attach thus to figures, nor whether 'triangle' is different from 'triangle whose angles are equal to two right angles'. — And this happens naturally enough; for the accidental is practically a mere name. And therefore Plato[1] was in a sense not wrong in saying that sophistic deals with that which is not. For the arguments of the sophists deal, we may say, above all with the accidental; e.g. the question whether 'musical' and 'lettered' are different or the same, and whether 'musical Coriscus' and 'Coriscus' are the same, and whether 'everything which is, but is not eternal, has come to be', with the paradoxical conclusion that if one who was musical has come to be lettered, he must also have been lettered and have come to be musical, — and all the other arguments of this sort; the accidental is obviously akin to non-being. And this is clear also from arguments such as the following: of things which are in another sense there is generation and decay, but of things which are accidentally there is not. But still we must, as far as we can, say, regarding the accidental, what is its nature and from what cause it proceeds; for it will perhaps at the same time become clear why there is no science of it.
Since, among things which are, some are always in the same state and are of necessity (not necessity in the sense of compulsion but that which means the impossibility of being otherwise), and some are not of necessity nor always, but for the most part, this is the principle and this the cause of the existence of the accidental; for that which is neither always nor for the most part, we call accidental. For instance, if in the dog-days there is wintry and cold weather, we say this is an accident, but not if there is sultry heat, because the latter is always or for the most part so, but not the former. And it is an accident that a man is white (for this is neither always nor for the most part so), but it is not by accident that he is an animal. And that the builder produces health is an accident, because it is the nature not of the builder but of the doctor to do this, — but the builder happened to be a doctor. Again, a confectioner, aiming at giving pleasure, may make something wholesome, but not in virtue of the confectioner's
- ↑ Cf. Sophistes 237 A, 254 A.
