Page:Metaphysics by Aristotle Ross 1908 (deannotated).djvu/147

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e.g. to white man the essence of white man. Let the compound be denoted by ' X '.[1] What is the essence of X? But, it may be said, this also is not a propter se expression. We reply that there are just two ways in which a predicate may fail to be true of a subject propter se, and one of these results from the addition, and the other from the omission, of a determinant. One kind of predicate is not propter se because the term that is being defined is combined with another determinant, e.g. if in defining the essence of white one were to state the formula of white man; another because in the subject another determinant is combined with that which is expressed in the formula, e.g. if X meant white man, and one were to

define X as white; white man is white indeed, but its essence is not to be white.[2] But is being-X an essence at all? Probably not.'[3] For the essence is an individual type; but when an attribute is asserted of an alien subject, the complex is not an individual type, e.g. white man is not an individual type, since individuality belongs only to substances.[4] Therefore there is an essence only of those things whose formula is a definition. But we have a definition not where we have a word and a formula identical in meaning (for in that case all formulae or sets of words would be definitions; for there will be some name for any set of words whatever, so that even the Iliad would be a definition[5]), but where there is a formula of something primary; and primary things are those which do not imply the predication of one element in them of another, alien element. Nothing, then, which is not a species of a genus will have an essence — only species will have it, for in these the subject is not thought to participate in the attribute and to have it as an affection,[6] nor to have it by accident; but for everything else as well, if it has a name, there will be a formula of its meaning — viz. that this attribute belongs to this subject;

  1. ↑ ' X ' Aristotle expresses by arbitrarily taking the word 'cloak'.
  2. ↑ 1030a 1 read οὐ μέντοι <τὸ> τί ἦν εἶναι λευκῷ εἶναι.
  3. ↑ 1030a 3 read ὅλως; ἢ οὔ.
  4. ↑ The point is that λευκόν is one thing, ἄνθρωπος another, while ζῷον and δίπουν are not distinct things but δίπουν is only a form of ζῷον. Thus ἄνθρωπος λευκός is not an individual type and cannot be defined, while ζῷον δίπουν is an individual type and can be defined.
  5. ↑ Sc. of the word 'Iliad'.
  6. ↑ Cf. 1037b 14-21 for the interpretation of this.
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