Book XII
1
The subject of our inquiry is substance; for the principles and
the causes we are seeking are those of substances. For if the universe
is of the nature of a whole, substance is its first part; and if it
coheres merely by virtue of serial succession, on this view also
substance is first, and is succeeded by quality, and then by quantity.
At the same time these latter are not even being in the full sense,
but are qualities and movements of it,-or else even the not-white
and the not-straight would be being; at least we say even these are,
e.g. 'there is a not-white'. Further, none of the categories other
than substance can exist apart. And the early philosophers also in
practice testify to the primacy of substance; for it was of
substance that they sought the principles and elements and causes. The
thinkers of the present day tend to rank universals as substances (for
genera are universals, and these they tend to describe as principles
and substances, owing to the abstract nature of their inquiry); but
the thinkers of old ranked particular things as substances, e.g.
fire and earth, not what is common to both, body.
There are three kinds of substance-one that is sensible (of
which one subdivision is eternal and another is perishable; the latter
is recognized by all men, and includes e.g. plants and animals), of
which we must grasp the elements, whether one or many; and another
that is immovable, and this certain thinkers assert to be capable of
existing apart, some dividing it into two, others identifying the
Forms and the objects of mathematics, and others positing, of these
two, only the objects of mathematics.
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