The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

kind
of thing, while universal mathematics applies alike to all. We
answer that if there is no substance other than those which are
formed by nature, natural science will be the first science; but if
there is an immovable substance, the science of this must be prior
and must be first philosophy, and universal in this way, because it
is first. And it will belong to this to consider being qua
being-both what it is and the attributes which belong to it qua
being.
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2
    But since the unqualified term ‘being’ has several meanings, of
which one was seen’ to be the accidental, and another the true
(’non-being’ being the false), while besides these there are the
figures of predication (e.g. the ‘what’, quality, quantity, place,
time, and any similar meanings which ‘being’ may have), and again
besides all these there is that which ‘is’ potentially or
actually:-since ‘being’ has many meanings, we must say regarding
the accidental, that there can be no scientific treatment of it.
This is confirmed by the fact that no science practical,
productive, or theoretical troubles itself about it. For on the one
hand he who produces a house does not produce all the attributes
that come into being along with the house; for these are
innumerable; the house that has been made may quite well be
pleasant for some people, hurtful for some, and useful to others,
and different-to put it shortly from all things that are; and the
science of building does not aim at producing any of these
attributes. And in the same way the geometer does not consider the
attributes which 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 so Plato was in a sense not wrong in
ranking sophistic as dealing 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: things which are in another sense come into being and
pass out of being by a process, but things which are accidentally
do not. But still we must, as far as we can, say further, regarding
the accidental, what its nature is 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 we assert of things because they cannot be 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
pale (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
art; and therefore we say ‘it was an accident’, and while there is
a sense in which he makes it, in the unqualified sense he does not.
For to other things answer faculties productive of them, but to
accidental results there corresponds no determinate art nor
faculty; for of things which are or come to be by accident, the
cause also is accidental. Therefore, since not all things either
are or come to be of necessity and always, but, the majority of
things are for the most part, the accidental must exist; for
instance a pale man is not always nor for