The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

attributed will
not be, as it is something different from ‘being’. Something,
therefore, which is not will be. Hence ‘substance’ will not be a
predicate of anything else. For the subject cannot be a being,
unless ‘being’ means several things, in such a way that each is
something. But ex hypothesi ‘being’ means only one thing.
    If, then, ‘substance’ is not attributed to anything, but other
things are attributed to it, how does ‘substance’ mean what is
rather than what is not? For suppose that ‘substance’ is also
‘white’. Since the definition of the latter is different (for being
cannot even be attributed to white, as nothing is which is not
‘substance’), it follows that ‘white’ is not-being—and that not in
the sense of a particular not-being, but in the sense that it is
not at all. Hence ‘substance’ is not; for it is true to say that it
is white, which we found to mean not-being. If to avoid this we say
that even ‘white’ means substance, it follows that ‘being’ has more
than one meaning.
    In particular, then, Being will not have magnitude, if it is
substance. For each of the two parts must he in a different
sense.
    (2) Substance is plainly divisible into other substances, if we
consider the mere nature of a definition. For instance, if ‘man’ is
a substance, ‘animal’ and ‘biped’ must also be substances. For if
not substances, they must be attributes-and if attributes,
attributes either of (a) man or of (b) some other subject. But
neither is possible.
    (a) An attribute is either that which may or may not belong to
the subject or that in whose definition the subject of which it is
an attribute is involved. Thus ‘sitting’ is an example of a
separable attribute, while ‘snubness’ contains the definition of
‘nose’, to which we attribute snubness. Further, the definition of
the whole is not contained in the definitions of the contents or
elements of the definitory formula; that of ‘man’ for instance in
‘biped’, or that of ‘white man’ in ‘white’. If then this is so, and
if ‘biped’ is supposed to be an attribute of ‘man’, it must be
either separable, so that ‘man’ might possibly not be ‘biped’, or
the definition of ‘man’ must come into the definition of
‘biped’-which is impossible, as the converse is the case.
    (b) If, on the other hand, we suppose that ‘biped’ and ‘animal’
are attributes not of man but of something else, and are not each
of them a substance, then ‘man’ too will be an attribute of
something else. But we must assume that substance is not the
attribute of anything, that the subject of which both ‘biped’ and
‘animal’ and each separately are predicated is the subject also of
the complex ‘biped animal’.
    Are we then to say that the All is composed of indivisible
substances? Some thinkers did, in point of fact, give way to both
arguments. To the argument that all things are one if being means
one thing, they conceded that not-being is; to that from bisection,
they yielded by positing atomic magnitudes. But obviously it is not
true that if being means one thing, and cannot at the same time
mean the contradictory of this, there will be nothing which is not,
for even if what is not cannot be without qualification, there is
no reason why it should not be a particular not-being. To say that
all things will be one, if there is nothing besides Being itself,
is absurd. For who understands ‘being itself’ to be anything but a
particular substance? But if this is so, there is nothing to
prevent there being many beings, as has been said.
    It is, then, clearly impossible for Being to be one in this
sense.
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4
    The physicists on the other hand have two modes of
explanation.
    The first set make the underlying body one either one of the
three or something else which is denser than fire and rarer than
air then generate everything else from this, and obtain
multiplicity by condensation and rarefaction. Now these are
contraries, which may be generalized into ‘excess and defect’.
(Compare Plato’s ‘Great and Small’-except that he make these his
matter, the one his form, while the others treat the one which
underlies as matter and the contraries as differentiae, i.e.
forms).
    The second set assert that the contrarieties are contained in
the one and emerge from it by segregation, for example Anaximander
and also all those who assert that