E.g. what is still weather? Absence of
motion in a large expanse of air; air is the matter, and absence of
motion is the actuality and substance. What is a calm? Smoothness of
sea; the material substratum is the sea, and the actuality or shape is
smoothness. It is obvious then, from what has been said, what sensible
substance is and how it exists-one kind of it as matter, another as
form or actuality, while the third kind is that which is composed of
these two.
3
We must not fail to notice that sometimes it is not clear
whether a name means the composite substance, or the actuality or
form, e.g. whether 'house' is a sign for the composite thing, 'a
covering consisting of bricks and stones laid thus and thus', or for
the actuality or form, 'a covering', and whether a line is 'twoness in
length' or 'twoness', and whether an animal is soul in a body' or 'a
soul'; for soul is the substance or actuality of some body. 'Animal'
might even be applied to both, not as something definable by one
formula, but as related to a single thing. But this question, while
important for another purpose, is of no importance for the inquiry
into sensible substance; for the essence certainly attaches to the
form and the actuality. For 'soul' and 'to be soul' are the same,
but 'to be man' and 'man' are not the same, unless even the bare
soul is to be called man; and thus on one interpretation the thing
is the same as its essence, and on another it is not.
If we examine we find that the syllable does not consist of the
letters + juxtaposition, nor is the house bricks + juxtaposition.
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