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‘That in virtue of which’ has several meanings:-(1) the form or substance of each thing, e.g. that in virtue of which a man is good is the good itself, (2) the proximate subject in which it is the nature of an attribute to be found, e.g. colour in a surface. ‘That in virtue of which’, then, in the primary sense is the form, and in a secondary sense the matter of each thing and the proximate substratum of each.-In general ‘that in virtue of which’ will found in the same number of senses as ‘cause’; for we say indifferently (3) in virtue of what has he come?’ or ‘for what end has he come?’; and (4) in virtue of what has he inferred wrongly, or inferred?’ or ‘what is the cause of the inference, or of the wrong inference?’-Further (5) Kath’ d is used in reference to position, e.g. ‘at which he stands’ or ‘along which he walks; for all such phrases indicate place and position.
Therefore ‘in virtue of itself’ must likewise have several meanings. The following belong to a thing in virtue of itself:-(1) the essence of each thing, e.g. Callias is in virtue of himself Callias and what it was to be Callias;-(2) whatever is present in the ‘what’, e.g. Callias is in virtue of himself an animal. For ‘animal’ is present in his definition; Callias is a particular animal.-(3) Whatever attribute a thing receives in itself directly or in one of its parts; e.g. a surface is white in virtue of itself, and a man is alive in virtue of himself; for the soul, in which life directly resides, is a part of the man.-(4) That which has no cause other than itself; man has more than one cause — animal, two-footed — but yet man is man in virtue of himself.-(5) Whatever attributes belong to a thing alone, and in so far as they belong to it merely by virtue of itself considered apart by itself.
‘Disposition’ means the arrangement of that which has parts, in respect either of place or of potency or of kind; for there must be a certain position, as even the word ‘disposition’ shows.
‘Having’ means (1) a kind of activity of the haver and of what he has-something like an action or movement. For when one thing makes and one is made, between them there is a making; so too between him who has a garment and the garment which he has there is a having. This sort of having, then, evidently we cannot have; for the process will go on to infinity, if it is to be possible to have the having of what we have.-(2) ‘Having’ or ‘habit’ means a disposition according to which that which is disposed is either well or ill disposed, and either in itself or with reference to something else; e.g. health is a ‘habit’; for it is such a disposition.-(3) We speak of a ‘habit’ if there is a portion of such a disposition; and so even the excellence of the parts is a ‘habit’ of the whole thing.
‘Affection’ means (1) a quality in respect of which a thing can be altered, e.g. white and black, sweet and bitter, heaviness and lightness, and all others of the kind.-(2) The actualization of these-the already accomplished alterations.-(3) Especially, injurious alterations and movements, and, above all painful injuries.-(4) Misfortunes and painful experiences when on a large scale are called affections.
We speak of ‘privation’ (1) if something has not one of the attributes which a thing might naturally have, even if this thing itself would not naturally have it; e.g. a plant is said to be ‘deprived’ of eyes.-(2) If, though either the thing itself or its genus would naturally have an attribute, it has it not; e.g. a blind man and a mole are in different senses ‘deprived’ of sight; the latter in contrast with its genus, the former in contrast with his own normal nature.-(3) If, though it would naturally have the attribute, and when it would naturally have it, it has it not; for blindness is a privation, but one is not ‘blind’ at any and every age, but only if one has not sight at the age at which one would naturally have it. Similarly a thing is called blind if it has not sight in the medium in which, and in respect of the organ in respect of which, and with reference to the object with reference to which, and in the circumstances in which, it would naturally have it.-(4) The violent taking away of anything is called privation.
Indeed there are just as many kinds of privations as there are of words with negative prefixes; for a thing is called unequal because it has not equality though it would naturally have it, and invisible either because it has no colour at all or because it has a poor colour, and apodous either because it has no feet at all or because it has imperfect feet. Again, a privative term may be used because the thing has little of the attribute (and this means having it in a sense imperfectly), e.g. ‘kernel-less’; or because it has it not easily or not well (e.g. we call a thing uncuttable not only if it cannot be cut but also if it cannot be cut easily or well); or because it has not the attribute at all; for it is not the one-eyed man but he who is sightless in both eyes that is called blind. This is why not every man is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, ‘just’ or ‘unjust’, but there is also an intermediate state.
To ‘have’ or ‘hold’ means many things:-(1) to treat a thing according to one’s own nature or according to one’s own impulse; so that fever is said to have a man, and tyrants to have their cities, and people to have the clothes they wear.-(2) That in which a thing is present as in something receptive of it is said to have the thing; e.g. the bronze has the form of the statue, and the body has the disease.-(3) As that which contains holds the things contained; for a thing is said to be held by that in which it is as in a container; e.g. we say that the vessel holds the liquid and the city holds men and the ship sailors; and so too that the whole holds the parts.-(4) That which hinders a thing from moving or acting according to its own impulse is said to hold it, as pillars hold the incumbent weights, and as the poets make Atlas hold the heavens, implying that otherwise they would collapse on the earth, as some of the natural philosophers also say. In this way also that which holds things together is said to hold the things it holds together, since they would otherwise separate, each according to its own impulse.
‘Being in something’ has similar and corresponding meanings to ‘holding’ or ‘having’.
‘To come from something’ means (1) to come from something as from matter, and this in two senses, either in respect of the highest genus or in respect of the lowest species; e.g. in a sense all things that can be melted come from water, but in a sense the statue comes from bronze.-(2) As from the first moving principle; e.g. ‘what did the fight come from?’ From abusive language, because this was the origin of the fight.-(3) From the compound of matter and shape, as the parts come from the whole, and the verse from the Iliad, and the stones from the house; (in every such case the whole is a compound of matter and shape,) for the shape is the end, and only that which attains an end is complete.-(4) As the form from its part, e.g. man from ‘two-footed’and syllable from ‘letter’; for this is a different sense from that in which the statue comes from bronze; for the composite substance comes from the sensible matter, but the form also comes from the matter of the form.-Some things, then, are said to come from something else in these senses; but (5) others are so described if one of these senses is applicable to a part of that other thing; e.g. the child comes from its father and mother, and plants come from the earth, because they come from a part of those things.-(6) It means coming after a thing in time, e.g. night comes from day and storm from fine weather, because the one comes after the other. Of these things some are so described because they admit of change into one another, as in the cases now mentioned; some merely because they are successive in time, e.g. the voyage took place ‘from’ the equinox, because it took place after the equinox, and the festival of the Thargelia comes ‘from’ the Dionysia, because after the Dionysia.
‘Part’ means (1) (a) that into which a quantum can in any way be divided; for that which is taken from a quantum qua quantum is always called a part of it, e.g. two is called in a sense a part of three. It means (b), of the parts in the first sense, only those which measure the whole; this is why two, though in one sense it is, in another is not, called a part of three.-(2) The elements into which a kind might be divided apart from the quantity are also called parts of it; for which reason we say the species are parts of the genus.-(3) The elements into which a whole is divided, or of which it consists-the ‘whole’ meaning either the form or that which has the form; e.g. of the bronze sphere or of the bronze cube both the bronze-i.e. the matter in which the form is-and the characteristic angle are parts.-(4) The elements in the definition which explains a thing are also parts of the whole; this is why the genus is called a part of the species, though in another sense the species is part of the genus.
‘A whole’ means (1) that from which is absent none of the parts of which it is said to be naturally a whole, and (2) that which so contains the things it contains that they form a unity; and this in two senses-either as being each severally one single thing, or as making up the unity between them. For (a) that which is true of a whole class and is said to hold good as a whole (which implies that it is a kind whole) is true of a whole in the sense that it contains many things by being predicated of each, and by all of them, e.g. man, horse, god, being severally one single thing, because all are living things. But (b) the continuous and limited is a whole, when it is a unity consisting of several parts, especially if they are present only potentially, but, failing this, even if they are present actually. Of these things themselves, those which are so by nature are wholes in a higher degree than those which are so by art, as we said in the case of unity also, wholeness being in fact a sort of oneness.
Again (3) of quanta that have a beginning and a middle and an end, those to which the position does not make a difference are called totals, and those to which it does, wholes. Those which admit of both descriptions are both wholes and totals. These are the things whose nature remains the same after transposition, but whose form does not, e.g. wax or a coat; they are called both wholes and totals; for they have both characteristics. Water and all liquids and number are called totals, but ‘the whole number’ or ‘the whole water’ one does not speak of, except by an extension of meaning. To things, to which qua one the term ‘total’ is applied, the term ‘all’ is applied when they are treated as separate; ‘this total number,’ ‘all these units.’
It is not any chance quantitative thing that can be said to be ‘mutilated’; it must be a whole as well as divisible. For not only is two not ‘mutilated’ if one of the two ones is taken away (for the part removed by mutilation is never equal to the remainder), but in general no number is thus mutilated; for it is also necessary that the essence remain; if a cup is mutilated, it must still be a cup; but the number is no longer the same. Further, even if things consist of unlike parts, not even these things can all be said to be mutilated, for in a sense a number has unlike parts (e.g. two and three) as well as like; but in general of the things to which their position makes no difference, e.g. water or fire, none can be mutilated; to be mutilated, things must be such as in virtue of their essence have a certain position. Again, they must be continuous; for a musical scale consists of unlike parts and has position, but cannot become mutilated. Besides, not even the things that are wholes are mutilated by the privation of any part. For the parts removed must be neither those which determine the essence nor any chance parts, irrespective of their position; e.g. a cup is not mutilated if it is bored through, but only if the handle or a projecting part is removed, and a man is mutilated not if the flesh or the spleen is removed, but if an extremity is, and that not every extremity but one which when completely removed cannot grow again. Therefore baldness is not a mutilation.
The term ‘race’ or ‘genus’ is used (1) if generation of things which have the same form is continuous, e.g. ‘while the race of men lasts’ means ‘while the generation of them goes on continuously’.-(2) It is used with reference to that which first brought things into existence; for it is thus that some are called Hellenes by race and others Ionians, because the former proceed from Hellen and the latter from Ion as their first begetter. And the word is used in reference to the begetter more than to the matter, though people also get a race-name from the female, e.g. ‘the descendants of Pyrrha’.-(3) There is genus in the sense in which ‘plane’ is the genus of plane figures and solid’ of solids; for each of the figures is in the one case a plane of such and such a kind, and in the other a solid of such and such a kind; and this is what underlies the differentiae. Again (4) in definitions the first constituent element, which is included in the ‘what’, is the genus, whose differentiae the qualities are said to be ‘Genus’ then is used in all these ways, (1) in reference to continuous generation of the same kind, (2) in reference to the first mover which is of the same kind as the things it moves, (3) as matter; for that to which the differentia or quality belongs is the substratum, which we call matter.
Those things are said to be ‘other in genus’ whose proximate substratum is different, and which are not analysed the one into the other nor both into the same thing (e.g. form and matter are different in genus); and things which belong to different categories of being (for some of the things that are said to ‘be’ signify essence, others a quality, others the other categories we have before distinguished); these also are not analysed either into one another or into some one thing.