Kitap 5
1
Accident 〈or attribute〉 means that which applies to something and is truly stated, but neither necessarily nor usually; as if, for example, while digging a hole for a plant one found a treasure. Then the finding of treasure is an accident to the man who is digging the hole; for the one thing is not a necessary consequence or sequel of the other, nor does one usually find treasure while planting.
2
And a cultured man might be white; but since this does not happen necessarily or usually, we call it an accident. Thus since there are attributes and subjects, and some attributes apply to their subjects only at a certain place and time, any attribute which applies to a subject, but not because it was a particular subject or time or place, will be an accident.
3
Nor is there any definite cause for an accident, but only a chance, i.e. indefinite, cause. It was by accident that X went to Aegina if he arrived there, not because he intended to go there but because he was carried out of his course by a storm, or captured by pirates.
4
The accident has happened or exists, but in virtue not of itself but of something else; for it was the storm which was the cause of his coming to a place for which he was not sailing—i.e. Aegina.
4
Accident has also another sense,i.e. property. namely, whatever belongs to each thing in virtue of itself, but is not in its essence; e.g. as having the sum of its angles equal to two right angles belongs to the triangle. Accidents of this kind may be eternal, but none of the former kind can be. There is an account of this elsewhere.The reference is probably to the Aristot. Analytica Posteriora 75a 18, 39-41.
