[
1042a]
[3]
We must now draw our conclusions from
what has been said, and after summing up the result, bring our inquiry
to a close. We have said
1 that the objects of our inquiry are the causes and
principles and elements of substances. Now some substances are agreed
upon by all; but about others certain thinkers have stated individual
theories.Those about
which there is agreement are natural substances: e.g. fire, earth,
water, air and all the other simple bodies; next, plants and their
parts, and animals and the parts of animals; and finally the sensible
universe and its parts; and certain thinkers individually include as
substances the Forms and the objects of mathematics.
2And arguments show that there are yet other
substances: the essence and the substrate.
3 Again, from another point of view, the genus is
more nearly substance than the species, and the universal than the
particulars
4;
and there is a close connection between the universal and genus and
the Ideas, for they are thought to be substance on the same
grounds.
5And since the essence is substance, and definition is the formula of
the essence, we have therefore systematically examined definition and
essential predication.
6 And since
the definition is a formula, and the formula has parts,
[20]
we have been compelled to
investigate "parts," and to discover what things are parts of the
substance, and what are not; and whether the parts of the substance
are also parts of the definition.
7 Further, then, neither the universal nor the genus
is substance.
8As for the Ideas and the objects of
mathematics (for some say that these exist apart from sensible
substances) we must consider them later.
9 But now let us proceed to
discuss those substances which are generally accepted as
such.
Now these are the sensible
substances, and all sensible substances contain matter.And the substrate is substance;
in one sense matter (by matter I mean that which is not actually, but
is potentially, an individual thing); and in another the formula and
the specific shape (which is an individual thing and is theoretically
separable); and thirdly there is the combination of the two, which
alone admits of generation and destruction,
10
and is separable in an unqualified senseāfor of substances
in the sense of formula some are separable
11 and some are not.
That matter is also substance is evident; for in all opposite
processes of change there is something that underlies those processes;
e.g., if the change is of
place , that which is now in
one place and subsequently in another; and if the change is of
magnitude , that which is now of such-and-such a
size, and subsequently smaller or greater; and if the change is of
quality , that which is now healthy and
subsequently diseased.