The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

distinguished); these also are not analysed either into
one another or into some one thing.
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    ‘The false’ means (1) that which is false as a thing, and that
(a) because it is not put together or cannot be put together, e.g.
‘that the diagonal of a square is commensurate with the side’ or
‘that you are sitting’; for one of these is false always, and the
other sometimes; it is in these two senses that they are
non-existent. (b) There are things which exist, but whose nature it
is to appear either not to be such as they are or to be things that
do not exist, e.g. a sketch or a dream; for these are something,
but are not the things the appearance of which they produce in us.
We call things false in this way, then,-either because they
themselves do not exist, or because the appearance which results
from them is that of something that does not exist.
    (2) A false account is the account of non-existent objects, in
so far as it is false. Hence every account is false when applied to
something other than that of which it is true; e.g. the account of
a circle is false when applied to a triangle. In a sense there is
one account of each thing, i.e. the account of its essence, but in
a sense there are many, since the thing itself and the thing itself
with an attribute are in a sense the same, e.g. Socrates and
musical Socrates (a false account is not the account of anything,
except in a qualified sense). Hence Antisthenes was too
simple-minded when he claimed that nothing could be described
except by the account proper to it,-one predicate to one subject;
from which the conclusion used to be drawn that there could be no
contradiction, and almost that there could be no error. But it is
possible to describe each thing not only by the account of itself,
but also by that of something else. This may be done altogether
falsely indeed, but there is also a way in which it may be done
truly; e.g. eight may be described as a double number by the use of
the definition of two.
    These things, then, are called false in these senses, but (3) a
false man is one who is ready at and fond of such accounts, not for
any other reason but for their own sake, and one who is good at
impressing such accounts on other people, just as we say things are
which produce a false appearance. This is why the proof in the
Hippias that the same man is false and true is misleading. For it
assumes that he is false who can deceive (i.e. the man who knows
and is wise); and further that he who is willingly bad is better.
This is a false result of induction-for a man who limps willingly
is better than one who does so unwillingly-by ‘limping’ Plato means
‘mimicking a limp’, for if the man were lame willingly, he would
presumably be worse in this case as in the corresponding case of
moral character.
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    ‘Accident’ means (1) that which attaches to something and can be
truly asserted, but neither of necessity nor usually, e.g. if some
one in digging a hole for a plant has found treasure. This-the
finding of treasure-is for the man who dug the hole an accident;
for neither does the one come of necessity from the other or after
the other, nor, if a man plants, does he usually find treasure. And
a musical man might be pale; but since this does not happen of
necessity nor usually, we call it an accident. Therefore since
there are attributes and they attach to subjects, and some of them
attach to these only in a particular place and at a particular
time, whatever attaches to a subject, but not because it was this
subject, or the time this time, or the place this place, will be an
accident. Therefore, too, there is no definite cause for an
accident, but a chance cause, i.e. an indefinite one. Going to
Aegina was an accident for a man, if he went not in order to get
there, but because he was carried out of his way by a storm or
captured by pirates. The accident has happened or exists,-not in
virtue of the subject’s nature, however, but of something else; for
the storm was the cause of his coming to a place for which he was
not sailing, and this was Aegina.
    ‘Accident’ has also (2) another meaning, i.e. all that attaches
to each thing in virtue of itself but is not in its essence, as
having its angles equal to two right angles attaches to the
triangle. And accidents of this sort may be eternal, but no
accident of the other sort is. This is explained