Essay Database

1. Matter underlies and persists through substantial changes. A substance is generated (destroyed) by having matter take on (lose) form. 1. A house is created when bricks, boards, etc., are put together according to a certain plan and arranged in a certain form. It is destroyed when the bricks, boards, etc., lose that form. 2. An animal is generated when matter (contributed by the mother) combines with form (contributed by the father). 2. This suggests that the primary substances …

…essential to it; its matter is accidental. (Socrates could have been composed of different matter from that of which he is actually composed.) Form may be accidental to the matter that it informs, but it is essential to the compound substance (i.e., the compound of matter and form) that it is the form of. Form is what makes the individual plants and animals what they are. Therefore, it is the substance of those individuals.