Page:O. F. Owen's Organon of Aristotle Vol. 2 (1853).djvu/126

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is not at all absurd? for man also is a biped, so that what is the same with man will also be biped, but an animal pedestrian biped is the same as man, so that animal pedestrian biped is biped. Nevertheless, no absurdity happens on this account, for biped is not predicated of pedestrian animal, (for thus indeed biped would be twice predicated of the same thing,) but biped is predicated about animal pedestrian biped, wherefore biped is predicated once only. In the same manner, in the case of desire, for to be of the pleasant is not predicated of appetite, but of the whole (sentence), so that here also the predication is once. Still, that the same name should be twice pronounced does not belong to absurdity, but frequently to predicate the same about a certain thing, as when Xenocrates says that prudence is definitive and contemplative of beings, for the definitive is something contemplative, so that he twice says the same thing, again adding contemplative. They also do the same, who say that refrigeration is a privation of natural heat, for all privation is of what exists naturally, so that to add naturally, is superfluous, but it would have been sufficient to say privation of heat, since privation itself makes it known that it is spoken of what is naturally.

Again, whether what is universally asserted adds also something particular, as if (we defined) equity the diminution of things profitable and just, for the just is something profitable, wherefore it is contained in the profitable, so that just is superfluous, and speaking of the universal, the partial is added. Also, if (some one should define) medicine to be the science of things healthful for animal and man, or law to be the image of things naturally beautiful and just, for the just is