İncelik Üzerine

The purpose of our endeavor in this work is to treat of subtlety. Subtlety is a certain reason by which perceptible things are grasped by the senses, and intelligible things by the intellect, only with difficulty. Therefore, if individual things that consist of subtlety present a great task in themselves and are most difficult, what must be said of this treatise, in which the whole nature of subtlety must be explained? And only that can seem clear and easy which is the most obscure part of every discipline. Therefore, subtlety consists in three things: substances, accidents, and representations. There are four kinds of representations: image, species, speech, and writing. Of substances, some are indeed joined to the body, while others are devoid of it. Some accidents depend on substances, such as light, radiance, and heat; some are the means through which substances themselves come to be, such as mixture, action, and generation; some belong to both categories, such as the qualities they call primary, like hot and cold. The thinness of bodies is sometimes due to the nature of their substance, like air, and sometimes due to the logic of quantity, like dust. By mixture, some things are thin, like gold, and among those made by art, silk.