Section 7 · Metaphysics

Being means (1.) accidental being, (2.) absolute being. (1.) E.g., we say that the upright person is cultured, and that the man is cultured, and that the cultured person is a man; very much as we say that the cultured person builds, because the builder happens to be cultured, or the cultured person a builder; for in this sense X is Y means that Y is an accident of X.

And so it is with the examples cited above; for when we say that the man is cultured and the cultured person is a man or the white is cultured or the cultured is white, in the last two cases it is because both predicates are accidental to the same subject, and in the first case because the predicate is accidental to what is ; and we say that the cultured is a man because the cultured is accidental to a man.

(Similarly not-white is said to be, because the subject of which not-white is an accident, is .) These, then, are the senses in which things are said to be accidentally: either because both predicates belong to the same subject, which is ; or because the predicate belongs to the subject, which is ; or because the subject to which belongs that of which it is itself predicated itself is .

(2.) The senses of essential being are those which are indicated by the figures of predication ; for being has as many senses as there are ways of predication. Now since some predicates indicate (a) what a thing is, and others its (b) quality, (c) quantity, (d) relation, (e) activity or passivity, (f) place, (g) time, to each of these corresponds a sense of being.

There is no difference between the man is recovering and the man recovers; or between the man is walking or cutting and the man walks or cuts; and similarly in the other cases.

(3.) Again, to be and is mean that a thing is true, and not to be that it is false.

Similarly too in affirmation and negation; e.g., in Socrates is cultured is means that this is true; or in Socrates is not-white that this is true; but in the diagonal is not commensurable is not means that the statement is false. (4.) Again, to be 〈or is〉 means that some of these statements can be made in virtue of a potentiality and others in virtue of an actuality.

For we say that both that which sees potentially and that which sees actually is a seeing thing. And in the same way we call understanding both that which can use the understanding, and that which does ; and we call tranquil both that in which tranquillity is already present, and that which is potentially tranquil.

Similarly too in the case of substances. For we say that Hermes is in the stone, and the half of the line in the whole; and we call corn what is not yet ripe. But when a thing is potentially existent and when not, must be defined elsewhere.