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For in all such cases the question is 'to which of the two does the
predicate in question happen (accidit) to belong more closely?' It is
clear on the face of it that there is nothing to prevent an accident
from becoming a temporary or relative property. Thus the sitting
posture is an accident, but will be a temporary property, whenever a
man is the only person sitting, while if he be not the only one
sitting, it is still a property relatively to those who are not
sitting. So then, there is nothing to prevent an accident from
becoming both a relative and a temporary property; but a property
absolutely it will never be.
Part 6
We must not fail to observe that all remarks made in criticism of a
'property' and 'genus' and 'accident' will be applicable to
'definitions' as well. For when we have shown that the attribute in
question fails to belong only to the term defined, as we do also in
the case of a property, or that the genus rendered in the definition
is not the true genus, or that any of the things mentioned in the
phrase used does not belong, as would be remarked also in the case of
an accident, we shall have demolished the definition; so that, to use
the phrase previously employed,' all the points we have enumerated
might in a certain sense be called 'definitory'. But we must not on
this account expect to find a single line of inquiry which will apply
universally to them all: for this is not an easy thing to find, and,
even were one found, it would be very obscure indeed, and of little
service for the treatise before us. Rather, a special plan of inquiry
must be laid down for each of the classes we have distinguished, and
then, starting from the rules that are appropriate in each case, it
will probably be easier to make our way right through the task before
us. So then, as was said before,' we must outline a division of our
subject, and other questions we must relegate each to the particular
branch to which it most naturally belongs, speaking of them as
'definitory' and 'generic' questions. The questions I mean have
practically been already assigned to their several branches.
Part 7
First of all we must define the number of senses borne by the term
'Sameness'. Sameness would be generally regarded as falling, roughly
speaking, into three divisions. We generally apply the term
numerically or specifically or generically-numerically in cases where
there is more than one name but only one thing, e.g. 'doublet' and
'cloak'; specifically, where there is more than one thing, but they
present no differences in respect of their species, as one man and
another, or one horse and another: for things like this that fall
under the same species are said to be 'specifically the same'.
Similarly, too, those things are called generically the same which
fall under the same genus, such as a horse and a man. It might appear
that the sense in which water from the same spring is called 'the same
water' is somehow different and unlike the senses mentioned above: but
really such a case as this ought to be ranked in the same class with
the things that in one way or another are called 'the same' in view of
unity of species. For all such things seem to be of one family and to
resemble one another. For the reaon why all water is said to be
specifically the same as all other water is because of a certain
likeness it bears to it, and the only difference in the case of water
drawn from the same spring is this, that the likeness is more
emphatic: that is why we do not distinguish it from the things that in
one way or another are called 'the same' in view of unity of species.
It is generally supposed that the term 'the same' is most used in a
sense agreed on by every one when applied to what is numerically one.
But even so, it is apt to be rendered in more than one sense; its most
literal and primary use is found whenever the sameness is rendered in
reference to an alternative name or definition, as when a cloak is
said to be the same as a doublet, or an animal that walks on two feet
is said to be the same as a man: a second sense is when it is rendered
in reference to a property, as when what can acquire knowledge is