What, then, we have to ask, is the constant element in the first three entities? What is it that identifies them with their inherent Substance? Is it the capacity to serve as a base? But Matter, we maintain, serves as the base and seat of Form: Form, thus, will be excluded from the category of Substance. Again, the Composite is the base and seat of attributes: hence, Form combined with Matter will be the basic ground of Composites, or at any rate of all posteriors of the Composite- Quantity, Quality, Motion, and the rest. But perhaps we may think Substance validly defined as that which is not predicated of anything else. White and black are predicated of an object having one or other of these qualities; double presupposes something distinct from itself- we refer not to the half, but to the length of wood of which doubleness is affirmed. father qua father is a predicate; knowledge is predicated of the subject in whom the knowledge exists; space is the limit of something, time the measure of something. Fire, on the other hand, is predicated of nothing; wood as such is predicated of nothing; and so with man, Socrates, and the composite substance in general. Equally the Substantial Form is never a predicate, since it never acts as a modification of anything. Form is not an attribute of Matter hence, is not predicable of Matter it is simply a constituent of the Couplement. On the other hand, the Form of a man is not different from the man himself . Matter, similarly, is part of a whole, and belongs to something else only as to a whole and not as to a separate thing of which it is predicated. White, on the contrary, essentially belongs to something distinct from itself. We conclude that nothing belonging to something else and predicated of it can be Substance. Substance is that which belongs essentially to itself, or, in so far as it is a part of the differentiated object, serves only to complete the Composite. Each or either part of the Composite belongs to itself, and is only affirmed of the Composite in a special sense: only qua part of the whole is it predicated of something else; qua individual it is never in its essential nature predicated of an external. It may be claimed as a common element in Matter, Form and the Couplement that they are all substrates. But the mode in which Matter is the substrate of Form is different from that in which Form and the Couplement are substrates of their modifications. And is it strictly true to say that Matter is the substrate of Form? Form is rather the completion which Matter's nature as pure potentiality demands. Moreover, Form cannot be said to reside in Matter . When one thing combines with another to form a unity, the one does not reside in the other; both alike are substrates of a third: thus, Man and a man are substrates of their experiences, and are prior to their activities and consequents. Substance, then, is that from which all other things proceed and to which they owe their existence; it is the centre of passivity and the source of action.

Of things stated, some are stated without connection; as, for example, "man" and "runs," and whatever does not complete a sentence, which is either...

For every Creature looks but into its Mother that is fixed [or predominant] in it. The material Creature sees a material Substance, but an immaterial ...

Hence, through these things such a corporeal-formed division as you introduce, is demonstrated to be false. It is, indeed, especially necessary not...

Thus now in the Essence of all Essences, there are three several distinct Properties, which yet are not parted asunder, with one Source [or Property]...

But the philosophers, the Stoics, and Plato, and Pythagoras, nay more, Aristotle the Peripatetic, suppose the existence of matter among the first prin...

And the knowledge pre-existing of each object of investigation is sometimes merely of the essence, while its functions are unknown (as of stones, and ...

It is necessary, therefore, to admit a thing of this kind in partial souls. For such as is the life which the soul received, prior to its insertion...

Leaving, therefore, these particulars, you wish in the next place that I would unfold to you “ What the Egyptians conceive the first cause to be;...

Know yourself, that is, from what substance you are, or from what race, or from what species. Understand that you have come into being from three race...

After the body of the universe, also, many things are generated by the nature of it. For the concord of similars, and the contrariety of dissimilars,...

I. First, there is the power, from which a body comes to be, whether wood, stone or herbs. II. After that, there is a sap in that thing, which is the...

And of those things that are classed under the ten Categories, some are predicated by themselves (as the nine Categories), and others in relation to s...

You must not, therefore, think that this division is the peculiarity of powers or energies, or of essence; nor assuming it separately, must you...

In addition to these things, also, how can the energies of a partible soul which is detained in body, become essence, and be by themselves separate...

Now bodies matter [-made] are in diversity. Some are of earth, of water some, some are of air, and some of fire. But they are all composed; some are...

For these reasons are forms , and being simple and uniform, they receive no perturbation in themselves, and no departure from their proper mode of sub...

One quality has always generated the others alike, and none of them have vanished or gone out of sight, just as it is in the whole God; and then the...

Accordingly, while the definition is explanatory of the essence of the thing, it is incapable of accurately comprehending its nature. By means of the...

First there is the ground, or the corporeal being, although in the Deity, or in the creatures, it [the heat] has no peculiar or several body, for all...

In these three species or qualities stands the corporeal being, or the creatural being of all creatures in heaven and in this world, whether it be...