Book 8
1
We must now draw our conclusions from what has been said, and after summing up the result, bring our inquiry to a close. We have saidCf. Aristot. Met. 7.1. that the objects of our inquiry are the causes and principles and elements of substances. Now some substances are agreed upon by all; but about others certain thinkers have stated individual theories.
2
Those about which there is agreement are natural substances: e.g. fire, earth, water, air and all the other simple bodies; next, plants and their parts, and animals and the parts of animals; and finally the sensible universe and its parts; and certain thinkers individually include as substances the Forms and the objects of mathematics.Cf. Aristot. Met. 7.2.
3
And arguments show that there are yet other substances: the essence and the substrate.Cf. Aristot. Met. 7.3-4. Again, from another point of view, the genus is more nearly substance than the species, and the universal than the particularsCf. Aristot. Met. 7.13.; and there is a close connection between the universal and genus and the Ideas, for they are thought to be substance on the same grounds.Cf. Aristot. Met. 7.14.
4
And since the essence is substance, and definition is the formula of the essence, we have therefore systematically examined definition and essential predication.Cf. Aristot. Met. 7.4-6, 12, 15. And since the definition is a formula, and the formula has parts, we have been compelled to investigate parts, and to discover what things are parts of the substance, and what are not; and whether the parts of the substance are also parts of the definition.Cf. Aristot. Met. 7.10, 11. Further, then, neither the universal nor the genus is substance.Cf. Aristot. Met. 7.13, 16.
5
As for the Ideas and the objects of mathematics (for some say that these exist apart from sensible substances) we must consider them later.Books 13 and 14. But now let us proceed to discuss those substances which are generally accepted as such.
