Note 691 — Chapter LXVIII · SOKRATES.

Aristotel. Metaphys. iii, 3, p. 998, A. Οἷον Ἐμπεδοκλῆς πῦρ καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ τὰ μετὰ τούτων, στοιχεῖά φησιν εἶναι ἐξ ὧν ἐστὶ τὰ ὄντα ἐνυπαρχόντων, ἀλλ᾽ οὐχ ὡς γένη λέγει ταῦτα τῶν ὄντων. That generic division and subdivision was unknown or unpractised by these early men, is noticed by Plato (Sophist. c. 114, p. 267, D).

Aristotle thinks that the Pythagoreans had some faint and obscure notion of the logical genus, περὶ τοῦ τί ἐστιν ἤρξαντο μὲν λέγειν καὶ ὁρίζεσθαι, λίαν δὲ ἁπλῶς ἐπραγματεύθησαν (Metaphys. i, 5, 29, p. 986, B). But we see by comparing two other passages in that treatise (xiii, 4, 6, p. 1078, b, with i, 5, 2, p. 985, b) that the Pythagorean definitions of καιρὸς, τὸ δίκαιον, etc., were nothing more than certain numerical fancies; so that these words cannot fairly be said to have designated, in their view, logical genera. Nor can the ten Pythagorean συστοιχίαι, or parallel series of contraries, be called by that name; arranged in order to gratify a fancy about the perfection of the number ten, which fancy afterwards seems to have passed to Aristotle himself, when drawing up his ten predicaments.

See a valuable Excursus upon the Aristotelian expressions τί ἐστι—τί ἦν εἶναι, etc., appended to Schwegler’s edition of Aristotle’s Metaphysica, vol. ii, p. 369, p. 378.

About the few and imperfect definitions which Aristotle seems also to ascribe to Demokritus, see Trendeleuburg, Comment. ad Aristot. De Animâ, p. 212.