To come from something
means: (a) In one sense, to come from something as matter, and this in two ways: in respect either of the primary genus or of the ultimate species. E.g., in the one sense everything liquefiable comes from water, and in the other the statue comes from bronze.
(b) To come from something as the first moving principle; e.g., from what comes fighting?
From abuse; because this is the beginning of a fight. (c) To come from the combination of matter and form (as the parts come from the whole, and the verse from the Iliad , and the stones from the house); for the shape is an end, and that is a complete thing which has attained its end.
(d) In the sense that the form is made out of the part of its definition; as, e.g., man
is made out of two-footed
and the syllable out of its element Footnote 1In the sense that στοιχεῖον(letter
) forms part of the definition of syllable.
(this is a different way from that in which the statue is made out of the bronze; for the composite entity is made out of perceptible material, but the form is also made out of the material of the form).
These, then, are some of the meanings of from
〈or out of
〉, but (e) sometimes one of these senses only partially applies; e.g., the child comes from the father and mother, and plants from the earth, because they come from some part of those things. (f) It means after
in time; e.g., we say that night comes from day, and storm from fine weather, because one comes after the other.
And we speak thus of some of these things in view of their alternation with each other, as in the examples just mentioned, and of others in view merely of their succession in time; e.g., the voyage was made from the equinox,
meaning that it was made after it; and the Thargelia are from the Dionysia,
meaning after the Dionysia. Footnote 2The (city) Dionysia were celebrated in March; the Thargelia (a festival in honor of Apollo and Artemis) at the end of May.