come grey in old age: in the fourth place, it is that in which it concurs (to happen) to one species alone, and to every (individual of it), and always, as risibility to a man; for though he does not always laugh, yet he is said to be risible, not from his always laughing, but from being naturally adapted to laugh, and this is always inherent in him, in the same way as neighing in a horse. They say also that these are validly properties, because they reciprocate, since if any thing be a it is capable of neighing, and if any thing be capable of neighing it is a horse.[1]
Chap. V.—Of Accident.
1. Accident two-fold. Cf. ch. 10, 14, 16, 17; also Aldrich. Log. Metap. iv. (v.) 30, ed. Leipsic.Accident is that which is present and absent without the destruction of its subject. It receives a two-fold division, for one kind of it is separable, but the other inseparable, e. g. to sleep is a separable accident, but to be black happens inseparably to a crow and an Ethiopian; we may possibly indeed conceive a white crow, and an Ethiopian casting his colour, without destruction of the subject.[2]
2. Two definitions of it in general.They also define it thus; accident is that which may be present and not present to the same thing;
- ↑ For examples of the above kinds of property, see Hill's Log., page 65: the fourth kind of property corresponds strictly with the (
Greek characters) of Porphyry, who with Aristotle does not distinguish property from accident, as flowing necessarily from the essence, but as co-extensive and simply convertible with its subject. Compare here Boethius, and for the other distinction, see Albert de Prædicab. Tract, vi, c. 1; also Mansel. Appendix A. An act (as that of speaking or laughing) cannot correctly be esteemed a property; moreover, as Whately remarks, "when logicians speak of property and accident, as expressing something united to the essence, this must be understood as having reference, not to the nature of things as they are in themselves, but to our conceptions of them." Property is sometimes termed "essential," but with this distinction with regard to difference, to which last predicable also, the same term is applied, viz. that Difference is called "Essentiale constituens;" Property, "Essentiale consequens." A generic property, upon the principles of Aristotle and Porphyry, can only be regarded as a property, with respect to the highest species of which it is predicable, as to all subordinate species it must be considered an accident, e. g. "mobile," a property of "corpus," is an accident to "animal," and to "homo," as not convertible with them.
- ↑ Upon the distinction of separable and inseparable accidents, see Mansel's Log., p. 28, note; Whately, ii. 5, 5, and Wallis, i. 5.
