Section 23

To have 〈or possess〉 is used in various senses. (a) To direct in accordance with one’s own nature or impulse; whence we say that fever possesses a man, and despots possess cities, and people who wear clothes possess them. (b) We speak of anything as having in which, as receptive material, something is present. E.g., the bronze has the shape of the statue, and the body has the disease.

(c) In the sense that the container holds the contained; for when A is contained in B, we say that A is held by B. E.g., we say that the vessel holds the liquid, and the city holds men, and the ship holds sailors, and so too that the whole holds the parts.

(d) The same term is applied to that which prevents anything from moving or acting in accordance with its own impulse; as pillars hold 〈up〉 the weights which are imposed upon them, and as the poets make Atlas 1 hold up the heaven, because otherwise it would fall upon the earth (as some of the physicists 2 maintain also).

It is in this sense that we say that that which holds together holds what it holds together; because otherwise the latter would disperse, each part in accordance with its own impulse.

To be in a thing is used similarly in senses corresponding to those of to have.