The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

especially as it is not easy to recognize them apart.
    But it is at any rate not difficult to see that place cannot be
either of them. The form and the matter are not separate from the
thing, whereas the place can be separated. As we pointed out, where
air was, water in turn comes to be, the one replacing the other;
and similarly with other bodies. Hence the place of a thing is
neither a part nor a state of it, but is separable from it. For
place is supposed to be something like a vessel-the vessel being a
transportable place. But the vessel is no part of the thing.
    In so far then as it is separable from the thing, it is not the
form: qua containing, it is different from the matter.
    Also it is held that what is anywhere is both itself something
and that there is a different thing outside it. (Plato of course,
if we may digress, ought to tell us why the form and the numbers
are not in place, if ‘what participates’ is place-whether what
participates is the Great and the Small or the matter, as he called
it in writing in the Timaeus.)
    Further, how could a body be carried to its own place, if place
was the matter or the form? It is impossible that what has no
reference to motion or the distinction of up and down can be place.
So place must be looked for among things which have these
characteristics.
    If the place is in the thing (it must be if it is either shape
or matter) place will have a place: for both the form and the
indeterminate undergo change and motion along with the thing, and
are not always in the same place, but are where the thing is. Hence
the place will have a place.
    Further, when water is produced from air, the place has been
destroyed, for the resulting body is not in the same place. What
sort of destruction then is that?
    This concludes my statement of the reasons why space must be
something, and again of the difficulties that may be raised about
its essential nature.
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3
    The next step we must take is to see in how many senses one
thing is said to be ‘in’ another.
    (1) As the finger is ‘in’ the hand and generally the part ‘in’
the whole.
    (2) As the whole is ‘in’ the parts: for there is no whole over
and above the parts.
    (3) As man is ‘in’ animal and generally species ‘in’ genus.
    (4) As the genus is ‘in’ the species and generally the part of
the specific form ‘in’ the definition of the specific form.
    (5) As health is ‘in’ the hot and the cold and generally the
form ‘in’ the matter.
    (6) As the affairs of Greece centre ‘in’ the king, and generally
events centre ‘in’ their primary motive agent.
    (7) As the existence of a thing centres ‘in its good and
generally ‘in’ its end, i.e. in ‘that for the sake of which’ it
exists.
    (8) In the strictest sense of all, as a thing is ‘in’ a vessel,
and generally ‘in’ place.
    One might raise the question whether a thing can be in itself,
or whether nothing can be in itself-everything being either nowhere
or in something else.
    The question is ambiguous; we may mean the thing qua itself or
qua something else.
    When there are parts of a whole-the one that in which a thing
is, the other the thing which is in it-the whole will be described
as being in itself. For a thing is described in terms of its parts,
as well as in terms of the thing as a whole, e.g. a man is said to
be white because the visible surface of him is white, or to be
scientific because his thinking faculty has been trained. The jar
then will not be in itself and the wine will not be in itself. But
the jar of wine will: for the contents and the container are both
parts of the same whole.
    In this sense then, but not primarily, a thing can be in itself,
namely, as ‘white’ is in body (for the visible surface is in body),
and science is in the mind.
    It is from these, which are ‘parts’ (in the sense at least of
being ‘in’ the man), that the man is called white, &c. But the
jar and the wine in separation are not parts of a whole, though
together they are. So when there are parts, a thing will be in
itself, as ‘white’ is in man because it is in body, and in body
because it resides in the visible surface. We cannot go further and
say that it is in surface in virtue of something other than itself.
(Yet it is not in itself: though these are in a way the same
thing,) they differ in essence, each having a special nature and
capacity, ‘surface’ and ‘white’.
    Thus if we