Note 75 — Chapter III · CATEGORIÆ.

In the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters of Mr. James Harris’s Philosophical Arrangements, there is a learned and valuable illustration of these two last Aristotelian Categories. I think, however, that he gives to the Predicament Κεῖσθαι (Jacere) a larger and more comprehensive meaning than it bears in the treatise Categoriæ; and that neither he, nor the commentators whom he cites (p. 317), take sufficient notice of the marked distinction drawn in that treatise between κεῖσθαι and θέσις (Cat. p. 6, b. 12). Mr. Harris ranks the arrangement of words in an orderly discourse, and of propositions in a valid syllogism, as cases coming under the Predicament Κεῖσθαι; which is travelling far beyond the meaning of that word in the Aristotelian Categories. At the same time he brings out strongly the fact, that living beings, and especially men, are the true and special subjects of predicates belonging to Κεῖσθαι and Ἔχειν. The more we attend to this, the nearer approach shall we make to the state of Aristotle’s mind when he drew up the list of Categories; as indeed Harris himself seems to recognize (chap. ii. p. 29).