syntax; and it is
expressly with words out of syntax that Aristotle deals, with
single words not in relation to the other parts of a sentence,
but in relation to the things signified. In any strict
definition of the provinces of Grammar and Logic, the
Categories are neither grammatical nor logical: the
grammarians have appropriated them for the subdivision of
certain parts of the sentence, but with no more right than the
logicians. They really form a treatise by themselves, which
is in the main ontological, a discussion of substances and
attributes as underlying the forms of common speech. In saying
this I use the word substance in the modern sense: but it
must be remembered that Aristotle's [Greek: ousia], translated
substantia, covered the word as well as the thing signified,
and that his Categories are primarily classes of words. The
union between names and things would seem to have been closer
in the Greek mind than we can now realise. To get at it we
must note that every separate word [Greek: to legomenon]
is conceived as having a being or thing [Greek: to on]
corresponding to it, so that beings or things [Greek: ta
onta] are coextensive with single words: a being or thing is
whatever receives a separate name. This is clear and simple
enough, but perplexity begins when we try to distinguish
between this nameable being and concrete being, which last is
Aristotle's category of [Greek: ousia], the being signified by
a Proper or a Common as distinguished from an Abstract Noun.
As we shall see, it is relatively to the highest sense of this
last kind of being, namely, the being signified by a Proper
name, that he considers the other kinds of being.]

CHAPTER IV.

THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT UNIVERSALS.--DIFFICULTIES CONCERNING THE
RELATION OF GENERAL NAMES TO THOUGHT AND TO REALITY.

In the opening sentences of his Isagoge, before giving his simple
explanation of the Five Predicables, Porphyry mentions certain
questions concerning Genera and Species, which he passes over as being
too difficult for the beginner. "Concerning genera and species,"
he says, "the question whether they subsist (_i.e._, have real
substance), or whether they lie in the mere thoughts only, or whether,
granting them to subsist, they are corporeal or incorporeal, or
whether they subsist apart, or in sensible things and cohering round