(29) Qualities must be for this school distinct from Substrates. This in fact they acknowledge by counting them as the second category. If then they form a distinct category, they must be simplex; that is to say they are not composite; that is to say that as qualities, pure and simple, they are devoid of Matter: hence they are bodiless and active, since Matter is their substrate- a relation of passivity.

If however they hold Qualities to be composite, that is a strange classification which first contrasts simple and composite qualities, then proceeds to include them in one genus, and finally includes one of the two species in the other ; it is like dividing knowledge into two species, the first comprising grammatical knowledge, the second made up of grammatical and other knowledge.

Again, if they identify Qualities with qualifications of Matter, then in the first place even their Seminal Principles will be material and will not have to reside in Matter to produce a composite, but prior to the composite thus produced they will themselves be composed of Matter and Form: in other words, they will not be Forms or Principles. Further, if they maintain that the Seminal Principles are nothing but Matter in a certain state, they evidently identify Qualities with States, and should accordingly classify them in their fourth genus. If this is a state of some peculiar kind, what precisely is its differentia? Clearly the state by its association with Matter receives an accession of Reality: yet if that means that when divorced from Matter it is not a Reality, how can State be treated as a single genus or species? Certainly one genus cannot embrace the Existent and the Non-existent.

And what is this state implanted in Matter? It is either real, or unreal: if real, absolutely bodiless: if unreal, it is introduced to no purpose; Matter is all there is; Quality therefore is nothing. The same is true of State, for that is even more unreal; the alleged Fourth Category more so.

Matter then is the sole Reality. But how do we come to know this? Certainly not from Matter itself. How, then? From Intellect? But Intellect is merely a state of Matter, and even the "state" is an empty qualification. We are left after all with Matter alone competent to make these assertions, to fathom these problems. And if its assertions were intelligent, we must wonder how it thinks and performs the functions of Soul without possessing either Intellect or Soul. If, then, it were to make foolish assertions, affirming itself to be what it is not and cannot be, to what should we ascribe this folly? Doubtless to Matter, if it was in truth Matter that spoke. But Matter does not speak; anyone who says that it does proclaims the predominance of Matter in himself; he may have a soul, but he is utterly devoid of Intellect, and lives in ignorance of himself and of the faculty alone capable of uttering the truth in these things.

(3) But perhaps we should rather speak of some single category, embracing Intellectual Substance, Matter, Form, and the Composite of Matter and Form. One might refer to the family of the Heraclids as a unity in the sense, not of a common element in all its members, but of a common origin: similarly, Intellectual Substance would be Substance in the first degree, the others being substances by derivation and in a lower degree.

But what is the objection to including everything in a single category, all else of which existence is predicated being derived from that one thing, Existence or Substance? Because, granted that things be no more than modifications of Substance, there is a distinct grading of substances themselves. Moreover, the single category does not put us in a position to build on Substance, or to grasp it in its very truth as the plausible source of the other substances.

Supposing we grant that all things known as substances are homogeneous as possessing something denied to the other genera, what precisely is this something, this individuality, this subject which is never a predicate, this thing not present in any thing as in a subject, this thing which does not owe its essential character to any other thing, as a quality takes character from a body and a quantity from a substance, as time is related to motion and motion to the moved?

The Second Substance is, it is true, a predicate. But predication in this case signifies a different relation from that just considered; it reveals the genus inherent in the subject and the subject's essential character, whereas whiteness is predicated of a thing in the sense of being present in the thing.

The properties adduced may indeed be allowed to distinguish Substance from the other Existents. They afford a means of grouping substances together and calling them by a common name. They do not however establish the unity of a genus, and they do not bring to light the concept and the nature of Substance.

These considerations are sufficient for our purpose: let us now proceed to investigate the nature of Quantity.

(3) How then do we go to work?

Let us begin by distinguishing Matter, Form, the Mixture of both, and the Attributes of the Mixture. The Attributes may be subdivided into those which are mere predicates, and those serving also as accidents. The accidents may be either inclusive or included; they may, further, be classified as activities, experiences, consequents.

Matter will be found common to all substances, not however as a genus, since it has no differentiae- unless indeed differentiae be ascribed to it on the ground of its taking such various forms as fire and air.

It may be held that Matter is sufficiently constituted a genus by the fact that the things in which it appears hold it in common, or in that it presents itself as a whole of parts. In this sense Matter will indeed be a genus, though not in the accepted sense of the term. Matter, we may remark, is also a single element, if the element as such is able to constitute a genus.

Further, if to a Form be added the qualification "bound up with, involved in Matter," Matter separates that Form from other Forms: it does not however embrace the whole of Substantial Form .

We may, again, regard Form as the creator of Substance and make the Reason-Principle of Substance dependent upon Form: yet we do not come thereby to an understanding of the nature of Substance.

We may, also, restrict Substance to the Composite. Matter and Form then cease to be substances. If they are Substance equally with the Composite, it remains to enquire what there is common to all three.

The "mere predicates" fall under the category of Relation: such are cause and element. The accidents included in the composite substances ire found to be either Quality or Quantity; those which are inclusive are of the nature of Space and Time. Activities and experiences comprise Motions; consequents Space and Time, which are consequents respectively of the Composites and of Motion.

The first three entities go, as we have discovered, to make a single common genus, the Sensible counterpart of Substance. Then follow in order Relation, Quantity, Quality, Time-during-which, Place-in-which, Motion; though, with Time and Space already included , Time-during-which and Place-in-which become superfluous.

Thus we have five genera, counting the first three entities as one. If the first three are not massed into a unity, the series will be Matter, Form, Composite, Relation, Quantity, Quality, Motion. The last three may, again, be included in Relation, which is capable of bearing this wider extension.

(8) We cannot indeed escape positing these three, Being, Motion, Stability, once it is the fact that the Intellect discerns them as separates; and if it thinks of them at all, it posits them by that very thinking; if they are thought, they exist. Things whose existence is bound up with Matter have no being in the Intellect: these three principles are however free of Matter; and in that which goes free of Matter to be thought is to be.

We are in the presence of Intellect undefiled. Fix it firmly, but not with the eyes of the body. You are looking upon the hearth of Reality, within it a sleepless light: you see how it holds to itself, and how it puts apart things that were together, how it lives a life that endures and keeps a thought acting not upon any future but upon that which already is, upon an eternal present- a thought self-centred, bearing on nothing outside of itself.

Now in the Act of Intellect there are energy and motion; in its self-intellection Substance and Being. In virtue of its Being it thinks, and it thinks of itself as Being, and of that as Being, upon which it is, so to speak, pivoted. Not that its Act self-directed ranks as Substance, but Being stands as the goal and origin of that Act, the object of its contemplation though not the contemplation itself: and yet this Act too involves Being, which is its motive and its term. By the fact that its Being is actual and not merely potential, Intellect bridges the dualism and abjures separation: it identifies itself with Being and Being with itself.

Being, the most firmly set of all things, that in virtue of which all other things receive Stability, possesses this Stability not as from without but as springing within, as inherent. Stability is the goal of intellection, a Stability which had no beginning, and the state from which intellection was impelled was Stability, though Stability gave it no impulsion; for Motion neither starts from Motion nor ends in Motion. Again, the Form-Idea has Stability, since it is the goal of Intellect: intellection is the Form's Motion.

Thus all the Existents are one, at once Motion and Stability; Motion and Stability are genera all-pervading, and every subsequent is a particular being, a particular stability and a particular motion.

We have caught the radiance of Being, and beheld it in its three manifestations: Being, revealed by the Being within ourselves; the Motion of Being, revealed by the motion within ourselves; and its Stability revealed by ours. We accommodate our being, motion, stability to those , unable however to draw any distinction but finding ourselves in the presence of entities inseparable and, as it were, interfused. We have, however, in a sense, set them a little apart, holding them down and viewing them in isolation; and thus we have observed Being, Stability, Motion- these three, of which each is a unity to itself; in so doing, have we not regarded them as being different from each other? By this posing of three entities, each a unity, we have, surely, found Being to contain Difference.

Again, inasmuch as we restore them to an all-embracing unity, identifying all with unity, do we not see in this amalgamation Identity emerging as a Real Existent?

Thus, in addition to the other three , we are obliged to posit the further two, Identity and Difference, so that we have in all five genera. In so doing, we shall not withhold Identity and Difference from the subsequents of the Intellectual order; the thing of Sense has, it is clear, a particular identity and a particular difference, but Identity and Difference have the generic status independently of the particular.

They will, moreover, be primary genera, because nothing can be predicated of them as denoting their essential nature. Nothing, of course we mean, but Being; but this Being is not their genus, since they cannot be identified with any particular being as such. Similarly, Being will not stand as genus to Motion or Stability, for these also are not its species. Beings comprise not merely what are to be regarded as species of the genus Being, but also participants in Being. On the other hand, Being does not participate in the other four principles as its geneANSWER: they are not prior to Being; they do not even attain to its level.

(5) These are incontrovertible facts in regard to the pseudo-substance of the Sensible realm: if they apply also in some degree to the True Substance of the Intellectual, the coincidence is, doubtless, to be attributed to analogy and ambiguity of terms.

We are aware that "the first" is so called only in relation to the things which come after it: "first" has no absolute significance; the first of one series is subsequent to the last of another. "Substrate," similarly, varies in meaning , while as for passivity its very existence in the Intellectual is questionable; if it does exist there, it is not the passivity of the Sensible.

It follows that the fact of "not being present in a subject is not universally true of Substance, unless presence in a subject be stipulated as not including the case of the part present in the whole or of one thing combining with another to form a distinct unity; a thing will not be present as in a subject in that with which it co-operates in the information of a composite substance. Form, therefore, is not present in Matter as in a subject, nor is Man so present in Socrates, since Man is part of Socrates.

Substance, then, is that which is not present in a subject. But if we adopt the definition "neither present in a subject nor predicated of a subject," we must add to the second "subject" the qualification "distinct," in order that we may not exclude the case of Man predicated of a particular man. When I predicate Man of Socrates, it is as though I affirmed, not that a piece of wood is white, but that whiteness is white; for in asserting that Socrates is a man, I predicate Man of a particular man, I affirm Man of the manhood in Socrates; I am really saying only that Socrates is Socrates, or that this particular rational animal is an animal.

It may be objected that non-presence in a subject is not peculiar to Substance, inasmuch as the differentia of a substance is no more present in a subject than the substance itself; but this objection results from taking a part of the whole substance, such as "two-footed" in our example, and asserting that this part is not present in a subject: if we take, not "two-footed" which is merely an aspect of Substance, but "two-footedness" by which we signify not Substance but Quality, we shall find that this "two-footedness" is indeed present in a subject.

We may be told that neither Time nor Place is present in a subject. But if the definition of Time as the measure of Motion be regarded as denoting something measured, the "measure" will be present in Motion as in a subject, while Motion will be present in the moved: if, on the contrary, it be supposed to signify a principle of measurement, the "measure" will be present in the measurer.

Place is the limit of the surrounding space, and thus is present in that space.

The truth is, however, that the "Substance" of our enquiry may be apprehended in directly opposite ways: it may be determined by one of the properties we have been discussing, by more than one, by all at once, according as they answer to the notions of Matter, Form and the Couplement.

(16) As for Relation, manifestly an offshoot, how can it be included among primaries? Relation is of thing ranged against thing; it is not self-pivoted, but looks outward.

Place and Date are still more remote from Being. Place denotes the presence of one entity within another, so that it involves a duality; but a genus must be a unity, not a composite. Besides, Place does not exist in the higher sphere, and the present discussion is concerned with the realm of True Being.

Whether time is There, remains to be considered. Apparently it has less claim than even Place. If it is a measurement, and that a measurement of Motion, we have two entities; the whole is a composite and posterior to Motion; therefore it is not on an equal footing with Motion in our classification.

Action and Passivity presuppose Motion; if, then, they exist in the higher sphere, they each involve a duality; neither is a simplex.

Possession is a duality, while Situation, as signifying one thing situated in another, is a threefold conception.

(23) As for Possession, if the term is used comprehensively, why are not all its modes to be brought under one category? Possession, thus, would include the quantum as possessing magnitude, the quale as possessing colour; it would include fatherhood and the complementary relationships, since the father possesses the son and the son possesses the father: in short, it would include all belongings.

If, on the contrary, the category of Possession comprises only the things of the body, such as weapons and shoes, we first ask why this should be so, and why their possession produces a single category, while burning, cutting, burying or casting them out do not give another or others. If it is because these things are carried on the person, then one's mantle lying on a couch will come under a different category from that of the mantle covering the person. If the ownership of possession suffices, then clearly one must refer to the one category of Possession all objects identified by being possessed, every case in which possession can be established; the character of the possessed object will make no difference.

If however Possession is not to be predicated of Quality because Quality stands recognised as a category, nor of Quantity because the category of Quantity has been received, nor of parts because they have been assigned to the category of Substance, why should we predicate Possession of weapons, when they too are comprised in the accepted category of Substance? Shoes and weapons are clearly substances.

How, further, is "He possesses weapons," signifying as it does that the action of arming has been performed by a subject, to be regarded as an entirely simple notion, assignable to a single category?

Again, is Possession to be restricted to an animate possessor, or does it hold good even of a statue as possessing the objects above mentioned? The animate and inanimate seem to possess in different ways, and the term is perhaps equivocal. Similarly, "standing" has not the same connotation as applied to the animate and the inanimate.

Besides, how can it be reasonable for what is found only in a limited number of cases to form a distinct generic category?

(25) There are those who lay down four categories and make a fourfold division into Substrates, Qualities, States, and Relative States, and find in these a common Something, and so include everything in one genus.

Against this theory there is much to be urged, but particularly against this posing of a common Something and a single all-embracing genus. This Something, it may be submitted, is unintelligible to themselves, is indefinable, and does not account either for bodies or for the bodiless. Moreover, no room is left for a differentia by which this Something may be distinguished. Besides, this common Something is either existent or non-existent: if existent, it must be one or other of its species;- if non-existent, the existent is classed under the non-existent. But the objections are countless; we must leave them for the present and consider the several heads of the division.

To the first genus are assigned Substrates, including Matter, to which is given a priority over the others; so that what is ranked as the first principle comes under the same head with things which must be posterior to it since it is their principle.

First, then: the prior is made homogeneous with the subsequent. Now this is impossible: in this relation the subsequent owes its existence to the prior, whereas among things belonging to one same genus each must have, essentially, the equality implied by the genus; for the very meaning of genus is to be predicated of the species in respect of their essential character. And that Matter is the basic source of all the rest of things, this school, we may suppose, would hardly deny.

Secondly: since they treat the Substrate as one thing, they do not enumerate the Existents; they look instead for principles of the Existents. There is however a difference between speaking of the actual Existents and of their principles.

If Matter is taken to be the only Existent, and all other things as modifications of Matter, it is not legitimate to set up a single genus to embrace both the Existent and the other things; consistency requires that Being be distinguished from its modifications and that these modifications be duly classified.

Even the distinction which this theory makes between Substrates and the rest of things is questionable. The Substrate is one thing and admits of no differentia- except perhaps in so far as it is split up like one mass into its various parts; and yet not even so, since the notion of Being implies continuity: it would be better, therefore, to speak of the Substrate, in the singular.

(14) The Academy and the Lyceum are places, and parts of Place, just as "above," "below," "here" are species or parts of Place; the difference is of minuter delimitation.

If then "above," "below," "the middle" are places- Delphi, for example, is the middle - and "near-the-middle" is also a place- Athens, and of course the Lyceum and the other places usually cited, are near the middle- what need have we to go further and seek beyond Place, admitting as we do that we refer in every instance to a place?

If, however, we have in mind the presence of one thing in another, we are not speaking of a single entity, we are not expressing a single notion.

Another consideration: when we say that a man is here, we present a relation of the man to that in which he is, a relation of the container to the contained. Why then do we not class as a relative whatever may be produced from this relation?

Besides, how does "here" differ from "at Athens"? The demonstrative "here" admittedly signifies place; so, then, does "at Athens": "at Athens" therefore belongs to the category of Place.

Again, if "at Athens" means "is at Athens," then the "is" as well as the place belongs to the predicate; but this cannot be right: we do not regard "is a quality" as predicate, but "a quality."

Furthermore, if "in time," "in place" are to be ranged under a category other than that applying to time and place, why not a separate category for "in a vessel"? Why not distinct categories for "in Matter," "in a subject," "a part in a whole," "a whole in its parts," "a genus in its species," "a species in a genus"? We are certainly on the way to a goodly number of categories.

(2) Our first observations must be directed to what passes in the Sensible realm for Substance. It is, we shall agree, only by analogy that the nature manifested in bodies is designated as Substance, and by no means because such terms as Substance or Being tally with the notion of bodies in flux; the proper term would be Becoming.

But Becoming is not a uniform nature; bodies comprise under the single head simples and composites, together with accidentals or consequents, these last themselves capable of separate classification.

Alternatively, Becoming may be divided into Matter and the Form imposed upon Matter. These may be regarded each as a separate genus, or else both may be brought under a single category and receive alike the name of Substance.

But what, we may ask, have Matter and Form in common? In what sense can Matter be conceived as a genus, and what will be its species? What is the differentia of Matter? In which genus, Matter or Form, are we to rank the composite of both? It may be this very composite which constitutes the Substance manifested in bodies, neither of the components by itself answering to the conception of Body: how, then, can we rank them in one and the same genus as the composite? How can the elements of a thing be brought within the same genus as the thing itself? Yet if we begin with bodies, our first-principles will be compounds.

Why not resort to analogy? Admitted that the classification of the Sensible cannot proceed along the identical lines marked out for the Intellectual: is there any reason why we should not for Intellectual-Being substitute Matter, and for Intellectual Motion substitute Sensible Form, which is in a sense the life and consummation of Matter? The inertia of Matter would correspond with Stability, while the Identity and Difference of the Intellectual would find their counterparts in the similarity and diversity which obtain in the Sensible realm.

But, in the first place, Matter does not possess or acquire Form as its life or its Act; Form enters it from without, and remains foreign to its nature. Secondly, Form in the Intellectual is an Act and a motion; in the Sensible Motion is different from Form and accidental to it: Form in relation to Matter approximates rather to Stability than to Motion; for by determining Matter's indetermination it confers upon it a sort of repose.

In the higher realm Identity and Difference presuppose a unity at once identical and different: a thing in the lower is different only by participation in Difference and in relation to some other thing; Identity and Difference are here predicated of the particular, which is not, as in that realm, a posterior.

As for Stability, how can it belong to Matter, which is distorted into every variety of mass, receiving its forms from without, and even with the aid of these forms incapable of offspring.

This mode of division must accordingly be abandoned.

(9) The above considerations- to which others, doubtless, might be added- suffice to show that these five are primary genera. But that they are the only primary genera, that there are no others, how can we be confident of this? Why do we not add unity to them? Quantity? Quality? Relation, and all else included by our various forerunners?

As for unity: If the term is to mean a unity in which nothing else is present, neither Soul nor Intellect nor anything else, this can be predicated of nothing, and therefore cannot be a genus. If it denotes the unity present in Being, in which case we predicate Being of unity, this unity is not primal.

Besides, unity, containing no differences, cannot produce species, and not producing species, cannot be a genus. You cannot so much as divide unity: to divide it would be to make it many. Unity, aspiring to be a genus, becomes a plurality and annuls itself.

Again, you must add to it to divide it into species; for there can be no differentiae in unity as there are in Substance. The mind accepts differences of Being, but differences within unity there cannot be. Every differentia introduces a duality destroying the unity; for the addition of any one thing always does away with the previous quantity.

It may be contended that the unity which is implicit in Being and in Motion is common to all other things, and that therefore Being and unity are inseparable. But we rejected the idea that Being is a genus comprising all things, on the ground that these things are not beings in the sense of the Absolute Being, but beings in another mode: in the same way, we assert, unity is not a genus, the Primary Unity having a character distinct from all other unities.

Admitted that not everything suffices to produce a genus, it may yet be urged that there is an Absolute or Primary Unity corresponding to the other primaries. But if Being and unity are identified, then since Being has already been included among the genera, it is but a name that is introduced in unity: if, however, they are both unity, some principle is implied: if there is anything in addition , unity is predicated of this added thing; if there is nothing added, the reference is again to that unity predicated of nothing. If however the unity referred to is that which accompanies Being, we have already decided that it is not unity in the primary sense.

But is there any reason why this less complete unity should not still possess Primary Being, seeing that even its posterior we rank as Being, and "Being" in the sense of the Primary Being? The reason is that the prior of this Being cannot itself be Being- or else, if the prior is Being, this is not Primary Being: but the prior is unity; .

Furthermore, unity, abstracted from Being, has no differentiae.

Again, even taking it as bound up with Being: If it is a consequent of Being, then it is a consequent of everything, and therefore the latest of things: but the genus takes priority. If it is simultaneous with Being, it is simultaneous with everything: but a genus is not thus simultaneous. If it is prior to Being, it is of the nature of a Principle, and therefore will belong only to Being; but if it serves as Principle to Being, it is not its genus: if it is not genus to Being, it is equally not a genus of anything else; for that would make Being a genus of all other things.

In sum, the unity exhibited in Being on the one hand approximates to Unity-Absolute and on the other tends to identify itself with Being: Being is a unity in relation to the Absolute, is Being by virtue of its sequence upon that Absolute: it is indeed potentially a plurality, and yet it remains a unity and rejecting division refuses thereby to become a genus.

(12) If then we do not propose to divide Quality in this manner, what basis of division have we?

We must examine whether qualities may not prove to be divisible on the principle that some belong to the body and others to the soul. Those of the body would be subdivided according to the senses, some being attributed to sight, others to hearing and taste, others to smell and touch. Those of the soul would presumably be allotted to appetite, emotion, reason; though, again, they may be distinguished by the differences of the activities they condition, in so far as activities are engendered by these qualities; or according as they are beneficial or injurious, the benefits and injuries being duly classified. This last is applicable also to the classification of bodily qualities, which also produce differences of benefit and injury: these differences must be regarded as distinctively qualitative; for either the benefit and injury are held to be derived from Quality and the quale, or else some other explanation must be found for them.

A point for consideration is how the quale, as conditioned by Quality, can belong to the same category: obviously there can be no single genus embracing both.

Further, if "boxer" is in the category of Quality, why not "agent" as well? And with agent goes "active." Thus "active" need not go into the category of Relation; nor again need "passive," if "patient" is a quale. Moreover, agent" is perhaps better assigned to the category of Quality for the reason that the term implies power, and power is Quality. But if power as such were determined by Substance , the agent, though ceasing to be a quale, would not necessarily become a relative. Besides, "active" is not like "greater": the greater, to be the greater, demands a less, whereas "active" stands complete by the mere possession of its specific character.

It may however be urged that while the possession of that character makes it a quale, it is a relative in so far as it directs upon an external object the power indicated by its name. Why, then, is not "boxer" a relative, and "boxing" as well? Boxing is entirely related to an external object; its whole theory pre-supposes this external. And in the case of the other arts- or most of them- investigation would probably warrant the assertion that in so far as they affect the soul they are qualities, while in so far as they look outward they are active and as being directed to an external object are relatives. They are relatives in the other sense also that they are thought of as habits.

Can it then be held that there is any distinct reality implied in activity, seeing that the active is something distinct only according as it is a quale? It may perhaps be held that the tendency towards action of living beings, and especially of those having freewill, implies a reality of activity .

But what is the function of the active in connection with those non-living powers which we have classed as qualities? Doubtless to recruit any object it encounters, making the object a participant in its content.

But if one same object both acts and is acted upon, how do we then explain the active? Observe also that the greater- in itself perhaps a fixed three yards' length- will present itself as both greater and less according to its external contacts.

It will be objected that greater and less are due to participation in greatness and smallness; and it might be inferred that a thing is active or passive by participation in activity or passivity.

This is the place for enquiring also whether the qualities of the Sensible and Intellectual realms can be included under one head- a question intended only for those who ascribe qualities to the higher realm as well as the lower. And even if Ideal Forms of qualities are not posited, yet once the term "habit" is used in reference to Intellect, the question arises whether there is anything common to that habit and the habit we know in the lower.

Wisdom too is generally admitted to exist There. Obviously, if it shares only its name with our wisdom, it is not to be reckoned among things of this sphere; if, however, the import is in both cases the same, then Quality is common to both realms- unless, of course, it be maintained that everything There, including even intellection, is Substance.

This question, however, applies to all the categories: are the two spheres irreconcilable, or can they be co-ordinated with a unity?

(1) Philosophy at a very early stage investigated the number and character of the Existents. Various theories resulted: some declared for one Existent, others for a finite number, others again for an infinite number, while as regards the nature of the Existents- one, numerically finite, or numerically infinite- there was a similar disagreement. These theories, in so far as they have been adequately examined by later workers, may be passed over here; our attention must be directed upon the results of those whose examination has led them to posit on their awn account certain well-defined genera.

These thinkers rejected pure unity on the ground of the plurality observed even in the Intellectual world; they rejected an infinite number as not reconcilable with the facts and as defying knowledge: considering the foundations of being to be "genera" rather than elements strictly so called, they concluded for a finite number. Of these "genera" some found ten, others less, others no doubt more.

But here again there is a divergence of views. To some the genera are first-principles; to others they indicate only a generic classification of the Existents themselves.

Let us begin with the well-known tenfold division of the Existents, and consider whether we are to understand ten genera ranged under the common name of Being, or ten categories. That the term Being has not the same sense in all ten is rightly maintained.

But a graver problem confronts us at the outset: Are the ten found alike in the Intellectual and in the Sensible realms? Or are all found in the Sensible and some only in the Intellectual? All in the Intellectual and some in the Sensible is manifestly impossible.

At this point it would be natural to investigate which of the ten belong to both spheres, and whether the Existents of the Intellectual are to be ranged under one and the same genus with the Existents in the Sensible, or whether the term "Existence" is equivocal as applied to both realms. If the equivocation exists, the number of genera will be increased: if there is no equivocation, it is strange to find the one same "Existence" applying to the primary and to the derivative Existents when there is no common genus embracing both primal and secondary.

These thinkers are however not considering the Intellectual realm in their division, which was not intended to cover all the Existents; the Supreme they overlooked.

(9) It follows that in the cases specified above- agent, knowledge and the rest- the relation must be considered as in actual operation, and the Act and the Reason-Principle in the Act must be assumed to be real: in all other cases there will be simply participation in an Ideal-Form, in a Reason-Principle.

If Reality implied embodiment, we should indeed be forced to deny Reality to these conditions called relative; if however we accord the pre-eminent place to the unembodied and to the Reason-Principles, and at the same time maintain that relations are Reason-Principles and participate in Ideal-Forms, we are bound to seek their causes in that higher sphere. Doubleness, it is clear, is the cause of a thing being double, and from it is derived halfness.

Some correlatives owe their designations to the same Form, others to opposite Forms; it is thus that two objects are simultaneously double and half of each other, and one great and the other small. It may happen that both correlatives exist in one object-likeness and unlikeness, and, in general, identity and difference, so that the same thing will be at once like and unlike, identical and different.

The question arises here whether sharing in the same Form could make one man depraved and another more depraved. In the case of total depravity, clearly the two are made equal by the absence of a Form. Where there is a difference of degree, the one has participated in a Form which has failed to predominate, the other in a Form which has failed still more: or, if we choose the negative aspect, we may think of them both as failing to participate in a Form which naturally belonged to them.

Sensation may be regarded as a Form of double origin ; and similarly with knowledge.

Habit is an Act directed upon something had and binding it as it were with the subject having , as the Act of production binds producer and product.

Measurement is an Act of the measurer upon the measured object: it too is therefore a kind of Reason-Principle.

Now if the condition of being related is regarded as a Form having a generic unity, Relation must be allowed to be a single genus owing its reality to a Reason-Principle involved in all instances. If however the Reason-Principles stand opposed and have the differences to which we have referred, there may perhaps not be a single genus, but this will not prevent all relatives being expressed in terms of a certain likeness and falling under a single category.

But even if the cases of which we have spoken can be subsumed under a single head, it is nevertheless impossible to include in a single genus all that goes with them in the one common category: for the category includes negations and derivatives- not only, for example, double but also its negative, the resultant doubleness and the act of doubling. But we cannot include in one genus both the thing and its negative- double and not-double, relative and not-relative- any more than in dealing with the genus animal we can insert in it the nonanimal. Moreover, doubleness and doubling have only the relation to double that whiteness has to white; they cannot be classed as identical with it.

(2) But are we really obliged to posit the existence of such genera?

Take Substance, for Substance must certainly be our starting-point: what are the grounds for regarding Substance as one single genus?

It has been remarked that Substance cannot be a single entity common to both the Intellectual and the Sensible worlds. We may add that such community would entail the existence of something prior to Intellectual and Sensible Substances alike, something distinct from both as predicated of both; and this prior would be neither body nor unembodied; for it were one or the other, body would be unembodied, or the unembodied would be the body.

This conclusion must not however prevent our seeking in the actual substance of the Sensible world an element held in common by Matter, by Form and by their Composite, all of which are designated as substances, though it is not maintained that they are Substance in an equal degree; Form is usually held to be Substance in a higher degree than Matter, and rightly so, in spite of those who would have Matter to be the more truly real.

There is further the distinction drawn between what are known as First and Second Substances. But what is their common basis, seeing that the First are the source from which the Second derive their right to be called substances?

But, in sum, it is impossible to define Substance: determine its property, and still you have not attained to its essence. Even the definition, "That which, numerically one and the same, is receptive of contraries," will hardly be applicable to all substances alike.

(8) The division into elements must, in short, be abandoned, especially in regard to Sensible Substance, known necessarily by sense rather than by reason. We must no longer look for help in constituent parts, since such parts will not be substances, or at any rate not sensible substances.

Our plan must be to apprehend what is constant in stone, earth, water and the entities which they compose- the vegetal and animal forms, considered purely as sensibles- and to confine this constant within a single genus. Neither Matter nor Form will thus be overlooked, for Sensible Substance comports them; fire and earth and the two intermediaries consist of Matter and Form, while composite things are actually many substances in one. They all, moreover, have that common property which distinguishes them from other things: serving as subjects to these others, they are never themselves present in a subject nor predicated of any other thing. Similarly, all the characteristics which we have ascribed to Substance find a place in this classification.

But Sensible Substance is never found apart from magnitude and quality: how then do we proceed to separate these accidents? If we subtract them- magnitude, figure, colour, dryness, moistness- what is there left to be regarded as Substance itself? All the substances under consideration are, of course, qualified.

There is, however, something in relation to which whatever turns Substance into qualified Substance is accidental: thus, the whole of fire is not Substance, but only a part of it- if the term "part" be allowed.

What then can this "part" be? Matter may be suggested. But are we actually to maintain that the particular sensible substance consists of a conglomeration of qualities and Matter, while Sensible Substance as a whole is merely the sum of these coagulations in the uniform Matter, each one separately forming a quale or a quantum or else a thing of many qualities? Is it true to say that everything whose absence leaves subsistence incomplete is a part of the particular substance, while all that is accidental to the substance already existent takes independent rank and is not submerged in the mixture which constitutes this so-called substance?

I decline to allow that whatever combines in this way with anything else is Substance if it helps to produce a single mass having quantity and quality, whereas taken by itself and divorced from this complementary function it is a quality: not everything which composes the amalgam is Substance, but only the amalgam as a whole.

And let no one take exception on the ground that we produce Sensible Substance from non-substances. The whole amalgam itself is not True Substance; it is merely an imitation of that True Substance which has Being apart from its concomitants, these indeed being derived from it as the possessor of True Being. In the lower realm the case is different: the underlying ground is sterile, and from its inability to produce fails to attain to the status of Being; it remains a shadow, and on this shadow is traced a sketch- the world of Appearance.

(15) How then do the four genera complete Substance without qualifying it or even particularizing it?

It has been observed that Being is primary, and it is clear that none of the four- Motion, Stability, Difference, Identity- is distinct from it. That this Motion does not produce Quality is doubtless also clear, but a word or two will make it clearer still.

If Motion is the Act of Substance, and Being and the Primaries in general are its Act, then Motion is not an accidental attribute: as the Act of what is necessarily actual , it is no longer to be considered as the complement of Substance but as Substance itself. For this reason, then, it has not been assigned to a posterior class, or referred to Quality, but has been made contemporary with Being.

The truth is not that Being first is and then takes Motion, first is and then acquires Stability: neither Stability nor Motion is a mere modification of Being. Similarly, Identity and Difference are not later additions: Being did not grow into plurality; its very unity was a plurality; but plurality implies Difference, and unity-in-plurality involves Identity.

Substance requires no more than these five constituents; but when we have to turn to the lower sphere, we find other principles giving rise no longer to Substance (as such) but to quantitative Substance and qualitative: these other principles may be regarded as genera but not primary genera.

(15) Now the objects attracting the sun-rays to themselves- illuminated by a fire of the sense-order- are necessarily of the sense-order; there is perceptibility because there has been a union of things at once external to each other and continuous, contiguous, in direct contact, two extremes in one line. But the Reason-Principle operating upon Matter is external to it only in a very different mode and sense: exteriority in this case is amply supplied by contrariety of essence and can dispense with any opposite ends ; or, rather, the difference is one that actually debars any local extremity; sheer incongruity of essence, the utter failure in relationship, inhibits admixture .

The reason, then, of the immutability of Matter is that the entrant principle neither possesses it nor is possessed by it. Consider, as an example, the mode in which an opinion or representation is present in the mind; there is no admixture; the notion that came goes in its time, still integrally itself alone, taking nothing with it, leaving nothing after it, because it has not been blended with the mind; there is no "outside" in the sense of contact broken, and the distinction between base and entrant is patent not to the senses but to the reason.

In that example, no doubt, the mental representation- though it seems to have a wide and unchecked control- is an image, while the Soul is in its nature not an image : none the less the Soul or Mind certainly stands to the concept as Matter, or in some analogous relation. The representation, however, does not cover the Mind over; on the contrary it is often expelled by some activity there; however urgently it presses in, it never effects such an obliteration as to be taken for the Soul; it is confronted there by indwelling powers, by Reason-Principles, which repel all such attack.

Matter- feebler far than the Soul for any exercise of power, and possessing no phase of the Authentic Existents, not even in possession of its own falsity- lacks the very means of manifesting itself, utter void as it is; it becomes the means by which other things appear, but it cannot announce its own presence. Penetrating thought may arrive at it, discriminating it from Authentic Existence; then, it is discerned as something abandoned by all that really is, by even the dimmest semblants of being, as a thing dragged towards every shape and property and appearing to follow- yet in fact not even following.

(23) A first principle is that the knowing of sensible objects is an act of the soul, or of the living conjoint, becoming aware of the quality of certain corporeal entities, and appropriating the ideas present in them.

This apprehension must belong either to the soul isolated, self-acting, or to soul in conjunction with some other entity.

Isolated, self-acting, how is it possible? Self-acting, it has knowledge of its own content, and this is not perception but intellection: if it is also to know things outside itself it can grasp them only in one of two ways: either it must assimilate itself to the external objects, or it must enter into relations with something that has been so assimilated.

Now as long as it remains self-centred it cannot assimilate: a single point cannot assimilate itself to an external line: even line cannot adapt itself to line in another order, line of the intellectual to line of the sensible, just as fire of the intellectual and man of the intellectual remain distinct from fire and man of the sensible. Even Nature, the soul-phase which brings man into being, does not come to identity with the man it shapes and informs: it has the faculty of dealing with the sensible, but it remains isolated, and, its task done, ignores all but the intellectual as it is itself ignored by the sensible and utterly without means of grasping it.

Suppose something visible lying at a distance: the soul sees it; now, admitting to the full that at first only the pure idea of the thing is seized- a total without discerned part- yet in the end it becomes to the seeing soul an object whose complete detail of colour and form is known: this shows that there is something more here than the outlying thing and the soul; for the soul is immune from experience; there must be a third, something not thus exempt; and it is this intermediate that accepts the impressions of shape and the like.

This intermediate must be able to assume the modifications of the material object so as to be an exact reproduction of its states, and it must be of the one elemental-stuff: it, thus, will exhibit the condition which the higher principle is to perceive; and the condition must be such as to preserve something of the originating object, and yet not be identical with it: the essential vehicle of knowledge is an intermediary which, as it stands between the soul and the originating object, will, similarly, present a condition midway between the two spheres, of sense and the intellectual-linking the extremes, receiving from one side to exhibit to the other, in virtue of being able to assimilate itself to each. As an instrument by which something is to receive knowledge, it cannot be identical with either the knower or the known: but it must be apt to likeness with both- akin to the external object by its power of being affected, and to the internal, the knower, by the fact that the modification it takes becomes an idea.

If this theory of ours is sound, bodily organs are necessary to sense-perception, as is further indicated by the reflection that the soul entirely freed of body can apprehend nothing in the order of sense.

The organ must be either the body entire or some member set apart for a particular function; thus touch for one, vision for another. The tools of craftsmanship will be seen to be intermediaries between the judging worker and the judged object, disclosing to the experimenter the particular character of the matter under investigation: thus a ruler, representing at once the straightness which is in the mind and the straightness of a plank, is used as an intermediary by which the operator proves his work.

Some questions of detail remain for consideration elsewhere: Is it necessary that the object upon which judgement or perception is to take place should be in contact with the organ of perception, or can the process occur across space upon an object at a distance? Thus, is the heat of a fire really at a distance from the flesh it warms, the intermediate space remaining unmodified; is it possible to see colour over a sheer blank intervening between the colour and the eye, the organ of vision reaching to its object by its own power?

For the moment we have one certainty, that perception of things of sense belongs to the embodied soul and takes place through the body.

(9) But how can we conceive a thing having existence without having magnitude?

We have only to think of things whose identity does not depend on their quantity- for certainly magnitude can be distinguished from existence as can many other forms and attributes.

In a word, every unembodied Kind must be classed as without quantity, and Matter is unembodied.

Besides quantitativeness itself does not possess quantity, which belongs only to things participating in it, a consideration which shows that Quantitativeness is an Idea-Principle. A white object becomes white by the presence of whiteness; what makes an organism white or of any other variety of colour is not itself a specific colour but, so to speak, a specific Reason-Principle: in the same way what gives an organism a certain bulk is not itself a thing of magnitude but is Magnitude itself, the abstract Absolute, or the Reason-Principle.

This Magnitude-Absolute, then, enters and beats the Matter out into Magnitude?

Not at all: the Matter was not previously shrunken small: there was no littleness or bigness: the Idea gives Magnitude exactly as it gives every quality not previously present.