The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

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the movement caused heat in the body, and this is either health, or
a part of health, or is followed by a part of health or by health
itself. And so it is said to cause health, because it causes that
to which health attaches as a consequence.
    Therefore, as in syllogisms, substance is the starting-point of
everything. It is from ‘what a thing is’ that syllogisms start; and
from it also we now find processes of production to start.
    Things which are formed by nature are in the same case as these
products of art. For the seed is productive in the same way as the
things that work by art; for it has the form potentially, and that
from which the seed comes has in a sense the same name as the
offspring only in a sense, for we must not expect parent and
offspring always to have exactly the same name, as in the
production of ‘human being’ from ‘human’ for a ‘woman’ also can be
produced by a ‘man’-unless the offspring be an imperfect form;
which is the reason why the parent of a mule is not a mule. The
natural things which (like the artificial objects previously
considered) can be produced spontaneously are those whose matter
can be moved even by itself in the way in which the seed usually
moves it; those things which have not such matter cannot be
produced except from the parent animals themselves.
    But not only regarding substance does our argument prove that
its form does not come to be, but the argument applies to all the
primary classes alike, i.e. quantity, quality, and the other
categories. For as the brazen sphere comes to be, but not the
sphere nor the brass, and so too in the case of brass itself, if it
comes to be, it is its concrete unity that comes to be (for the
matter and the form must always exist before), so is it both in the
case of substance and in that of quality and quantity and the other
categories likewise; for the quality does not come to be, but the
wood of that quality, and the quantity does not come to be, but the
wood or the animal of that size. But we may learn from these
instances a peculiarity of substance, that there must exist
beforehand in complete reality another substance which produces it,
e.g. an animal if an animal is produced; but it is not necessary
that a quality or quantity should pre-exist otherwise than
potentially.
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10
    Since a definition is a formula, and every formula has parts,
and as the formula is to the thing, so is the part of the formula
to the part of the thing, the question is already being asked
whether the formula of the parts must be present in the formula of
the whole or not. For in some cases the formulae of the parts are
seen to be present, and in some not. The formula of the circle does
not include that of the segments, but that of the syllable includes
that of the letters; yet the circle is divided into segments as the
syllable is into letters.-And further if the parts are prior to the
whole, and the acute angle is a part of the right angle and the
finger a part of the animal, the acute angle will be prior to the
right angle and finger to the man. But the latter are thought to be
prior; for in formula the parts are explained by reference to them,
and in respect also of the power of existing apart from each other
the wholes are prior to the parts.
    Perhaps we should rather say that ‘part’ is used in several
senses. One of these is ‘that which measures another thing in
respect of quantity’. But let this sense be set aside; let us
inquire about the parts of which substance consists. If then matter
is one thing, form another, the compound of these a third, and both
the matter and the form and the compound are substance even the
matter is in a sense called part of a thing, while in a sense it is
not, but only the elements of which the formula of the form
consists. E.g. of concavity flesh (for this is the matter in which
it is produced) is not a part, but of snubness it is a part; and
the bronze is a part of the concrete statue, but not of the statue
when this is spoken of in the sense of the form. (For the form, or
the thing as having form, should be said to be the thing, but the
material element by itself must never be said to be so.) And so the
formula of the circle does not include that of the segments, but
the formula of the syllable includes that of the letters; for the
letters are parts of the formula of the form, and not matter, but
the segments are parts in the sense of matter on