VERBAL AND REAL PROPOSITIONS. 149 



made it a\\olov : but by altering any property which 

 was of its essence, you made it another thing, a'XXo*. 

 To a modern it is obvious that between the change 

 which only makes a thing different, and the change 

 which makes it another thing, the only distinction is 

 that in the one case, though changed, it is still called 

 by the same name. Thus, pound ice in a mortar, 

 and being still called ice, it is only made a\\olov: 

 melt it, and it becomes aXXo, another thing, namely, 

 water. Now it is really the same thing, i. e., the same 

 particles of matter, in both cases; and you cannot so 

 change anything that it shall cease to be the same 

 thing in this sense. The identity which it can be 

 deprived of is merely that of the name: when the 

 thing ceases to be called ice, it becomes another thing, 

 its essence, what constitutes it ice, is gone; while, so 

 long as it continues to be so called, nothing is gone 

 except some of its accidents. But these reflections, 

 so easy to us, would have been difficult to persons 

 who thought, as most of the Aristotelians did, that 

 objects were made what they were called, that ice (for 

 instance) was made ice, not by the possession of 

 certain properties to which mankind have chosen to 

 attach that name, but by participation in the nature 

 of a certain general substance, called Ice in general, 

 which substance, together with all the properties that 

 belonged to it, inhered in every individual piece of ice. 

 As they did not consider these universal substances to 

 be attached to all general names but only to some, 

 they thought that an object borrowed only a part of 



* Ka66\ov ptv ovv Traera Sicxfropa irpoa-yivop-evij ran erepoiov irote? dXX' 

 at /j,eV Koivns T KOI tStW (differences in the accidental properties) aXXotbi/ 

 TToiova-iv at de idiairara, (differences in the essential properties) XXo. 

 PORPH., Isag., cap. iii. 



