106 THE WORLD-ENERGY 



Position (xsiffdat), Possession (exetv), Action (xoieiv), 

 and Passion (ndffzzt*;). 



It is true that in the logical treatise of Aristotle these 

 categories receive a treatment that seems rather formal 

 than essential. And yet, even here, and still more strongly 

 in the metaphysics, Aristotle intimates his conviction, not 

 only that substance must be (logically) prior to its attri- 

 butes in any given object, but that substance is one and 

 indivisible, as well as primal and primordial. 



Doubtless this would be a somewhat violent interpre- 

 tation if taken from the logical treatise alone. But its 

 justification is found to be fairly complete through the 

 frequent references to, and even extended discussions of, 

 substance in the metaphysics, where it is represented as 

 equivalent to the very being, essence or nature of a thing, 

 and where the conception that substance must be pri- 

 marily one is explicitly referred to with approval, and 

 something approaching proof of its necessity. And when 

 taken in connection with the outcome of the discussion 

 of the nature of cause, with which he identifies substance, 

 it is fairly evident that the oiW was to him what sub- 

 stance is in modern thought namely, that which sup- 

 ports and unifies all attributes, or rather, that which 

 enfolds all "attributes" within itself, as no thing else than 

 modes of itself. Thus, evidently, it is that without 

 which the attributes themselves could not be. 



From this point of view it is manifest that quality and 

 quantity can be real only as attributes of substance. 

 They are simply the what-kind and the how-much of 

 substance. Similarly, relation can exist, in the first 

 place, only as between substance and the attributes inher- 

 ing in substance, and secondly, as between the attributes 



