THE CATEGORIES OR &quot; PRAEDICAMENTA &quot;. 139 



73. THE ARISTOTELEAN CATEGORIES ENUMERATED Aris 

 totle s tenfold scheme gives ten heads under one or other of 

 which we can classify any conceivable predicate, any notion or 

 term which can fill up the blank in the statement &quot; This is 

 For example, &quot; This is white; cold; soft . . . This is snow .&quot; 



The latter predicate, &quot;snow,&quot; represents in the abstract the 

 substance, essence, &quot; quidditas &quot; or &quot; whatness&quot; of the thing in which 

 we find inhering the various attributes expressed by the adjectives 

 &quot;white,&quot; &quot;cold,&quot; &quot;soft,&quot; etc. When we thus designate any 

 individual thing that comes into our experience the &quot;this some 

 thing,&quot; rooVrt, &quot;hoc aliquid&quot; as it has always been called 

 by any concept or notion signifying its substance or essence, 

 we are predicating of it the first of Aristotle s categories, 

 f) ovo-ia, n eVrt, &quot; substantial &quot;quidditas&quot; the category of 

 Substance. The concrete individual thing itself, the &quot;hoc 

 aliquid&quot; which forms the ultimate subject of all logical predicates in 

 the order of thought or knowledge, and the underlying substratum 

 of all real or ontological attributes in the order of things or 

 reality, is called the ova-La Trpom/, &quot; substantia prima &quot; / while the 

 abstract, universal substance which we predicate of this, and 

 which constitutes the first Aristotelean category, is called by 

 way of contrast the ovcria Sevrepa, &quot; substantia secunda &quot;. The 

 latter, - or &quot; categorical,&quot; substance, i.e. the substance as repre 

 sented in the abstract and universal notion (4, 5) &quot;snow,&quot; for 

 example can of course become the logical subject of other 

 logical predicates, e.g. &quot;Snow is white, cold,&quot; etc.; but it is 

 never their ultimate logical subject, for it must itself be referred 

 for its meaning to the individual, concrete &quot;this,&quot; or &quot;that,&quot; in 

 which it finds itself verified, and of which, ultimately, itself is pre 

 dicated ; whereas the &quot; hoc aliquid&quot; the individual &quot;this,&quot; can 

 never be itself a mere mode or state or attribute of another 

 individual thing in the real order, 1 nor can it be properly the 

 predicate of any subject in the logical order. 



Since the &quot; second substance,&quot; the kinder nature of an individual, is con 

 ceived as abstract and universal, it is attributed to the individual by the 

 same sort of logical predication i as the other categories, the &quot; accidents,&quot; are 

 predicated of the latter. And just as the accidents attributed to an individual 



1 It is, however, undoubtedly a determinate or definite mode of being, and is 

 therefore referred by Aristotle to the category of substance, since this latter gives 

 us what is essential to it in so far as we can have an intellectual concept of it at all. 

 C/. JOSEPH, o/&amp;gt;. cit., p. 39, n. 



