a brown horse
a scholar
Each of these is a compound of substance + attribute:
a brown horse = a horse + brownness
a scholar = a human + education
In these cases, the compound is a compound of entities that are more basic. ("A scholar is not an ontologically basic item in the world -- a scholar is just a human with a liberal education.")
That is, they're not just unstructured collections of elements, but have a structure that is essential to their being what they are. The syllables BA and AB are different, but they are the same collection of components - they have the same "matter".
[Aristotle offers an infinite regress argument for this: if the structure of a compound (e.g., a syllable) were just another component (along with the letters) then the whole compound would just be a heap. (E.g., the syllable BA would be a collection consisting of two letters and one structure. But a structure considered by itself, as an element, is not the structure of the syllable. The syllable BA consists of two elements structured in a certain way; it isn't an unstructured collection of three things, one of which is a thing called a structure.]
The substantial form (i.e., what makes Socrates human, or, for the proponent of individual forms, what makes Socrates Socrates) is really the basic entity that persists through change.
This may seem wrong, since when Socrates dies, his matter persists, although he no longer exists.
But: when we are tracing the history of Socrates through time, we do not follow the course of the matter that happens to compose his body at any given moment, but that of the form that the matter has. (Animals and plants metabolize; the matter that they are composed of differs from time to time.)
So what makes Socrates the kind of thing he is, and what makes him remain, over time, the same thing of that kind, is the form that he continues to have.
For Aristotle, the form of a compound substance is essential to it; its matter is accidental. (Socrates could have been composed of different matter from that of which he is actually composed.)
Form may be accidental to the matter that it informs, but it is essential to the compound substance (i.e., the compound of matter and form) that it is the form of. Form is what makes the individual plants and animals what they are. Therefore, it is the substance of those individuals.
Notes
1. Substances are supposed to be objects of knowledge, and objects of knowledge are universals, Aristotle says (417b21, 1140b31). Similarly, substances are supposed to be, par excellence, definable, and it is universals, rather than individuals, that are definable, according to Aristotle (90b4, 97b25, 1036a28, 1039b20, 1040a5). These seem to be serious obstacles to the "individual form" interpretation. Back to text.
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