Book 7
17
but in the concrete substance, e.g. snub nose or Callias, matter will be present too.Chapters. 10-11; and cf. Aristot. Met. 7.4. We have stated also that the essence and the individual are in some cases the same, as in the case of the primary substances; e.g. crookedness and essence of crookedness, if this is primary.
18
By primary I mean that which does not imply the presence of something in something else as a material substrate. But such things as are material or are compounded with matter are not the same as their essence; not even if they are accidentally one, e.g. Socrates and cultured; for these are only accidentally the same.
1
Now let us first deal with definition, in so far as it has not been dealt with in the Analytics; for the problem stated thereAristot. An. Post. 92a 29. has a bearing upon our discussion of substance. The problem I mean is this: what constitutes the unity of the thing of which we say that the formula is a definition? E.g., in the case of man, two-footed animal; for let us take this as the formula of man.
2
Why, then, is this a unity and not a plurality, animal and two-footed? For in the case of man and white we have a plurality when the latter does not refer to the former, but a unity when it does refer to it, and the subject, man, has an attribute; for then they become a unity and we have the white man.
3
But in the case before us one term does not partake of the other; the genus is not considered to partake of its differentiae, for then the same thing would be partaking simultaneously of contraries, since the differentiae by which the genus is distinguished are contrary. And even if it does partake of them, the same argument applies, since the differentiae are many; e.g. terrestrial, two-footed, wingless.
