And this is right; for the juxtaposition or mixing does not consist of
those things of which it is the juxtaposition or mixing. And the
same is true in all other cases; e.g. if the threshold is
characterized by its position, the position is not constituted by
the threshold, but rather the latter is constituted by the former. Nor
is man animal + biped, but there must be something besides these, if
these are matter,-something which is neither an element in the whole
nor a compound, but is the substance; but this people eliminate, and
state only the matter. If, then, this is the cause of the thing's
being, and if the cause of its being is its substance, they will not
be stating the substance itself.
(This, then, must either be eternal or it must be destructible
without being ever in course of being destroyed, and must have come to
be without ever being in course of coming to be. But it has been
proved and explained elsewhere that no one makes or begets the form,
but it is the individual that is made, i.e. the complex of form and
matter that is generated. Whether the substances of destructible
things can exist apart, is not yet at all clear; except that obviously
this is impossible in some cases-in the case of things which cannot
exist apart from the individual instances, e.g. house or utensil.
Perhaps, indeed, neither these things themselves, nor any of the other
things which are not formed by nature, are substances at all; for
one might say that the nature in natural objects is the only substance
to be found in destructible things.
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