And some say Forms
and numbers have the same nature, and the other things come after
them-lines and planes-until we come to the substance of the material
universe and to sensible bodies.
Regarding these matters, then, we must inquire which of the common
statements are right and which are not right, and what substances
there are, and whether there are or are not any besides sensible
substances, and how sensible substances exist, and whether there is
a substance capable of separate existence (and if so why and how) or
no such substance, apart from sensible substances; and we must first
sketch the nature of substance.
3
The word 'substance' is applied, if not in more senses, still at
least to four main objects; for both the essence and the universal and
the genus, are thought to be the substance of each thing, and fourthly
the substratum. Now the substratum is that of which everything else is
predicated, while it is itself not predicated of anything else. And so
we must first determine the nature of this; for that which underlies a
thing primarily is thought to be in the truest sense its substance.
And in one sense matter is said to be of the nature of substratum,
in another, shape, and in a third, the compound of these. (By the
matter I mean, for instance, the bronze, by the shape the pattern of
its form, and by the compound of these the statue, the concrete
whole.) Therefore if the form is prior to the matter and more real, it
will be prior also to the compound of both, for the same reason.
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