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'Accident' means (1) that which attaches to something and can be
truly asserted, but neither of necessity nor usually, e.g. if some one
in digging a hole for a plant has found treasure. This-the finding
of treasure-is for the man who dug the hole an accident; for neither
does the one come of necessity from the other or after the other, nor,
if a man plants, does he usually find treasure. And a musical man
might be pale; but since this does not happen of necessity nor
usually, we call it an accident. Therefore since there are
attributes and they attach to subjects, and some of them attach to
these only in a particular place and at a particular time, whatever
attaches to a subject, but not because it was this subject, or the
time this time, or the place this place, will be an accident.
Therefore, too, there is no definite cause for an accident, but a
chance cause, i.e. an indefinite one. Going to Aegina was an
accident for a man, if he went not in order to get there, but
because he was carried out of his way by a storm or captured by
pirates. The accident has happened or exists,-not in virtue of the
subject's nature, however, but of something else; for the storm was
the cause of his coming to a place for which he was not sailing, and
this was Aegina.
'Accident' has also (2) another meaning, i.e. all that attaches to
each thing in virtue of itself but is not in its essence, as having
its angles equal to two right angles attaches to the triangle.
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