Page:Ferrier Works vol 2 1888 LECTURES IN GREEK PHILOSOPHY.pdf/423

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GREEK PHILOSOPHY.

classed together as the Organon or instrument of inquiry. The Categories, or general heads under which all things may be classed, are the following ten: οὐσία, or substance; πόσον, quantity; ποιόν, quality; πρός τι, relation; ποῦ, where; ποτὲ, when; κεῖσθαι, position; ἔχειν, having; ποιεῖν, doing; πάσχειν, suffering. These might be reduced to two, substance and accident; or, viewed logically, subject and predicate: thus οὐσία is the subject, for example "man," and all the other categories denote what may be predicated of man. Thus, Whatever we say of man must be either something about his size, or his qualities, or his relation to other things, or the place where he is or was, or the time when he is or was, or his attitude, or his possessions, or his actings or sufferings. Aristotle's scheme of the Categories must be pronounced crude and imperfect, whether we regard it as a table of things or as a classification of the forms of predication.

3. In his work, entitled the 'Metaphysics,' or first philosophy, as he himself calls it, Aristotle treats of the principles common to all things, the universal constituents of Being. The term metaphysics is not employed by Aristotle. The explanation usually given of the origin of this word is, that some early commentator on Aristotle, finding certain treatises placed after the physics in the arrangement of his master's works, gave to these treatises the superscription τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικὰ the writings that