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. But it has been
proved and explained elsewhere that no one makes or begets the form,
but it is the individual that is made, i.e. the complex of form and
matter that is generated. Whether the substances of destructible
things can exist apart, is not yet at all clear; except that obviously
this is impossible in some cases-in the case of things which cannot
exist apart from the individual instances, e.g. house or utensil.
Perhaps, indeed, neither these things themselves, nor any of the other
things which are not formed by nature, are substances at all; for
one might say that the nature in natural objects is the only substance
to be found in destructible things.)
Therefore the difficulty which used to be raised by the school
of Antisthenes and other such uneducated people has a certain
timeliness. They said that the 'what' cannot be defined (for the
definition so called is a 'long rigmarole') but of what sort a
thing, e.g. silver, is, they thought it possible actually to
explain, not saying what it is, but that it is like tin. Therefore one
kind of substance can be defined and formulated, i.e. the composite
kind, whether it be perceptible or intelligible; but the primary parts
of which this consists cannot be defined, since a definitory formula
predicates something of something, and one part of the definition must
play the part of matter and the other that of form.
It is also obvious that, if substances are in a sense numbers,
they are so in this sense and not, as some say, as numbers of units
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