Book 7
8
In one case the definition is not per se true because the term which is being defined is combined with something else; as if, e.g., in defining whiteness one were to state the definition of a white man. In the other, because something else (which is not in the definition) is combined with the subject; as if, e.g., X were to denote white man, and X were defined as white. White man is white, but its essence is not to be white. But is to be X an essence at all?
9
Surely not. The essence is an individual type; but when a subject has something distinct from it predicated of it, it is not an individual type. E.g., white man is not an individual type; that is, assuming that individuality belongs only to substances. Hence essence belongs to all things the account of which is a definition.
10
We have a definition, not if the name and the account signify the same (for then all accounts would be definitions; because any account can have a name, so that even the Iliad will be a definition), but if the account is of something primary. Such are all statements which do not involve the predication of one thing of another.
