Read Concerning Being And Essence Online

xxii PREFACE 

arc modes for composing and dividing essence, which represent 
significatively the finite or limited whole or the thing of nature. 
Thus an essence is like a set of ratios, or proportion, for the 
signs refer to each other and in addition to that which is 
signaled. It is clear that in the rational order signification 
possesses an analytic remotion or formal distance from that 
which is signified. 

Let, therefore, two orders of reference be posed: i. The 
horizontal order of reference according to which entia rationis, 
beings of the conceptual order, refer to each other. These are 
second intentions in the order of signification and consist of the 

sense we call anything one if it is a quantity and continuous, in a sense 
we do not unless it is a whole, i. e. unless it has unity of form." Met. 
1016 b 7. In regard to the analytic separability of the essence: "...and 
the physicist is concerned only with things whose forms are separable 
indeed, but do not exist apart from matter. . . . The mode of existence 
and essence of the separable it is the business of the primary type of 
philosophy to define." Physics, 194 b 12. "The underlying nature is an 
object of scientific knowledge by an analogy." Physics, 191 a 8. "...and 
when I speak of substance without matter I mean essence." 1032 b 14. 
"It is obvious then, . . . what sensible substance is and how it exists 
one kind of it as matter, another as form or actuality, while the third 
kind is that which is composed of these two." 1043 a 26. "...for in 
everything the essence is identical with the ground of its being." De 
Anima, 415 b 12. "...form or essence, which is that precisely in virtue 
of which a thing is called a 'this'..." De Anima, 412 a 8. In regard to 
essence, nature and substance: "From what has been said, then, it is plain 
that nature in the primary and strict sense is the essence of things which 
have in themselves, as such, a source of movement; for the matter is 
called the nature because it is qualified to receive this, and processes of 
becoming and growing are called nature because they are movements pro- 
ceeding from this." Met. 1015 a 13. "The kinds of essential being are 
precisely those that are indicated by the figures of predication (soil, the 
categories); for the senses of 'being' are just as many as these figures." 
Met. 1017 a 23. "Therefore there is an essence only of those things whose 
formula is a definition." Met 1030 a 6. See further Met. Z. "It follows 
then, that 'substance' has two senses: (A) the ultimate substratum, which 
is no longer predicated of anything else, and (B) that which, being a 
'this* is also separable. . . ." Met. 1017 b 23. Oxford University Press Ed.