But if all statements are accidental,
there will be nothing primary about which they are made, if the
accidental always implies predication about a subject. The
predication, then, must go on ad infinitum. But this is impossible;
for not even more than two terms can be combined in accidental
predication. For (1) an accident is not an accident of an accident,
unless it be because both are accidents of the same subject. I mean,
for instance, that the white is musical and the latter is white,
only because both are accidental to man. But (2) Socrates is
musical, not in this sense, that both terms are accidental to
something else. Since then some predicates are accidental in this
and some in that sense, (a) those which are accidental in the latter
sense, in which white is accidental to Socrates, cannot form an
infinite series in the upward direction; e.g. Socrates the white has
not yet another accident; for no unity can be got out of such a sum.
Nor again (b) will 'white' have another term accidental to it, e.g.
'musical'. For this is no more accidental to that than that is to
this; and at the same time we have drawn the distinction, that while
some predicates are accidental in this sense, others are so in the
sense in which 'musical' is accidental to Socrates; and the accident
is an accident of an accident not in cases of the latter kind, but
only in cases of the other kind, so that not all terms will be
accidental. There must, then, even so be something which denotes
substance.
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