Moreover, primary substances are most properly called substances in
virtue of the fact that they are the entities which underlie everything
else, and that everything else is either predicated of them or present
in them. Now the same relation which subsists between primary substance
and everything else subsists also between the species and the genus:
for the species is to the genus as subject is to predicate, since the
genus is predicated of the species, whereas the species cannot be
predicated of the genus. Thus we have a second ground for asserting
that the species is more truly substance than the genus.
Of species themselves, except in the case of such as are genera, no one
is more truly substance than another. We should not give a more
appropriate account of the individual man by stating the species to
which he belonged, than we should of an individual horse by adopting
the same method of definition. In the same way, of primary substances,
no one is more truly substance than another; an individual man is not
more truly substance than an individual ox.
It is, then, with good reason that of all that remains, when we exclude
primary substances, we concede to species and genera alone the name
'secondary substance', for these alone of all the predicates convey a
knowledge of primary substance. For it is by stating the species or the
genus that we appropriately define any individual man; and we shall
make our definition more exact by stating the former than by stating
the latter. All other things that we state, such as that he is white,
that he runs, and so on, are irrelevant to the definition. Thus it is
just that these alone, apart from primary substances, should be called
substances.
Further, primary substances are most properly so called, because they
underlie and are the subjects of everything else. Now the same relation
that subsists between primary substance and everything else subsists
also between the species and the genus to which the primary substance
belongs, on the one hand, and every attribute which is not included
within these, on the other. For these are the subjects of all such. If
we call an individual man 'skilled in grammar', the predicate is
applicable also to the species and to the genus to which he belongs.
This law holds good in all cases.