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. Now what is knowable and primary for particular
sets of people is often knowable to a very small extent, and has
little or nothing of reality. But yet one must start from that which
is barely knowable but knowable to oneself, and try to know what is
knowable without qualification, passing, as has been said, by way of
those very things which one does know.
4
Since at the start we distinguished the various marks by which
we determine substance, and one of these was thought to be the
essence, we must investigate this. And first let us make some
linguistic remarks about it. The essence of each thing is what it is
said to be propter se. For being you is not being musical, since you
are not by your very nature musical. What, then, you are by your
very nature is your essence.
Nor yet is the whole of this the essence of a thing; not that
which is propter se as white is to a surface, because being a
surface is not identical with being white. But again the combination
of both-'being a white surface'-is not the essence of surface, because
'surface' itself is added. The formula, therefore, in which the term
itself is not present but its meaning is expressed, this is the
formula of the essence of each thing. Therefore if to be a white
surface is to be a smooth surface, to be white and to be smooth are
one and the same.
But since there are also compounds answering to the other
categories (for there is a substratum for each category, e
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