Authors/Aristotle/metaphysics/l12/c1

Chapter 1

Latin	English
METHAPHISICE ARISTOTILIS LIBER DUODECIMUS	Aristotle Metaphysics Book 12 (L)1
ƿ De substantia quidem theoria est; nam substantiarum principia et cause quaeruntur.	Chapter 1. The subject of our inquiry is substance; for the principles and the causes we are seeking are those of substances.
Et enim si ut totum quoddam ↵ omne, substantia est prima pars; et si eo quod consequenter, et ita primum substantia, deinde qualitas aut quantitas.	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.
Simul [/Similiter] autem nec entia ut est simpliciter dicere haec, sed qualitates et motus, qua et non album et non rectum; dicimus enim esse et haec, ut puta est non album.	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 .
Amplius nihil aliorum separa↵bile.	Further, none of the categories other than substance can exist apart.
Testantur autem et antiqui opere; nam substantiae quaerebant principia et elementa et causas. * qui quidem nunc universalia substantias magis ponunt; nam genera universalia, quae dicunt principia et substantias esse magis propter logice inquirere. Qui vero antiquitus particularia, ut ignem et ↵ terram, sed non commune, corpus.	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.
Substantiae vero tres sunt, una quidem sensibilis, cuius alia quidem sempiterna alia corruptibilis, quam omnes * confitentur, ut plante et animalia. * Sempiterna autem, cuius elementa necesse est accipere, sive unum sive multa. Alia vero immoƿbilis. Hanc dicunt quidam separabilem esse, hii quidem in duo dividentes, alii in unam naturam species ponentes et mathema↵tica, alii horum mathematica solum. Ille quidem naturalis (* cum motu enim), et haec alterius, si nullum ipsis princi↵pium commune est.	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. The former two kinds of substance are the subject of physics (for they [69b] imply movement); but the third kind belongs to another science, if there is no principle common to it and to the other kinds.
Sensibilis vero substantia mutabilis. Si autem mutatio est ex oppositis aut mediis, oppositis autem non omnibus (non ↵ album enim * vox), sed ex contrario, necesse subesse quid mutabile in contrarietatem; non enim contraria transmutantur.	Sensible substance is changeable. Now if change proceeds from opposites or from intermediates, and not from all opposites (for the voice is not-white, (but it does not therefore change to white)), but from the contrary, there must be something underlying which changes into the contrary state; for the contraries do not change.