Page:Metaphysics by Aristotle Ross 1908 (deannotated).djvu/146

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is our work to start from what is more intelligible to oneself and make what is intelligible by nature intelligible to oneself. Now what is intelligible and primary for particular sets of people is often intelligible to a very small extent, and has little or nothing of reality. But yet one must start from that which is barely intelligible but intelligible to oneself, and try to understand what is intelligible in itself, passing, as has been said, by way of those very things which one understands.



Chapter 4

Since at the start we distinguished the various marks by which we determine substance, and one of these was thought to be the essence, we must investigate this. And first let us make some abstract linguistic remarks about it. The essence of each thing is what it is said to be propter se[1]. For being you is not being musical; for you are not by your very nature musical. What, then, you are by your very nature is your essence.

But not the whole of this is the essence of a thing; not that which it is propter se as a surface is propter se white, because being a surface is not identical with being white. But again the combination of both — 'being a white surface' [2] — is not the essence of surface. Why? Because 'surface' itself is repeated. The formula, therefore, in which the term itself is not present but its meaning is expressed, this is the formula of the essence of each thing. Therefore if to be a white surface is to be a smooth surface [3], to be white and to be smooth are one and the same.[4]

But since there are compounds of substance with the other

categories (for there is a substrate for each category, e.g. for quality, quantity, time, place, and motion), we must inquire whether there is a formula of the essence of each of them, i.e. whether to these compounds also there belongs an essence,

  1. ↑ It seems convenient here to translate thus the phrase translated in Δ. 18 as 'in virtue of itself'.
  2. ↑ 1029b 18 read τὸ ἐπιφανείᾳ λευκῇ εἶναι.
  3. ↑ 1029b 21 read τὸ ἐπιφανείᾳ εἶναι λείᾳ. Cf. De Sensu 442b 11 (on Democritus).
  4. ↑ i.e. this identification does not give the essence of 'surface' (for 'surface' is repeated) but it gives the essence of 'white', since this is not repeated but replaced by an equivalent.
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