32 On Inherence and Being In
On Inherence and Being In Whether we construe the predicate as including the copula, the term 'predicate' is used in a variety of senses. In one sense anything is a predicate which is the extreme of a proposition and not its subject; in this sense anything can be a predicate because any thing can be the predicate of a true or false proposition.
In another sense we call that a predicate which is predicated in a true proposition where we have direct predication. In this sense 'animal' is a predicate with respect to 'man' but not with respect to 'stone'.
In a third sense a predicate is that which is predicated, by direct predication, of some subject of which there can be science in the strict sense. It is in this sense that the philosopher uses 'predicate' in the first book of the Topics where he distinguishes the four predicates—genus, definition, property, and accident; under the genus he also includes difference.' He does not mention species here because although the species is predicated of the individual, the individual cannot be the subject of a proposition grasped by what in the strict sense is called science. It is for this reason that he does not list species here.
The verb connecting the predicate with the subject is called the copula.
32: On Inherence and Being In We say that predicates are predicated of their subjects; but we also say that predicates are in, belong to, and inhere in their subjects. Such locutions should not be understood to imply that predicates really inhere in their subjects in the way that whiteness inheres in the wall. On the contrary these locutions are synonymous with 'predicated of'. They should not be taken in any other way.
Thus, all the accidents which constitute the nine categories can be said to be in substance as in a subject, but not because they really inhere in substance; the notion is, rather, that of inherence by way of true predication. Some who say that quantity is an accident which is in substance want to deny that quantity actually inheres in substance; they mean on the contrary that it is contingently predicated of substance so that it is possible for substances to exist when the proposition 'Substance is a quantity', is false.
Similarly, other expressions like 'come to', 'leave', 'present in', and 'absent from' are frequently used in place of 'predicated of'. The venerable Anselm in his