ARISTOTLE AND THE EARLIER PERIPATETICS vol.I by Eduard Zeller, B.F.C.Costelloe 1897

METAPHYSIQS 283
for a decimal system inherited from them by the
Platonists, 1 which made it at first seem to Aristotle
natural that he should find a round number of categories.
But we cannot well suppose any further connection
between his doctrine and the Pythagorean
nor iS the conjecture 3 much more probable, that he
borrowed his categories from the school of Plato. 4
;
a
It is
true that almost all of them appear in' Plato's writings;
5 but we cannot attribute any great weight to this
coincidence, for the reason that in Plato they are merely
used as occasion arises, without any attempt to
arrive
at a full enumeration of all the categories in one scheme.
Among the categories themselves, much the most
ZELLER, ibid. p. 857 sqq.
1
2
As Petersen supposed in
PMlos. Chrygipp. Fundamenta,
p. 12.
s
Eose, Arigt. Libr. Ord. 238
sqq.
* In the first place, there is
no trace whatever of the ten
categories among the Platonists ;
and it is not likely that information
about so notable a. point
would neither have been transmitted
through their writings nor
through Chrysippns and other
scholars of the Alexandrian period
to the later Peripatetics,
and through them to us. And
again, the theory of the categories
is so closely connected with
the other opinions of Aristotle
that it is not likely to have
sprung up on other ground.
Take, for example, merely the
fundamental statements as to
the oitr'a and its relation to properties,
on which the whole
division of the categories in
Aristotle is based. These are
certainly not Platonic ; in fact it
is one chief point of dispute between
Aristotle and his master
that the latter conceded to ideas
of quality the position of substances
and made the iroibv an
oh Staipe7rai
[sc. t1] ivvwdpxov [Ace] us Batji/.
Similarly in viii. 2, 1043, a, 19, cf.
Gen. An. i. 21,729,b. 3 : ushwrdp-
X°v kcl\ fidptou'hf evBvs Tovyivofievov
ffufiaros fiiyvtifievov tt) #Ap. Tbid.
c. 18, 724, a, 24 : S