Two criteria for the substantial

Proceeding from the “philosophical grammar” (as it was once or twice styled in the foregoing) of the Categories, to the full theory of substance that is attempted in the Metaphysics, is like travelling from the complex surface of a solid into its multiply-complex interior. In fact, the problem of complexity is one that can very easily get out of hand with this theory, for the object or “solid” in question is highly multidimensional; and this makes for difficulties of both organization and tactics, to which very likely no solution is ideal. Also, the full picture requires of us moderns some rather considerable mind-bending if we are to take it all in. The best course, it seems, is to proceed in stages, by degrees; for while bending one's mind is highly salutary for the philosophical soul, I would not wish to break any minds, or blow them. It has been indicated in §0 that particular emphasis is going to be placed on Aristotle's biological writings as a source of concrete metaphysical intuitions, and we shall move in that direction shortly. But it will both help us in focusing on the right issues, and also work in the spirit of proceeding-by-degrees, first to indicate roughly and provisionally some main features of the Metaphysics concept of the sort of thing a substance is, and from the outset to separate some questions that it is very important to separate. The first of these tasks is for the present section; the second is undertaken in §7.

It was also let fall in §0 that my interpretive approach would be, in places, “reconstructive”, “approaching the text by convergence”.