/lit/ - Literature

if the genera are in the highest degree principles, whether should one regard the first of the genera as principles, or those which are predicated directly of the individuals? This also admits of dispute. For if the universal is always more of a principle, evidently the uppermost of the genera are the principles; for these are predicated of all things. There will, then, be as many principles of things as there are primary genera, so that both being and unity will be principles and substances; for these are most of all predicated of all things. But it is not possible that either unity or being
should be a genus of things; for the differentiae of any genus must each of them both have being and be one, but it is not possible for the genus to be predicated of the differentiae taken apart from the species (any more than for the species of the genus to be predicated of the proper differentiae of the genus); so that if unity or being is a genus, no differentia will either be one or have being. But if unity and being are not genera, neither will they be principles, if the genera are the principles.—Again, the intermediate classes, whose concepts include the differentiae, will on this theory be genera, down to the individuals; but as it is, some are thought to be genera and others are not thought to be so. Besides this, the differentiae are principles even more than the genera; and if these also are principles, there comes to be practically an infinite number of principles, especially if we suppose the highest genus to be a principle.—But again, if unity is more of the nature of a principle, and the indivisible is one, and everything indivisible is so either in quantity or in species, and that which is so in species is prior to the divisible, and genera are divisible into species (for man is not the genus of individual men), that which is predicated directly of the individuals will have more unity

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