Another difficulty about the mutual exclusiveness of the Categories
was started by Aristotle in connexion with the Fourth Category,
Relation ([Greek: pros ti] _Ad aliquid_, _To something_). Mill remarks
that "that could not be a very comprehensive view of the nature of
Relation which would exclude action, passivity, and local situation
from that Category," and many commentators, from Simplicius down to
Hamilton, have remarked that all the last six Categories might be
included under Relation. This is so far correct that the word Relation
is one of the vaguest and most extensive of words; but the criticism
ignores the strictness with which Aristotle confined himself in
his Categories to the forms of common speech. It is clear from
his examples that in his Fourth Category he was thinking only of
"relation" as definitely expressed in common speech. In his meaning,
any word is a relative which is joined with another in a sentence by
means of a preposition or a case-inflection. Thus "disposition" is a
relative: it is the disposition _of_ something. This kind of relation
is perfect when the related terms reciprocate grammatically; thus
"master," "servant," since we can say either "the master of the
servant," or "the servant of the master". In mediaeval logic the term
_Relata_ was confined to these perfect cases, but the Category had
a wider scope with Aristotle. And he expressly raised the question
whether a word might not have as much right to be put in another
Category as in this. Indeed, he went further than his critics in his
suggestions of what Relation might be made to include. Thus: "big"
signifies Quality; yet a thing is big with reference to something
else, and is so far a Relative. Knowledge must be knowledge of
something, and is a relative: why then should we put "knowing"
(_i.e._, learned) in the Category of Quality. "Hope" is a relative,
as being the hope _of_ a man and the hope of something. Yet we say,
"I have hope," and there hope would be in the category of Having,
Appurtenance. For the solution of all such difficulties, Aristotle
falls back upon the forms of common speech, and decides the place of
words in his categories according to them. This was hardly consistent
with his proposal to deal with separate words out of syntax, if by
this was meant anything more than dealing with them without reference
to truth or falsehood. He did not and could not succeed in dealing
with separate words otherwise than as parts of sentences, owing their
signification to their position as parts of a transient plexus of
thought. In so far as words have their being in common speech, and
it is their being in this sense that Aristotle considers in the
Categories, it is a transient being. What being they represent besides
is, in the words of Porphyry, a very deep affair, and one that needs
other and greater investigation.
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