The Aristotelians suffer from a curious distortion of their account of individuals. When Porphyry   writes his introduction to Aristotle  , the Isagoge, he describes individuals as being unique bundles (athroismata) of distinctive qualities (idiotetes). Why? – for Aristotle believes that the individual consists of matter and form. I conjecture that once again Plato’s Theaetetus   is the ultimate source, although the athroisma idea^? is in the same chapter of Alcinous  , Didaskalikos  , ch. 4. In the Theaetetus, the individual Theaetetus is described as consisting of qualities such as a distinctive snubness of nose. The terms ‘bundle’ (athroisma) and ‘distinctive’ (idios) occur earlier in the Theaetetus respectively at 157B-C and 154A, 166C. I think Porphyry offers this Platonic view of the individual, because his introduction is for beginners in Philosophy, and he does not yet want to broach the more complex concepts of matter and form, which enter into Aristotle’s account of the individual. But because Porphyry wrote this in an introduction to Aristotle, later Neoplatonists, Proclus  , Simplicius  , and possibly ‘Philoponus  ’, though they are well aware of Aristotle’s belief in matter and form, take it to be a view, if not of Aristotle, at any rate of the Aristotelian school. If so, the Aristotelians’ account of individuals has been harmonised with Plato’s, this time by a sort of accident of interpretation. [SorabjiPC3  :17]