very similar to the Platonic theory, for things separable from matter 

 and immovable are surely suprasensible and, as such, must differ 

 but little from Plato's Ideas; but this is not Aristotle's meaning, 

 for he goes on to explain that the task of this first philosophy is to 

 consider being as such, TO bv rj bv, both what it is and the attributes 

 that belong to it as being. 1 The physicist studies being as composed 

 of bodies in motion, the mathematician studies being as possessing 

 number and spatial form, but first philosophy asks what it means to 

 be. It abstracts from all the particulars the one most common 

 quality, viz., being, and in that sense it is more general than phy- 

 sics and mathematics, it is indeed most general of all. The general 

 principles resulting from this first philosophy will be applicable 

 everywhere, whereas those of the second philosophies, mathematics 

 and physics, are applicable only within a certain territory. The 

 development of this doctrine of being results in the Aristotelian 

 system. 



True to his avowed purpose not to commit the error of Plato, 

 Aristotle commences his work by an investigation of individual 

 things. The logical analysis of every individual being or substance, 

 oixna, gives Aristotle what he calls the causes or first principles 

 of being. These causes are strictly four and may be designated 

 material, efficient, final and formal, but, since the formal may be 

 thought of as including the efficient and final, there are practically 

 two fundamental principles or causes, the material and the formal. 

 Every individual being is what it is because of the operation of these 

 two causes. Neither pure form nor pure matter exists in the realm 

 of determined being; the individual substance is a (rvvo\ov, a total- 

 ity of matter and form. But the terms matter and form are rela- 

 tive; that which is form in regard to one thing may be matter in 

 regard to another. For example, wood may be considered the form 

 for the unhewn tree, but it is matter in relation to the completed 

 house. What holds true of individual things is also true of the 

 sum-total of things, for matter and form are principles which run 

 throughout the whole development. Now everything that is 

 determined is for Aristotle in a process of change, Kivrjcns. And 

 this process consists in a taking on of form by matter; the higher 

 the stage of evolution, the more there is of form and the less of 



iMeta. VI, 1, 1026 a 33. 



54 



