Note (return) — Chapter XII
Reading edition
"The Metaphysics" of Aristotle opens by an enumeration of "the principles or causes" 718 into which all existences can be resolved by philosophical analysis. This enumeration is at present to be regarded as provisional, and in part hypothetical--a verbal generalization of the different principles which seem to be demanded to explain the existence of a thing, or constitute it what it is. These he sets down as--