[62] Ibid. b. 8-15. διὰ τὸ προφανῆ εἶναι, οὐδὲν ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν ἄλλο λέγεται ἢ ὅσα ἐν ἀρχῇ ἐρρέθη, &c.
No part of the Aristotelian doctrine has become more incorporated with logical tradition, or elicited a greater amount of comment and discussion,[63] than these Ten Categories or Predicaments. I have endeavoured to give the exposition as near as may be in the words and with the illustrations of Aristotle; because in many of the comments new points of view are introduced, sometimes more just than those of Aristotle, but not present to his mind. Modern logicians join the Categories side by side with the five Predicables, which are explained in the Eisagoge of Porphyry, more than five centuries after Aristotle’s death. As expositors of Logic they are right in doing this; but my purpose is to illustrate rather the views of Aristotle. The mind of Aristotle was not altogether exempt from that fascination[64] which particular numbers exercised upon the Pythagoreans and after them upon Plato. To the number Ten the Pythagoreans ascribed peculiar virtue and perfection. The fundamental Contraries, which they laid down as the Principles of the Universe, were ten in number.[65] After them, also, Plato carried his ideal numbers as far as the Dekad, but no farther. That Aristotle considered Ten to be the suitable number for a complete list of general heads — that he was satisfied with making up the list of ten, and looked for nothing beyond — may be inferred from the different manner in which he deals with the different items. At least, such was his point of view when he composed this treatise. Though he recognizes all the ten Categories as co-ordinate in so far that (except Quale) each is a distinct Genus, not reducible under either of the others, yet he devotes all his attention to the first four, and gives explanations (copious for him) in regard to these. About the fifth and sixth (Agere and Pati)[66] he says a little, though much less than we should expect, considering their extent and importance. About the last four, next to nothing appears. There are even passages in his writings where he seems to drop all mention of the two last (Jacere and Habere), and to recognize no more than eight Predicaments. In the treatise Categoriæ where his attention is fastened on Terms and their signification, and on the appropriate way of combining these terms into propositions, he recites the ten seriatim; but in other treatises, where his remarks bear more upon the matter and less upon the terms by which it is signified, he thinks himself warranted in leaving out the two or three whose applications are most confined to special subjects. If he had thought fit to carry the total number of Predicaments to twelve or fifteen instead of ten,[67] he would probably have had little difficulty in finding some other general heads not less entitled to admission than Jacere and Habere; the rather, as he himself allows, even in regard to the principal Categories, that particulars comprised under one of them may also be comprised under another, and that there is no necessity for supposing each particular to be restricted to one Category exclusively.
[63] About the prodigious number of these comments, see the Scholion of Dexippus, p. 39, a. 34, Br.; p. 5, ed. Spengel.
[64] See Simpl. in Categ. Schol. p. 78, b. 14, Br.; also the two first chapters of the Aristotelian treatise De CÅ“lo; compare also, about the perfection of the τρίτη σύστασις, De Partibus Animalium, ii. p. 646, b. 9; De Generat. Animal. iii. p. 760, a. 34.
[65] Aristot. Metaph. A. p. 986, a. 8. There existed, in the time of the later Peripatetics, a treatise in the Doric dialect by Archytas — Περὶ τοῦ Παντός — discriminating Ten Categories, and apparently the same ten Categories as Aristotle. By several Aristotelian critics this treatise was believed to have been composed by Archytas the Tarentine, eminent both as a Pythagorean philosopher and as the leading citizen of Tarentum — the contemporary and friend of Plato, and, therefore, of course, earlier than Aristotle. Several critics believed that Aristotle had borrowed his Ten Categories from this work of Archytas; and we know that the latter preserved the total number of Ten. See Schol. ad Categor. p. 79, b. 3, Br.
But other critics affirmed, apparently with better reason, that the Archytas, author of this treatise, was a Peripatetic philosopher later than Aristotle; and that the doctrine of Archytas on the Categories was copied from Aristotle in the same manner as the Doric treatise on the Kosmos, ascribed to the Lokrian Timæus, was copied from the Timæus of Plato, being translated into a Doric dialect.
See Scholia of Simplikius and Boëthius, p. 33, a. 1, n.; p. 40, a. 43, Brandis. The fact that this treatise was ascribed to the Tarentine Archytas, indicates how much the number Ten was consecrated in men’s minds as a Pythagorean canon.
[66] Trendelenburg thinks (Geschichte der Kategorienlehre, p. 131) that Aristotle must have handled the Categories Agere, and Pati more copiously in other treatises; and there are some passages in his works which render this probable. See De Animâ, ii. p. 416, b. 35; De Generat. Animal. iv. p. 768, b. 15. Moreover, in the list of Aristotle’s works given by Diogenes Laertius, one title appears — Περὶ τοῦ ποιεῖν καὶ πεπονθέναι (Diog. L. v. 22).
[67] Prantl expresses this view in his Geschichte der Logik (p. 206), and I think it just.