qualities are the universal element in the gold,
the gold without the qualities is the absolutely particular and
isolated. For, first, the yellowness is a quality which this gold has
in common with that gold, and is therefore a universal, and so with
all the qualities. Even if a particular piece of gold has a quality
possessed by no other gold, it is yet possessed by some other object
in the universe, or it would be unknowable. Every quality is
consequently a universal. Secondly, the gold without its qualities is
the absolutely particular. For, being stripped of all qualities, it is
stripped of whatever it has in common with other things; it is
stripped of whatever universality it has, and it remains an absolute
particular. Hence the {267} universal is not substance, nor is the
particular. For neither of them can exist without the other. Substance
must be a compound of the two; it must be the universal in the
particular. And this means that that alone which is substance is the
individual object, for example, the gold with all its qualities
attached to it.

It is usually believed that Aristotle contradicted himself in as much
as he first states, as above, that the individual object, the compound
of universal and particular, is substance, but later on allows a
superior reality to the universal, or "form" as he calls it, and in
effect teaches, like Plato, that the universal is what alone is
absolutely real, that is, that the universal is substance. I do not
agree that there is any real inconsistency in Aristotle. Or rather,
the inconsistency is one of words and not of thought. It must be
remembered that, whenever Aristotle says that the individual, and not
the universal, is substance, he is thinking of Plato. What he means to
deny is that the universal can exist on its own account, as Plato
thought. Nevertheless he agrees with Plato that the universal is the
real. When he says that the universal is not substance he means, as
against Plato, that it is not existent. What alone exists is the
individual thing, the compound of universal and particular. When he
says, or implies, that the universal is substance, he means that,
though it is not existent, it is real. His words are contradictory,
but his meaning is not. He has not expressed himself as clearly as he
should; that is all.

The further development of Aristotle's metaphysics depends upon his
doctrine of causation. By causation here, however, is meant a very
much wider