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forms, and the bodies of animals either by their habitations—on the earth, in the earth, and similarly for the other elements—or else as light, heavy and intermediate. Some bodies, we shall observe, stand in the middle of the universe, others circumscribe it from above, others occupy the middle sphere: in each case we shall find bodies different in shape, so that the bodies of the living beings of the heavens may be differentiated from those of the other elements.
Once we have classified bodies into the four species, we are ready to combine them on a different principle, at the same time intermingling their differences of place, form and constitution; the resultant combinations will be known as fiery or earthy on the basis of the excess or predominance of some one element.
The distinction between First and Second Substances, between Fire and a given example of fire, entails a difference of a peculiar kind—the difference between universal and particular. This however is not a difference characteristic of Substance; there is also in Quality the distinction between whiteness and the white object, between grammar and some particular grammar.
The question may here be asked: what deficiency has grammar compared with a particular grammar, and science as a whole in comparison with a science? Grammar is certainly not posterior to the particular grammar: on the contrary, the grammar as in you depends upon the prior existence of grammar as such: the grammar as in you becomes a particular by the fact of being in you; it is otherwise identical with grammar the universal.
Turn to the case of Socrates: it is not Socrates who bestows manhood upon what previously was not Man, but Man upon Socrates; the individual man exists by participation in the universal.
Besides, Socrates is merely a particular instance of Man; this particularity can have no effect whatever in adding to his essential manhood.
We may be told that Man (the universal) is Form alone, Socrates Form in Matter. But on this very ground Socrates will be less fully Man than the universal; for the Reason-Principle will be less effectual