The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

that the others are not Forms; but
thus all things will be one.
    We have pointed out, then, that the question of definitions
contains some difficulty, and why this is so. And so to reduce all
things thus to Forms and to eliminate the matter is useless labour;
for some things surely are a particular form in a particular
matter, or particular things in a particular state. And the
comparison which Socrates the younger used to make in the case of
‘animal’ is not sound; for it leads away from the truth, and makes
one suppose that man can possibly exist without his parts, as the
circle can without the bronze. But the case is not similar; for an
animal is something perceptible, and it is not possible to define
it without reference to movement-nor, therefore, without reference
to the parts’ being in a certain state. For it is not a hand in any
and every state that is a part of man, but only when it can fulfil
its work, and therefore only when it is alive; if it is not alive
it is not a part.
    Regarding the objects of mathematics, why are the formulae of
the parts not parts of the formulae of the wholes; e.g. why are not
the semicircles included in the formula of the circle? It cannot be
said, ‘because these parts are perceptible things’; for they are
not. But perhaps this makes no difference; for even some things
which are not perceptible must have matter; indeed there is some
matter in everything which is not an essence and a bare form but a
‘this’. The semicircles, then, will not be parts of the universal
circle, but will be parts of the individual circles, as has been
said before; for while one kind of matter is perceptible, there is
another which is intelligible.
    It is clear also that the soul is the primary substance and the
body is matter, and man or animal is the compound of both taken
universally; and ‘Socrates’ or ‘Coriscus’, if even the soul of
Socrates may be called Socrates, has two meanings (for some mean by
such a term the soul, and others mean the concrete thing), but if
‘Socrates’ or ‘Coriscus’ means simply this particular soul and this
particular body, the individual is analogous to the universal in
its composition.
    Whether there is, apart from the matter of such substances,
another kind of matter, and one should look for some substance
other than these, e.g. numbers or something of the sort, must be
considered later. For it is for the sake of this that we are trying
to determine the nature of perceptible substances as well, since in
a sense the inquiry about perceptible substances is the work of
physics, i.e. of second philosophy; for the physicist must come to
know not only about the matter, but also about the substance
expressed in the formula, and even more than about the other. And
in the case of definitions, how the elements in the formula are
parts of the definition, and why the definition is one formula (for
clearly the thing is one, but in virtue of what is the thing one,
although it has parts?),-this must be considered later.
    What the essence is and in what sense it is independent, has
been stated universally in a way which is true of every case, and
also why the formula of the essence of some things contains the
parts of the thing defined, while that of others does not. And we
have stated that in the formula of the substance the material parts
will not be present (for they are not even parts of the substance
in that sense, but of the concrete substance; but of this there is
in a sense a formula, and in a sense there is not; for there is no
formula of it with its matter, for this is indefinite, but there is
a formula of it with reference to its primary substance-e.g. in the
case of man the formula of the soul-, for the substance is the
indwelling form, from which and the matter the so-called concrete
substance is derived; e.g. concavity is a form of this sort, for
from this and the nose arise ‘snub nose’ and ‘snubness’); but in
the concrete substance, e.g. a snub nose or Callias, the matter
also will be present. And we have stated that the essence and the
thing itself are in some cases the same; ie. in the case of primary
substances, e.g. curvature and the essence of curvature if this is
primary. (By a ‘primary’ substance I mean one which does not imply
the presence of something in something else, i.e. in something that
underlies it which acts as matter.) But things which are of the
nature of matter, or of wholes that include matter, are not the
same as