In general, what is being? This is a question to which the
(Aristotelians) could find no answer; for such mere indication of
properties is not an essential definition of what it is, and it would
seem that the property of being a thing that is susceptible of
successively admitting their contraries, while remaining identical, and
numerically one,[243] could not apply to all (intelligible) beings.
3. Can we assert that "being" is a category that embraces
simultaneously intelligible being, matter, form, and the concretion of
form and matter, on the same justification that one may say that the
race of the Heraclidae form a kind, not because all its members possess
a common characteristic, but because they are all descended from a
common ancestry? In such case, the first degree thereof will belong to
this being (from which all the rest is derived), and the second degree
to the other things which are less beings. What then hinders that all
things form a single category, since all other things of which one may
say, "they subsist," owe this property to "being?"
Might it then be said that the other things are affections (or,
modifications),[232] and that the beings are (hierarchically)
subordinated to each other in a different manner? In this case,
however, we could not stop at (the conception of) "being," and
determine its fundamental property so as to deduce from it other
beings. Beings would thus be of the same kind, but then would possess
something which would be outside of the other beings.[244] Thus the
secondary substance would be attributed to something else, and leave
no meaning to "whatness" (quiddity or quality), "determinate form"
(thatness), "being a subject," "not being a subject," "being in no
subject," and "being attributed to nothing else,"[245] (as, when one
says, whiteness is a quality of the body, quantity is something of
substance, time is something of movement, and movement is something
of mobility), since the secondary "being" is attributed to something
else.[246] Another objection would be, that the secondary being is
attributed to the primary Being, in another sense (than quality is
to being), as "a kind," as "constituting a part," as "being thus
the essence of the subject," while whiteness would be attributed to
something else in this sense that it is in a subject.[247] Our answer
would be that these things have properties which distinguish them from
the others; they will consequently be gathered into a unity, and be
called beings. Nevertheless, no kind could be made up out of them, nor
thus arrive at a definition of the notion and nature of being. Enough
about this; let us pass to quantity.