The word for definition is ὅρος.

The original meaning of this word seems to have been

“boundary,” “landmark.” Then we have it in Plato and Aristotle in the sense of standard or
determining principle (“id quo alicuius rei natura constituitur vel definitur,” Index Aristotelicus)1;
and closely connected with this is the sense of definition. Aristotle uses both ὅρος and ὁρισμός for
definition, the former occurring more frequently in the Topics, the latter in the Metaphysics.
Let us now first be clear as to what a definition does not do. There is nothing in connexion
with definitions which Aristotle takes more pains to emphasise than that a definition asserts nothing
as to the existence or non-existence of the thing defined. It is an answer to the question what a thing
is (τί ἐστι). The existence of the various things defined has to be proved, except in the case of a few
primary things in each science, the existence of which is indemonstrable and must be assumed
among the first principles of each science; e.g. points and lines in geometry must be proved. This is
started clearly in the long passage quoted above under First Principles 2. It is reasserted in such
passages as the following. “The (answer to the question) what is a man and the fact that a man
exists are different thing3.” “It is clear that, even according to the view of definitions now current,
those who difine things do not prove that they exist 4.” “We say that is by demonstration that we
must show that everything exists, except essence (εἰ μὴ οὐσία εἴη). But the existence of a thing is
never essence; for the existent is not a genus. Therefore there must be demonstration that a thing
exists. Thus, what is meant by triangle the geometer assumes, but that it exists he has to prove 5.”
“Anterior knowlegde of two sorts is necessary: for it is necessary to presuppose, with regard to
some things, that they exist; in other cases it is necessaty to understand what the thing described is,
and in other cases it is necessary to do both. Thus, with the fact that one of two contradictories must
be true, we must know that it exists (is true); of the triangle we must know that it means such and
such a thing; of the unit we must know both what it means and that it exists 6.” What is here só much
insisted on is the very fact which Mill pointed out in his discussion of earlier views of Definitions,
where he says that the so-called real definitions or definitions of things do not constitute a different
kind of definition from nominal definitions, or definitions of names; the former is simply the latter
plus something else, namely a covert assertion that the thing defined exists. “This covert assertion is
not a definition but a postulate. The definition is a mere identical proposition which gives
information only about the use of language, and from which no conclusion affecting matters of fact
can possibly be drawn. The accompanying postulate, on the other hand, affirms a fact which may
1 Cf. De anima, I. 2, 404 a 9, where “breathing” is spoken of as the ὅρος of “life,” and the many passages in the
Politics where the word is used to denote that which gives its special character to the several forms of government
(virtue being the ὅρος of aristocracy, wealth of oligarchy, liberty of democracy, 1294 a 10); Plato, Replubic, VIII.
551 C.
2 Anal. post. I. 10, 76 a 31 sqq.
3 ibid. II. 7, 92 b 10.
4 ibid. 92 b 19.
5 ibid. 92 b 12 sqq.
6 ibid. I. I, 71 a 11 sqq.
lead to consequences of every degree of importance. It affirms the actual or possible existence of
Things possessing the combination of attributes set forth in the definition: and this, if true, may be
foundation sufficient on which to build a whole fabric of scientific truth 7.” This statement really
adds nothing to Aristotle's doctrine8: it has even the slight disadvantage, due to the use of the word
“postulate” to described “the covert assertion” in all cases, of not definitely pointing out that there
are cases where existence has to be proved as distinct from those where it must be assumed. It is
true that the existence of a definiend may have to be taken for granted provisionally until the time
comes for proving it; but, so far as regards any case where existence must be proved sooner or later,
the provisional assumption would be for Aristotle, not a postulate, but a hypothesis. In modern
times, too, Mill's account of the true distinction between real and nominal definitions had been fully
anticipated by Saccheri9, the editor of Euclides ab omni naevo vindicatus (1733), famous in the
history of non-Euclidean geometry. In his Logica Demonstrativa (to which he also refers in his
Euclid) Saccheri lays down the clear distinction between what he calls definitiones quid nominis or
nomiles, and definitiones quid rei or reales, namely that the former are only intended to explain the
meaning that is to be attached to a given term, whereas the latter, besides declaring the meaning of a
word, affirm at the same time the existence of the thing defined or, in geometry, the possibility of
constructing it. The definitio quid nominis becomes a definitio quid rei “by means of a postulate, or
when we come to the question whether the thing exists and it is answered affirmatively10.”
Definitions quid nominis are in themselves quite arbitrary, and neither require nor are capable of
proof; they are merely provisional and are only intented to be turned as quickly as possible into
definitions quid rei, either (1) by means of a postulate in which it is asserted or conceded that what
is definided exists or can be constructed, e.g. in the case of straight lines and circles, to Euclid's first
three postulates refer, or (2) by means of a demonstration reducting the construction of the figure
defined to the sussecive carrying-out of a certain number of those elementary construction, the

7 Mill's System of Logic, Bk. I. ch. viii.

8 It is true that it was in opposition to “the ideas of most of the Aristotelian logicians” (rather than of Aristotle
himself) that Mill laid such stress on his point of view. Cf. his obsevation: “We have already made, and shall often
have to repeat, the remark, that the philosophers who overthrew Realism by no means got rid of the consequences of
Realism, but retained long afterwards, in their own philosophy, nomerous propositions which could only have a
rational meaning as part of a Realistic system. It had been handed down from Aristotle, and probably from earlier
times, as an obvious truth, that the science of geometry is deduced from definitions. This, só long as a definition was
considered to be a proposition 'unfolding the nature of the thing,' did well enough. But Hobbes followed and rejected
utterly the notion that a definition declares the nature of the thing, or does anything but state the meaning of a name;
yet he continued to affirm as broadly as any of his predecessors that the ἀρχαί, principia, or original premisses of
mathematics, and even of all science, are definition; producing the singular paradox that systems of scientific truth,
nay, all truths whatever at which we arrive by reasoning, are deduced from the arbitrary conventions of mankind
concerning the signification of words.” Aristotle was guilty of no such paradox; on the contrary, he exposed it as
plainly as did Mill.
9 This has been fully brought out in two papers by G. Vailati, La teoria Aristotelica della definizione (Rivista di
Filosofia e scienze affini, 1903), and Di un' opera dimenticata del P. Gerolamo Saccheri (“Logica Demonstrativa,”
1697) (in Rivista Filosofica, 1903).
10 “Definitio quid nominis nata est evadere definitio quid rei per postulatum vel dum venitur ad quaestionem an est et
respondetur affirmative.”
possibility of which is postulated. Thus definitions quid rei are in general obtained as the result of a
series of demonstrations. Saccheri gives as an instances the construction of a square in Euclid I. 46.
Suppose that it is objected that Euclid had no right to define a square, as he does at the beginning of
the Book, when it was not certain that such a figure exists in nature; the objection, he says, could
only have force if, before proving and manking the construction, Euclid had assumed the aforesaid
figure as given. That Euclid is not guilty of this error is clear from the fact that he never
presupposes the existence of the square as defined until after I. 46.