Aristotle ON INTERPRETATION (Organon) Complete

Translated by E. Edghill.

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Some combinations of predicates are such that the separate predicates unite to form a single predicate. Let us consider under what conditions this is and is not possible. We may either state in two separate propositions that man is an animal and that man is a biped, or we may combine the two, and state that man is an animal with two feet. Similarly we may use 'man' and 'white' as separate predicates, or unite them into one. Yet if a man is a shoemaker and is also good, we cannot construct a composite proposition and say that he is a good shoemaker. For if, whenever two separate predicates truly belong to a subject, it follows that the predicate resulting from their combination also truly belongs to the subject, many absurd results ensue. For instance, a man is man and white. Therefore, if predicates may always be combined, he is a white man. Again, if the predicate 'white' belongs to him, then the combination of that predicate with the former composite predicate will be permissible. Thus it will be right to say that he is a white man so on indefinitely. Or, again, we may combine the predicates 'musical', 'white', and 'walking', and these may be combined many times. Similarly we may say that Socrates is Socrates and a man, and that therefore he is the man Socrates, or that Socrates is a man and a biped, and that therefore he is a two-footed man. Thus it is manifest that if man states unconditionally that predicates can always be combined, many absurd consequences ensue.

We will now explain what ought to be laid down. Those predicates, and terms forming the subject of predication, which are accidental either to the same subject or to one another, do not combine to form a unity. Take the proposition 'man is white of complexion and musical'. Whiteness and being musical do not coalesce to form a unity, for they belong only accidentally to the same subject. Nor yet, if it were true to say that that which is white is musical, would the terms 'musical' and 'white' form a unity, for it is only incidentally that that which is musical is white; the combination of the two will, therefore, not form a unity.

Thus, again, whereas, if a man is both good and a shoemaker, we cannot combine the two propositions and say simply that he is a good shoemaker, we are, at the same time, able to combine the predicates 'animal' and 'biped' and say that a man is an animal with two feet, for these predicates are not accidental.

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