Page - 315 - in The Complete Aristotle

for meeting each of them. Moreover, distinguish between the different senses in which one thing may be said to be ‘+’ another, and see if there is none of them in which A could be said to exist ‘+ B.’ Thus e.g. supposing the expression to mean that they exist either in some identical thing capable of containing them (as e.g. justice and courage are found in the soul), or else in the same place or in the same time, and if this be in no way true of the A and B in question, clearly the definition rendered could not hold of anything, as there is no possible way in which A can exist B’. If, however, among the various senses above distinguished, it be true that A and B are each found in the same time as the other, look and see if possibly the two are not used in the same relation. Thus e.g. suppose courage to have been defined as ‘daring with right reasoning’: here it is possible that the person exhibits daring in robbery, and right reasoning in regard to the means of health: but he may have ‘the former quality+the latter’ at the same time, and not as yet be courageous! Moreover, even though both be used in the same relation as well, e.g. in relation to medical treatment (for a man may exhibit both daring and right reasoning in respect of medical treatment), still, none the less, not even this combination of ‘the one+the other ‘makes him ‘courageous’. For the two must not relate to any casual object that is the same, any more than each to a different object; rather, they must relate to the function of courage, e.g. meeting the perils of war, or whatever is more properly speaking its function than this. Some definitions rendered in this form fail to come under the aforesaid division at all, e.g. a definition of anger as ‘pain with a consciousness of being slighted’. For what this means to say is that it is because of a consciousness of this sort that the pain occurs; but to occur ‘because of’ a thing is not the same as to occur ‘+ a thing’ in any of its aforesaid senses. < div id=“section63” class=“section” title=“14”> 14 Again, if he have described the whole compounded as the ‘composition’ of these things (e.g. ‘a living creature’ as a ‘composition of soul and body’), first of all see whether he has omitted to state the kind of composition, as (e.g.) in a definition of ‘flesh’ or ‘bone’ as the ‘composition of fire, earth, and air’. For it is not enough to say it is a composition, but you should also go on to define the kind of composition: for these things do not form flesh irrespective of the manner of their composition, but when compounded in one way they form flesh, when in another, bone. It appears, moreover, that neither of the 315