METAPHYSICS and the subject He treats of each of these four items in later chapters: the subject in chapter 3, the quiddity in chapters and 5, the genus not until chapter 12, and Wnally the universal in chapter 14 The subject (to hypokeimenon) turns out to be the same as the Wrst substance of the Categories: it is that of which everything is predicated and which is itself predicated of nothing Such Wrst substances, we are told, are composites of matter and form; in the way that a statue is related to its bronze and its shape (1029a3–5): so much is familiar to us from the Physics But matter is not substance (because pure matter cannot exist alone; 1029a27), and if we are to discover whether form is substance, we have to investigate its relation to quiddity In treating of quiddity Aristotle makes use of a distinction he drew in his lexicon in Metaphysics D (1017a7) between being per se (kath’auto) and being per accidens (kata sumbebekos) I have already used these expressions in giving an account of the Parmenides, though Plato’s Greek expressions are not quite the same The Latin phrases are simply transverbalizations of Aristotle’s Greek expressions It is futile to seek to render them into English, since the meaning of any English equivalents, as of the Latin and Greek phrases, would have to be gleaned from the contexts in which they occur The phrases are used in various contexts, for instance in that of causation A builder is a per se cause of a house: he builds it qua builder But if the builder happens also to be blind, then the headline ‘Blind man builds house’ gives not the per se but the per accidens cause of the house The distinction is applied to the case of being in the following way Entities in all ten of the categories, he tells us, are examples of per se beings: a thing’s colour or shape is as much a per se being as the thing itself (D 1017a22) Clearly, the distinction between per se and per accidens is not the same as that between substance and accident Accidents, confusingly, are per se beings It is a substance-qualiWed-by-an-accident that is a per accidens being So while the wisdom of Socrates is a per se being, wise Socrates is not; he is a being per accidens Aristotle uses his deWnition in deWning quiddity: a quiddity is what a thing is said to be per se You may be a scholar, but you are not a scholar per se as you are a person per se (F 1029b15) ‘The scholar Theophrastus’ names a per accidens being However, ‘the man Theophrastus’ names a per se being, and ‘Theophrastus is a man’ is a per se predication Being a man is the quiddity or essence of Theophrastus 219