Aristotle

by George Grote

APPENDIX.

[I.]

THE DOCTRINE OF UNIVERSALS.

The controversy respecting Universals first obtained its place in philosophy from the colloquies of Sokrates, and the writings and teachings of Plato. We need not here touch upon their predecessors, Parmenides and Herakleitus, who, in a confused and unsystematic manner, approached this question from opposite sides, and whose speculations worked much upon the mind of Plato in determining both his aggressive dialectic, and his constructive theories. Parmenides of Elea, improving upon the ruder conceptions of Xenophanes, was the first to give emphatic proclamation to the celebrated Eleatic doctrine, Absolute Ens as opposed to Relative Fientia: i.e. the Cogitable, which Parmenides conceived as the One and All of reality, ἓν καὶ πᾶν, enduring and unchangeable, of which the negative was unmeaning, — and the Sensible or Perceivable, which was in perpetual change, succession and multiplicity, without either unity, or reality, or endurance. To the last of these two departments Herakleitus assigned especial prominence. In place of the permanent underlying Ens, which he did not recognize, he substituted a cogitable process of change, or generalized concept of what was common to all the successive phases of change — a perpetual stream of generation and destruction, or implication of contraries, in which everything appeared only that it might disappear, without endurance or uniformity. In this doctrine of Herakleitus, the world of sense and particulars could not be the object either of certain knowledge or even of correct probable opinion; in that of Parmenides, it was recognized as an object of probable opinion, though not of certain knowledge. But in both doctrines, as well as in the theories of Demokritus, it was degraded, and presented as incapable of yielding satisfaction to the search of a philosophizing mind, which could find neither truth nor reality except in the world of Concepts and Cogitables.

Besides the two theories above-mentioned, there were current in the Hellenic world, before the maturity of Sokrates, several other veins of speculation about the Kosmos, totally divergent one from the other, and by that very divergence sometimes stimulating curiosity, sometimes discouraging all study as though the problems were hopeless. But Parmenides and Herakleitus, together with the arithmetical and geometrical hypotheses of the Pythagoreans, are expressly noticed by Aristotle as having specially contributed to form the philosophy of Plato.

Neither Parmenides, nor Herakleitus, nor the Pythagoreans were dialecticians. They gave out their own thoughts in their own way, with little or no regard to dissentients. They did not cultivate the art of argumentative attack or defence, nor the correct application and diversified confrontation of universal terms, which are the great instruments of that art. It was Zeno, the disciple of Parmenides, that first employed dialectic in support of his master’s theory, or rather against the counter-theories of opponents. He showed by arguments memorable for their subtlety, that the hypothesis of an Absolute, composed of Entia Plura Discontinua, led to consequences even more absurd than those that opponents deduced from the Parmenidean hypothesis of Ens Unum Continuum. The dialectic, thus inaugurated by Zeno, reached still higher perfection in the colloquies of Sokrates; who not only employed a new method, but also introduced new topics of debate — ethical, political, and social matters instead of physical things and the Kosmos.

The peculiar originality of Sokrates is well known: a man who wrote nothing, but passed his life in indiscriminate colloquy with every one; who professed to have no knowledge himself, but interrogated others on matters that they talked about familiarly and professed to know well; whose colloquies generally ended by puzzling the respondents, and by proving to themselves that they neither knew nor could explain even matters that they had begun by affirming confidently as too clear to need explanation. Aristotle tells us[1] that Sokrates was the first that set himself expressly and methodically to scrutinize the definitions of general or universal terms, and to confront them, not merely with each other, but also, by a sort of inductive process, with many particular cases that were, or appeared to be, included under them. And both Xenophon and Plato give us abundant examples of the terms to which Sokrates applied his interrogatories: What is the Holy? What is the Unholy? What is the Beautiful or Honourable? What is the Ugly or Base? What is Justice-Injustice — Temperance — Madness — Courage — Cowardice — A City — A man fit for civil life? What is the Command of Men? What is the character fit for commanding men? Such are the specimens, furnished by a hearer,[2] of the universal terms whereon the interrogatories of Sokrates bore. All of them were terms spoken and heard familiarly by citizens in the market-place, as if each understood them perfectly; but when Sokrates, professing his own ignorance, put questions asking for solutions of difficulties that perplexed his own mind, the answers showed that these difficulties were equally insoluble by respondents, who had never thought of them before. The confident persuasion of knowledge, with which the colloquy began, stood exposed as a false persuasion without any basis of reality. Such illusory semblance of knowledge was proclaimed by Sokrates to be the chronic, though unconscious, intellectual condition of his contemporaries. How he undertook, as the mission of a long life, to expose it, is impressively set forth in the Platonic Apology.

[1] Metaphysica, A. p. 987, b. 2; M. p. 1078, b. 18.

[2] Xenophon Memorab. I. i. 16; IV. vi. 1-13.

It was thus by Sokrates that the meaning of universal terms and universal propositions, and the relation of each respectively to particular terms and particular propositions were first made a subject of express enquiry and analytical interrogation. His influence was powerful in imparting the same dialectical impulse to several companions; but most of all to Plato, who not only enlarged and amplified the range of Sokratic enquiry, but also brought the meaning of universal terms into something like system and theory, as a portion of the conditions of trustworthy science. Plato was the first to affirm the doctrine afterwards called Realism, as the fundamental postulate of all true and proved cognition. He affirmed it boldly, and in its most extended sense, though he also produces (according to his frequent practice) many powerful arguments and unsolved objections against it. It was he (to use the striking phrase of Milton[3]) that first imported into the schools the portent of Realism. The doctrine has been since opposed, confuted, curtailed, transformed, diversified in many ways; but it has maintained its place in logical speculation, and has remained, under one phraseology or another, the creed of various philosophers, from that time down to the present.

[3] See the Latin verses ‘De Ideâ Platonicâ quemadmodum Aristoteles intellexit’ —

“At tu, perenne ruris Academi decus, Hæc monstra si tu primus induxti scholis,� &c.

The following account of the problems of Realism was handed down to the speculations of the mediæval philosophers by Porphyry (between 270-300 A.D.), in his Introduction to the treatise of Aristotle on the Categories. After informing Chrysaorius that he will prepare for him a concise statement of the doctrines of the old philosophers respecting Genus, Differentia, Species, Proprium, Accidens, “abstaining from the deeper enquiries, but giving suitable development to the more simple,� — Porphyry thus proceeds:— “For example, I shall decline discussing, in respect to Genera and Species, (1) Whether they have a substantive existence, or reside merely in naked mental conceptions; (2) Whether, assuming them to have substantive existence, they are bodies or incorporeals; (3) Whether their substantive existence is in and along with the objects of sense, or apart and separable. Upon this task I shall not enter, since it is of the greatest depth, and requires another larger investigation; but shall try at once to show you how the ancients (especially the Peripatetics), with a view to logical discourse, dealt with the topics now propounded.�[4]

[4] Porphyry, Introd. in Categor. init. p. 1, a. 1, Schol. Br.

Before Porphyry, all these three problems had been largely debated, first by Plato, next by Aristotle against Plato, again by the Stoics against both, and lastly by Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists as conciliators of Plato with Aristotle. After Porphyry, problems the same, or similar, continued to stand in the foreground of speculation, until the authority of Aristotle became discredited at all points by the influences of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But in order to find the beginning of them, as questions provoking curiosity and opening dissentient points of view to inventive dialecticians, we must go back to the age and the dialogues of Plato.

The real Sokrates (i.e. as he is described by Xenophon) inculcated in his conversation steady reverence for the invisible, as apart from and overriding the phenomena of sensible experience; but he interpreted the term in a religious sense, as signifying the agency of the personal gods, employed to produce effects beneficial or injurious to mankind.[5] He also puts forth his dialectical acuteness to prepare consistent and tenable definitions of familiar general terms (of which instances have already been given), at least so far as to make others feel, for the first time, that they did not understand these terms, though they had been always talking like persons that did understand. But the Platonic Sokrates (i.e. as spokesman in the dialogues of Plato) enlarges both these discussions materially. Plato recognizes, not simply the invisible persons or gods, but also a separate world of invisible, impersonal entities or objects; one of which he postulates as the objective reality, though only a cogitable reality, correlating with each general term. These Entia he considers to be not merely distinct realities, but the only true and knowable realities: they are eternal and unchangeable, manifested by the fact that particulars partake in them, and imparting a partial show of stability to the indeterminate flux of particulars: unless such separate Universal Entia be supposed, there is nothing whereon cognition can fasten, and consequently there can be no cognition at all.[6] These are the substantive, self-existent Ideas, or Forms that Plato first presented to the philosophical world; sometimes with logical acuteness, oftener still with rich poetical and imaginative colouring. They constitute the main body and characteristic of the hypothesis of Realism.

[5] Xenophon, Memorab. I. iv. 9-17; IV. iii. 14.

[6] Aristot. Metaphys. A. vi. p. 987, b. 5; M. iv. p. 1078, b. 15.

But, though the main hypothesis is the same, the accessories and manner of presentation differ materially among its different advocates. In these respects, indeed, Plato differs not only from others, but also from himself. Systematic teaching or exposition is not his purpose, nor does he ever give opinions in his own name. We have from him an aggregate of detached dialogues, in many of which this same hypothesis is brought under discussion, but in each dialogue, the spokesmen approach it from a different side; while in others (distinguished by various critics as the Sokratic dialogues) it does not come under discussion at all, Plato being content to remain upon the Sokratic platform, and to debate the meaning of general terms without postulating in correlation with them an objective reality, apart from their respective particulars.

At the close of the Platonic dialogue called Kratylus, Sokrates is introduced as presenting the hypothesis of self-existent, eternal, unchangeable Ideas (exactly in the way that Aristotle ascribes to Plato) as the counter-proposition to the theory of universal flux and change announced by Herakleitus. Particulars are ever changing (it is here argued) and are thus out of the reach of cognition; but, unless the Universal Ideas above them, such as the Self-beautiful, the Self-good, &c., be admitted as unchangeable, objective realities, there can be nothing either nameable or knowable: cognition becomes impossible.

In the Timæus, Plato describes the construction of the Kosmos by a Divine Architect, and the model followed by the latter in his work. The distinction is here again brought out, and announced as capital, between the permanent, unalterable Entia, and the transient, ever-fluctuating Fientia, which come and go, but never really are. Entia are apprehended by the cogitant or intelligent soul of the Kosmos, Fientia by the sentient or percipient soul; the cosmical soul as a whole, in order to suffice for both these tasks, is made up of diverse component elements — Idem, correlating with the first of the two, Diversum, correlating with the second, and Idem implicated with Diversum, corresponding to both in conjunction. The Divine Architect is described as constructing a Kosmos, composed both of soul and body, upon the pattern of the grand pre-existent Idea — αὐτοζῷον or the Self-Animal; which included in itself as a genus the four distinct species — celestial (gods, visible and invisible), terrestrial, aerial, and aquatic.

The main point that Plato here insists upon is — the eternal and unchangeable reality of the cogitable objects called Ideas, prior both in time and in logical order to the transient objects of sight and touch, and serving as an exemplar to which these latter are made to approximate imperfectly. He assumes such priority, without proof, in the case of the Idea of Animal; but, when he touches upon the four elements — Fire, Air, Water, Earth — he hesitates to make the same assumption, and thinks himself required to give a reason for it. The reason that he assigns (announced distinctly as his own) is as follows: If Intellection (Cogitation, Νοῦς) and true Opinion are two genera distinct from each other, there must clearly exist Forms or Ideas imperceptible to our senses, and apprehended only by cogitation or intellection; but if, as some persons think, true opinion is noway different from intellection, then we must admit all the objects perceived by our senses as firm realities. Now the fact is (he proceeds to say) that true opinion is not identical with intellection, but quite distinct, separate, and unlike to it. Intellection is communicated by teaching, through true reasoning, and is unshakeable by persuasion; true opinion is communicated by persuasion and removed by counter-persuasion, without true reasoning. True opinion may belong to any man; but intellection is the privilege only of gods and of a small section of mankind. Accordingly, since the two are distinct, the objects correlating with each of them must also be distinct from each other. There must exist, first, primary, eternal, unchangeable Forms, apprehended by intellect or cogitation, but imperceptible by sense; and, secondly, resemblances of these bearing the same name, generated and destroyed each in some place, and apprehended first by sense, afterwards by opinion. Thirdly, there must be the place wherein such resemblances are generated; a place itself imperceptible by sense, yet postulated, as a receptacle indispensable for them, by a dreamy kind of computation.

We see here that the proof given by Plato, in support of the existence of Forms as the primary realities, is essentially psychological: resting upon the fact that there is a distinct mental energy or faculty called Intellection (apart from Sense and Opinion), which must have its distinct objective correlate; and upon the farther fact, that intellection is the high prerogative of the gods, shared only by a few chosen men. This last point of the case is more largely and emphatically brought out in the Phædrus, where Sokrates delivers a highly poetical effusion respecting the partial intercommunion of the human soul with these eternal intellectual realities. To contemplate them is the constant privilege of the gods; to do so is also the aspiration of the immortal soul of man generally, in the pre-existent state, prior to incorporation with the human body; though only in a few cases is such aspiration realized. Even those few human souls, that have succeeded in getting sight of the intellectual Ideas (essences without colour, figure, or tactile properties), lose all recollection of them when first entering into partnership with a human body; but are enabled gradually to recall them, by combining repeated impressions and experience of their resemblances in the world of sense. The revival of these divine elements is an inspiration of the nature of madness; though it is a variety of madness as much better than uninspired human reason as other varieties are worse. The soul, becoming insensible to ordinary pursuits, contracts a passionate devotion to these Universal Ideas, and to that dialectical communion, especially with some pregnant youthful mind, that brings them into clear separate contemplation disengaged from the limits and confusion of sense.

Here philosophy is presented as the special inspiration of a few, whose souls during the period of pre-existence have sufficiently caught sight of the Universal Ideas or Essences; so that these last, though overlaid and buried when the soul is first plunged in a body, are yet revivable afterwards under favourable circumstances, through their imperfect copies in the world of sense; especially by the sight of personal beauty in an ingenuous and aspiring youth, in which case the visible copy makes nearest approach to the perfection of the Universal Idea or Type. At the same time, Plato again presents to us the Cogitable Universals as the only objects of true cognition, the Sensible Particulars being objects merely of opinion.

In the Phædon, Sokrates advances the same doctrine, that the perceptions of sense are full of error and confusion, and can at best suggest nothing higher than opinion; that true cogitation can never be attained except when the cogitant mind disengages itself from the body and comes into direct contemplation of the Universal Entia, objects eternal and always the same — The Self-beautiful, Self-good, Self-just, Self-great, Healthy, Strong, &c., all which objects are invisible, and can be apprehended only by the cogitation or intellect. It is this Cogitable Universal that is alone real; Sensible Particulars are not real, nor lasting, nor trustworthy. None but a few philosophers, however, can attain to such pure mental energy during this life; nor even they fully and perfectly. But they will attain it fully after death (their souls being immortal), if their lives have been passed in sober philosophical training. And their souls enjoyed it before birth during the period of pre-existence; having acquired, before junction with the body, the knowledge of these Universals, which are forgotten during childhood, but recalled in the way of Reminiscence, by sensible perceptions that make a distant approach to them. Thus, according to the Phædon and some other dialogues, all learning is merely reminiscence; the mind is brought back, by the laws of association, to the knowledge of Universal Realities that it had possessed in its state of pre-existence. Particulars of sense participate in these Universals to a certain extent, or resemble them imperfectly; and they are therefore called by the same name.

In the Republic, we have a repetition and copious illustration of this antithesis between the world of Universals or Cogitables, which are the only unchangeable realities and the only objects of knowledge, — and the world of Sensible Particulars, which are transitory and confused shadows of these Universals, and are objects of opinion only. Full and real Ens is knowable, Non-Ens is altogether unknowable; what is midway between the two is matter of opinion, and in such midway are the Particulars of sense.[7] Respecting these last, no truth is attainable: whenever you affirm a proposition respecting any of them, you may with equal truth affirm the contrary at the same time. Nowhere is the contrast between the Universals or real Ideas (among which the Idea of Good is the highest, predominant over all the rest), and the unreal Particulars, or Percepta, of Sense, more forcibly insisted upon than in the Republic. Even the celestial bodies and their movements, being among these Percepta of sense, are ranked among phantoms interesting but useless to observe; they are the best of all Percepta, but they fall very short of the perfection that the mental eye contemplates in the Ideal — in the true Figures and Numbers, in the real Velocity and the real Slowness. In the simile commencing the seventh book of the Republic, Plato compares mankind to prisoners in a cave, chained in one particular attitude, so as to behold only an ever-varying multiplicity of shadows, projected, through the opening of the cave upon the wall before them, by certain unseen realities behind. The philosopher is one among a few, who by training or inspiration, have been enabled to face about from this original attitude, and to contemplate with his mind the real unchangeable Universals, instead of having his eye fixed upon their particular manifestations, at once shadowy and transient. By such mental revolution he comes round from the Perceivable to the Cogitable, from Opinion to Knowledge.

[7] Plato, Republic. v. pp. 477, 478.

The distinction between these two is farther argued in the elaborate dialogue called Theætetus, where Sokrates, trying to explain what Knowledge or Cognition is, refutes three proposed explanations and shows, to his own satisfaction, that it is not sensible perception, that it is not true opinion, that it is not true opinion coupled with rational explanation. But he confesses himself unable to show what Knowledge or Cognition is, though he continues to announce it as correlating with Realities Cogitable and Universal only.[8]

[8] Plato, Theætêt. pp. 173, 176, 186. Grote’s Plato, II. [xxvi.] pp. 320-395.

In the passages above noticed, and in many others besides, we find Plato drawing a capital distinction between Universals eternal and unchangeable (each of them a Unit as well as a Universal),[9] which he affirms to be the only real Entia, — and Particulars transient and variable, which are not Entia at all, but are always coming or going; the Universals being objects of cogitation and of a psychological fact called Cognition, which he declares to be infallible; and the Particulars being objects of Sense, and of another psychological fact radically different, called Opinion, which he pronounces to be fallible and misleading. Plato holds, moreover, that the Particulars, though generically distinct and separate from the Universals, have nevertheless a certain communion or participation with them, by virtue of which they become half existent and half cognizable, but never attain to full reality or cognizability.

[9] Plato, Philêbus, p. 15, A. B.; Republic, x. p. 596, A. The phrase of Milton, “unus et universus,� expresses this idea; also the lines:—

“Sed quamlibet natura sit communior, Tamen seorsus extat ad modum unius,� &c.

This is the first statement of the theory of complete and unqualified Realism, which came to be known in the Middle Ages under the phrase Universalia ante rem or extra rem, and to be distinguished from the two counter-theories Universalia in re (Aristotelian), and Universalia post rem (Nominalism). Indeed, the Platonic theory goes even farther than the phrase Universalia ante rem, which recognizes the particular as a reality, though posterior and derivative; for Plato attenuates it into phantom and shadow. The problem was now clearly set out in philosophy — What are the objects correlating with Universal terms, and with Particular terms? What is the relation between the two? Plato first gave to the world the solution called Realism, which lasted so long after his time. We shall presently find Aristotle taking issue with him on both the affirmations included in his theory.

But though Plato first introduced this theory into philosophy, he was neither blind to the objections against it, nor disposed to conceal them. His mind was at once poetically constructive and dialectically destructive; to both these impulses the theory furnished ample scope, while the form of his compositions (separate dialogues, with no mention of his own name) rendered it easy to give expression either to one or to the other. Before Aristotle arose to take issue with him, we shall find him taking issue with himself, especially in the dialogues called Sophistes and Parmenides, not to mention the Philêbus, wherein he breaks down the unity even of his sovereign Idea, which in the Republic governs the Cogitable World, — the Idea of Good.[10]

[10] Plato, Philêbus, pp. 65, 66. See Grote’s Plato, II. xxx. pp. [584, 585].

Both in the Sophistes and in the Parmenides, the leading disputant introduced by Plato is not Sokrates, but Parmenides and another person (unnamed) of the Eleatic school. In both dialogues objections are taken against the Realistic theory elsewhere propounded by Plato, though the objections adduced in the one are quite distinct from those noticed in the other. In the Sophistes, the Eleatic reasoner impugns successfully the theories of two classes of philosophers, one the opposite of the other: first, the Materialists, who recognized no Entia except the Percepta of Sense; next, the Realistic Idealists, who refused to recognize these last as real Entia, or as anything more than transient and mutable Generata or Fientia, while they confined the title of Entia to the Forms, cogitable, incorporeal, eternal, immutable, neither acting on anything, nor acted upon by anything. These persons are called in the Sophistes “Friends of Forms,� and their theory is exactly what we have already cited out of so many other dialogues of Plato, drawing the marked line of separation between Entia and Fientia; between the Immutable, which alone is real and cognizable, and the Mutable, neither real nor cognizable. The Eleate in the Sophistes controverts this Platonic theory, and maintains that among the Universal Entia there are included items mutable as well as immutable; that both are real and both cognizable; that Non-Ens (instead of being set in glaring contrast with Ens, as the totally incogitable against the infallibly cognizable)[11] is one among the multiplicity of Real Forms, meaning only what is different from Ens, and therefore cognizable not less than Ens; that Percepta and Cogitata are alike real, yet both only relatively real, correlating with minds percipient and cogitant. Thus, the reasoning in the Sophistes, while it sets aside the doctrine of Universalia ante rem, does not mark out any other relation between Universals and Particulars (neither in re nor post rem). It discusses chiefly the intercommunion or reciprocal exclusion of Universals with respect to each other; and upon this point, far from representing them as objects of infallible Cognition as contrasted with Opinion, it enrolls both Opinion and Discourse among the Universals themselves, and declares both of them to be readily combinable with Non-Ens and Falsehood. So that we have here error and fallibility recognized in the region of Universals, as well as in that of Particulars.

[11] Plato, Republic, v. pp. 478, 479.

But it is principally in the dialogue Parmenides that Plato discusses with dialectical acuteness the relation of Universals to their Particulars; putting aside the intercommunion (affirmed in the Sophistes) or reciprocal exclusion between one Universal and another, as an hypothesis at least supremely difficult to vindicate, if at all admissible.[12] In the dialogue, Sokrates is introduced in the unusual character of a youthful and ardent aspirant in philosophy, defending the Platonic theory of Ideas as we have seen it proclaimed in the Republic and in the Timæus. The veteran Parmenides appears as the opponent to cross-examine him; and not only impugns the theory by several interrogatories which Sokrates cannot answer, but also intimates that there remain behind other objections equally serious requiring answer. Yet at the same time he declares that, unless the theory be admitted, and unless Universalia ante rem can be sustained as existent, there is no trustworthy cognition attainable, nor any end to be served by philosophical debate. Moreover, Parmenides warns Sokrates that, before he can acquire a mental condition competent to defend the theory, he must go through numerous preliminary dialectical exercises; following out both the affirmative and the negative hypotheses in respect to a great variety of Universals severally. To illustrate the course prescribed, Parmenides gives a long specimen of this dialectic in handling his own doctrine of Ens Unum. He takes first the hypothesis Si Unum est, next the hypothesis Si Unum non est; and he deduces from each, by ingenious subtleties, double and contradictory conclusions. These he sums up at the end, challenging Sokrates to solve the puzzles before affirming his thesis.

[12] Plato, Parmenid. p. 129, E.; with Stallbaum’s Prolegomena to that dialogue, pp. 38-42.

Apart from these antinomies at the close of the dialogue, the cross-examination of Sokrates by Parmenides, in the middle of it, brings out forcibly against the Realistic theory objections such as those urged against it by the Nominalists of the Middle Ages. In the first place, we find that Plato conceived the theory itself differently from Porphyry and the philosophers that wrote subsequently to the Peripatetic criticism. Porphyry and his successors put the question, Whether Genera and Species had a separate existence, apart from the Individuals composing them? Now, the world of Forms (the Cogitable or Ideal world as opposed to the Sensible) is not here conceived by Plato as peopled in the first instance by Genera and Species. Its first tenants are Attributes, and attributes distinctly relative — Likeness, One and Many, Justice, Beauty, Goodness, &c. Sokrates, being asked by Parmenides whether he admits Forms corresponding with these names, answers unhesitatingly in the affirmative. He is next asked whether he admits forms corresponding to the names Man, Fire, Water, &c., and, instead of replying in the affirmative, intimates that he does not feel sure. Lastly, the question is put whether there are Forms corresponding to the names of mean objects — Mud, Hair, Dirt, &c. At first he answers emphatically in the negative, and treats the affirmative as preposterous; there exist no cogitable Hair, &c., but only the object of sense that we so denominate. Yet, on second thoughts, he is not without misgiving that there may be Forms even of these; though the supposition is so repulsive to him that he shakes it off as much as he can. Upon this last expression of sentiment Parmenides comments, ascribing it to the juvenility of Sokrates, and intimating that, when Sokrates has become more deeply imbued with philosophy, he will cease to set aside any of these objects as unworthy.

Here we see that, in the theory of Realism as conceived by Sokrates, the Self-Existent Universals are not Genera and Species as such, but Attributes — not Second Substances or Essences, but Accidents or Attributes, e.g. Quality, Quantity, Relation, &c., to use the language afterwards introduced in the Aristotelian Categories; that no Genera or Species are admitted except with hesitation; and that the mean and undignified among them are scarcely admissible at all. This sentiment of dignity, associated with the Universalia ante rem, and emotional necessity for tracing back particulars to an august and respected origin, is to be noted as a marked and lasting feature of the Realistic creed; and it even passed on to the Universalia in re, as afterwards affirmed by Aristotle. Parmenides here takes exception to it (and so does Plato elsewhere[13]) as inconsistent with faithful adherence to scientific analogy.

[13] Plato, Sophist. p. 227, A. Politikus, p. 266, D.

Parmenides then proceeds (interrogating Sokrates) first to state what the Realistic theory is (Universals apart from Particulars — Particulars apart from Universals, yet having some participation in them, and named after them), next to bring out the difficulties attaching to it. The Universal or Form (he argues) cannot be entire in each of its many separate particulars; nor yet is it divisible, so that a part can be in one particular, and a part in another. For take the Forms Great, Equal, Small; Equal magnitudes are equal because they partake in the Form of Equality. But how can a part of the Form Equality, less than the whole Form, cause the magnitudes to be equal? How can the Form Smallness have any parts less than itself, or how can it be greater than anything?

The Form cannot be divided, nor can it co-exist undivided in each separate particular; accordingly, particulars can have no participation in it at all.

Again, you assume a Form of Greatness, because you see many particular objects, each of which appears to you great; this being the point of resemblance between them. But if you compare the Form of Greatness with any or all of the particular great objects, you will perceive a resemblance between them; this will require you to assume a higher Form, and so on upward without limit.

Sokrates, thus embarrassed, starts the hypothesis that perhaps each of these Forms may be a cogitation, and nothing more, existing only within the mind. How? rejoins Parmenides. Can there be a cogitation of nothing at all? Must not each cogitation have a real cogitatum correlating with it, — in this case, the one Form that is identical throughout many particulars? If you say that particulars partake in the Form, and that each Form is nothing but a cogitation, does not this imply that each particular is itself cogitant?

Again Sokrates urges that the Forms are constant, unalterable, stationary in nature; that particulars resemble them, and participate in them only so far as to resemble them. But (rejoins Parmenides), if particulars resemble the Form, the Form must resemble them; accordingly, you must admit another and higher Form, as the point of resemblance between the Form and its particulars; and so on, upwards.

And farther (continues Parmenides), even when admitting these Universal Forms as self-existent, how can we know anything about them? Forms can correlate only with Forms, Particulars only with Particulars. Thus, if I, an individual man, am master, I correlate with another individual man, who is my servant, and he on his side with me. But the Form of mastership, the Universal self-existent Master, must correlate with the Form of servantship, the Universal Servant. The correlation does not subsist between members of the two different worlds, but between different members of the same world respectively. Thus the Form of Cognition correlates with the Form of Truth; and the Form of each variety of Cognition, with the Form of the corresponding variety of Truth. But we, as individual subjects, do not possess in ourselves the Form of Cognition; our cognition is our own, correlating with such truth as belongs to it and to ourselves. Our cognition cannot reach to the Form of Truth, nor therefore to any other Form; we can know nothing of the Self-good, Self-beautiful, Self-just, &c., even supposing such Forms to exist.

These acute and subtle arguments are nowhere answered by Plato. They remain as unsolved difficulties, embarrassing the Realistic theory; they are reinforced by farther difficulties no less grave, included in the dialectical antinomies of Parmenides at the close of the dialogue, and by an unknown number of others indicated as producible, though not actually produced. Yet still Plato, with full consciousness of these difficulties, asserts unequivocally that, unless the Realistic theory can be sustained, philosophical research is fruitless, and truth cannot be reached. We see thus that the author of the theory has also left on record some of the most forcible arguments against it. It appears from Aristotle (though we do not learn the fact from the Platonic dialogues), that Plato, in his later years, symbolized the Ideas or Forms under the denomination of Ideal Numbers, generated by implication of The One with what he called The Great and Little, or the Indeterminate Dyad. This last, however, is not the programme wherein the Realistic theory stands opposed to Nominalism.

But the dialogue Parmenides, though full of acuteness on the negative side, not only furnishes no counter-theory, but asserts continued allegiance to the Realistic theory, which passes as Plato’s doctrine to his successors. To impugn, forcibly and even unanswerably, a theory at once so sweeping and so little fortified by positive reasons, was what many dialecticians of the age could do. But to do this, and at the same time to construct a counter-theory, was a task requiring higher powers of mind. One, however, of Plato’s disciples and successors was found adequate to the task — Aristotle.

The Realistic Ontology of Plato is founded (as Aristotle himself remarks) upon mistrust and contempt of perception of sense, as bearing entirely on the flux of particulars, which never stand still so as to become objects of knowledge. All reality, and all cognoscibility, were supposed to reside in the separate world of Cogitable Universals (extra rem or ante rem), of which, in some confused manner, particulars were supposed to partake. The Universal, apart from its particulars, was clearly and fully knowable, furnishing propositions constantly and infallibly true: the Universal as manifested in its particulars was never fully knowable, nor could ever become the subject of propositions, except such as were sometimes true and sometimes false.

Against this separation of the Universal from its Particulars, Aristotle entered a strong protest; as well as against the subsidiary hypothesis of a participation of the latter in the former; which participation, when the two had been declared separate, appeared to him not only untenable and uncertified, but unintelligible. His arguments are interesting, as being among the earliest objections known to us against Realism.

1. Realism is a useless multiplication of existences, serving no purpose. Wherever a number of particulars — be they substances, eternal or perishable, or be they qualities, or relations — bear the same name, and thus have a Universal in re predicable of them in common, in every such case Plato assumes a Universal extra rem, or a separate self-existent Form; which explains nothing, and merely doubles the total to be summed up.[14]

[14] Aristot. Metaph. A. ix. p. 990, a. 34; M. iv. p. 1079, a. 2. Here we have the first appearance of the argument that William of Ockham, the Nominalist, put in the foreground of his case against Realism: “Entia non sunt multiplicanda præter necessitatem.�

2. Plato's arguments in support of Realism are either inconclusive, or prove too much. Wherever there is cognition (he argues), there must exist an eternal and unchangeable object of cognition, apart from particulars, which are changeable and perishable. No, replies Aristotle: cognition does not require the Universale extra rem; for the Universale in re, the constant predicate of all the particulars, is sufficient as an object of cognition. Moreover, if the argument were admitted, it would prove that there existed separate Forms or Universals of mere negations; for many of the constant predicates are altogether negative. Again, if Self-existent Universals are to be assumed corresponding to all our cogitations, we must assume Universals of extinct particulars, and even of fictitious particulars, such as hippocentaurs or chimeras; for of these, too, we have phantasms or concepts in our minds.[15]

[15] Aristot. Metaphys. A. ix. p. 990, b. 14; Scholia, p. 565, b. 9, Br.

3. The most subtle disputants on this matter include Relata, among the Universal Ideas or Forms. This is absurd, because these do not constitute any Genus by themselves. These disputants have also urged against the Realistic theory that powerful and unsolved objection, entitled “The Third Man.�[16]

[16] Aristot. Metaph. A. ix. p. 990, b. 15: οἱ ἀκριβέστεροι τῶν λόγων. Both the points here noticed appear in the Parmenides of Plato.

The objection called “The Third Man� is expressed by saying that, if there be a Form of man, resembling individual men, you must farther postulate some higher Form, marking the point of resemblance between the two; and so on higher, without end.

The authenticity of the Platonic Parmenides is disputed by Ueberweg (Untersuchungen über die Echtheit und Zeitfolge der Platonischen Schriften, pp. 176-181), upon the ground (among others) that, while Aristotle never cites the dialogue by its title, nor ever makes probable allusion to it, the Parmenides advances against the theory of the Platonic Ideas this objection of Aristotle’s, known under the name of “The Third Man.� Aristotle (says Ueberweg), if he had known the Parmenides, would not have advanced this objection as his own. We must therefore suppose that the Parmenides was composed later than Aristotle, and borrowed this objection from Aristotle.

In reply to this argument I transcribe the passage of Aristotle (Metaphys. A. ix. p. 990, b. 15) to which Ueberweg himself refers: ἔτι δὲ οἱ ἀκριβέστεροι τῶν λόγων οἱ μὲν τῶν πρός τι ποιοῦσιν ἰδέας, ὧν οὔ φαμεν εἶναι καθ’ αὑτὸ γένος, οἱ δὲ τὸν τρίτον ἄνθρωπον λέγουσιν. The same words (with the exception of φασίν in place of φαμέν) are repeated in M. p. 1079, a. 11.

Now these words plainly indicate that Aristotle does not profess to advance the objection, called ὁ τρίτος ἄνθρωπος, as his own, or as broached by himself. He derives it from what he calls οἱ ἀκριβέστεροι τῶν λόγων. The charge against Aristotle, therefore, of advancing as his own an objection which had already been suggested by Plato himself in the Parmenides, is unfounded. And it is the more unfounded, because Aristotle, in the first book of the Metaphysica, speaks in the language of a Platonist, and considers himself as partly responsible for the doctrine of Ideas: δείκνυμεν, φαμέν, οἰόμεθα, &c. (Alexand. in Schol. p. 563, b. 27, Brand.)

But what are we to understand by these words — οἱ ἀκριβέστεροι τῶν λόγων — from which Aristotle derives the objection? The words refer to certain expositions or arguments (oral, or written, or both) which were within the knowledge of Aristotle, and were of a peculiarly subtle and analytical character. Among them is very probably included the Platonic Parmenides itself, distinguished as it is for extreme subtlety. (See Stallbaum’s Prolegg. pp. 249, 277, 337, who says, “In uno ferè Parmenide idearum doctrina subtilius investigatur.â€�) I see no reason why it should not be included within the fair and reasonable meaning of the words. And such being the case, I cannot go along with Ueberweg (and other critics) who say that Aristotle has not even made an indirect allusion to the Parmenides.

But why did not Aristotle specify the Parmenides directly and by name? I do not know what was his reason. We may feel surprise (as Stallbaum feels, p. 337) that he does not; but, when critics infer from the omission that he did not know the dialogue as a work of Plato, I contest the inference. We see that Alexander, in his elaborate commentary (p. 566, Schol. Brand.) makes no allusion to the Parmenides, though he alludes to Eudêmus, to Diodôrus, Kronus, and to the manner in which the objection called ὁ τρίτος ἄνθρωπος was handled by various Sophists. Now we are fully assured that the Parmenides was acknowledged as a work of Plato, long before the time of Alexander (since it is included in the catalogue of Thrasyllus); yet he, the most instructed of all the commentators, makes no allusion to it. Why he did not, I cannot say, but his omission affords no ground for concluding that he did not know it, or did not trust its authenticity.

4. The supporters of these Self-existent Universals trace them to two principia — The One, and the Indeterminate Dyad; which they affirm to be prior in existence even to the Universals themselves. But this cannot be granted; for the Idea of Number must be logically prior to the Idea of the Dyad; but the Idea of Number is relative, and the Relative can never be prior to the Absolute or Self-existent.

5. If we grant that, wherever there is one constant predicate belonging to many particulars, or wherever there is stable and trustworthy cognition, in all such cases a Self-existent Universal Correlate extra rem is to be assumed, we shall find that this applies not merely to Substances or Essences, but also to the other Categories — Quality, Quantity, Relation, &c. But hereby we exclude the possibility of participation in them by Particulars; since from such participation the Particular derives its Substance or Essence alone, not its accidental predicates. Thus the Self-existent Universal Dyad is eternal: but a particular pair, which derives its essential property of doubleness from partaking in this Universal Dyad, does not at the same time partake of eternity, unless by accident. Accordingly, there are no Universal Ideas, except of Substances or Essences: the common name, when applied to the world of sense and to that of cogitation, signifies the same thing — Substance or Essence. It is unmeaning to talk of anything else as signified — any other predicate common to many. Well then, if the Form of the Universals and the Form of those Particulars that participate in the Universals be the same, we shall have something common to both the one and the other, so that the objection called “The Third Man� will become applicable, and a higher Form must be postulated. But, if the Form of the Universals and the Form of the participating Particulars, be not identical, then the same name, as signifying both, will be used equivocally; just as if you applied the same denomination man to Kallias and to a piece of wood, without any common property to warrant it.

6. But the greatest difficulty of all is to understand how these Cogitable Universals, not being causes of any change or movement, contribute in any way to the objects of sense, either to the eternal or to the perishable; or how they assist us towards the knowledge thereof, being not in them, and therefore not their substance or essence; or how they stand in any real relation to their participants, being not immanent therein. Particulars certainly do not proceed from these Universals, in any intelligible sense. To say that the Universals are archetypes, and that Particulars partake in them, is unmeaning, and mere poetic metaphor. For where is the working force to mould them in conformity with the Universals? Any one thing may be like, or may become like, to any other particular thing, by accident, or without any regular antecedent cause to produce such assimilation. The same particular substance, moreover, will have not one universal archetype only, but several. Thus, the same individual man will have not only the Self-animal and the Self-biped, but also the Self-man, as archetype. Then again, there will be universal archetypes, not merely for particular sensible objects, but also for Universals themselves; thus the genus will be an archetype for its various species; so that the same which is now archetype will, under other circumstances, be copy.

7. Furthermore, it seems impossible that what is Substance or Essence can be separate from that whereof it is the substance or essence. How then can the Universals, if they be the essences of sensible things, have any existence apart from those sensible things? Plato tells us in the Phædon, that the Forms or Universals are the causes why particulars both exist at all, and come into such or such modes of existence. But even if we assume Universals as existing, still the Particulars participant therein will not come into being, unless there be some efficient cause to produce movement; moreover, many other things come into being, though there be no Universals correlating therewith, e.g. a house, or a ring. The same causes that were sufficient to bring these last into being, will be sufficient to bring all particulars into being, without assuming any Universals extra rem at all.

8. Again, if the Universals or Forms are Numbers, how can they ever be causes? Even if we suppose Particulars to be Numbers also, how can one set of Numbers be causes to the others? There can be no such causal influence, even if one set be eternal, and the other perishable.[17]

[17] Aristot. Metaph. A. p. 991, b. 13. Several other objections are made by Aristotle against that variety of the Platonic theory wherein the Ideas were commuted into Ideal Numbers. These objections do not belong to the controversy of Realism against Nominalism.

Out of the many objections raised by Aristotle against Plato, we have selected such as bear principally upon the theory of Realism; that is, upon the theory of Universalia ante rem or extra rem — self-existent, archetypal, cogitable substances, in which Particulars faintly participate. The objections are not superior in acuteness, and they are decidedly inferior, in clearness of enunciation, to those that Plato himself produces in the Parmenides. Moreover, several of them are founded upon Aristotle’s point of view, and would have failed to convince Plato. The great merit of Aristotle is, that he went beyond the negative of the Parmenides, asserted this new point of view of his own, and formulated it into a counter-theory. He rejected altogether the separate and exclusive reality which Plato had claimed for his Absolutes of the cogitable world, as well as the derivative and unreal semblance that alone Plato accorded to the sensible world. Without denying the distinction of the two, as conceivable and nameable, he maintained that truth and cognition required that they should be looked at in implication with each other. And he went even a step farther, in antithesis to Plato, by reversing the order of the two. Instead of considering the Cogitable Universals alone as real and complete in themselves, and the Sensible Particulars as degenerate and confused semblances of them, he placed complete reality in the Sensible Particulars alone,[18] and treated the Cogitable Universals as contributory appendages thereto; some being essential, others non-essential, but all of them relative, and none of them independent integers. His philosophy was a complete revolution as compared with Parmenides and Plato; a revolution, too, the more calculated to last, because he embodied it in an elaborate and original theory of Logic, Metaphysics, and Ontology. He was the first philosopher that, besides recognizing the equivocal character of those general terms whereon speculative debate chiefly turns, endeavoured methodically to set out and compare the different meanings of each term, and their relations to each other.

[18] Aristotle takes pains to vindicate against both Plato and the Herakleiteans the dignity of the Sensible World. They that depreciate sensible objects as perpetually changing, unstable, and unknowable, make the mistake (he observes) of confining their attention to the sublunary interior of the Kosmos, where, indeed, generation and destruction largely prevail. But this is only a small portion of the entire Kosmos. In the largest portion — the visible, celestial, superlunary regions — there is no generation or destruction at all, nothing but permanence and uniformity. In appreciating the sensible world (Aristotle says) philosophers ought to pardon the shortcomings of the smaller portion on account of the excellences of the larger; and not condemn both together on account of the smaller (Metaphys. Γ. v. p. 1010, a. 30).

However much the Ontology of Aristotle may fail to satisfy modern exigencies, still, as compared with the Platonic Realism, it was a considerable improvement. Instead of adopting Ens as a self-explaining term, contrasted with the Generated and Perishable (the doctrine of Plato in the Republic, Phædon, and Timæus), he discriminates several distinct meanings of Ens; a discrimination not always usefully pursued, but tending in the main towards a better theory. The distinction between Ens potential, and Ens actual, does not belong directly to the question between Realism and Nominalism, yet it is a portion of that philosophical revolution wrought by Aristotle against Plato — displacement of the seat of reality, and transfer of it from the Cogitable Universal to the Sensible Particular. The direct enunciation of this change is contained in his distinction of Ens into Fundamental and Concomitant (συμβεβηκός), and his still greater refinement on the same principle by enumerating the ten varieties of Ens called Categories or Predicaments.[19] He will not allow Ens (nor Unum) to be a genus, partible into species: he recognizes it only as a word of many analogous meanings, one of them principal and fundamental, the rest derivative and subordinate thereto, each in its own manner. Aristotle thus establishes a graduated scale of Entia, each having its own value and position, and its own mode of connexion with the common centre. That common centre Aristotle declared to be of necessity some individual object — Hoc Aliquid, That Man, This Horse, &c. This was the common subject, to which all the other Entia belonged as predicates, and without which none of them had any reality. We here fall into the language of Logic, the first theory of which we owe to Aristotle. His ontological classification was adapted to that theory.

[19] In enumerating the Ten Categories, Aristotle takes his departure from the Proposition — Homo currit — Homo vincit. He assumes a particular individual as subject; and he distributes, under ten general heads, all the information that can be asked or given about that subject — all the predicates that can be affirmed or denied thereof. [See [Ch. iii.], especially [p. 73], seq.]

As we are here concerned only with the different ways of conceiving the relation between the Particular and the Universal, we are not called on to criticize the well-known decuple enumeration of Categories or Predicaments given by Aristotle, both in his treatise called by that name and elsewhere. For our purpose it is enough to point out that the particular sensible Hoc Aliquid is declared to be the ultimate subject, to which all Universals attach, as determinants or accompaniments; and that, if this condition be wanting, the unattached Universal cannot rank among complete Entia. The subject or First Substance, which can never become a predicate, is established as the indispensable ultimate subject for all predicates; if that disappears, all predicates disappear along with it. The Particular thus becomes the keystone of the arch whereon all Universals rest. Aristotle is indeed careful to point out a gradation in these predicates: some are essential to the subject, and thus approach so near to the First Substance that he calls them Second Substances; others, and the most in number, are not thus essential; these last are Concomitants or Accidents, and some of them fall so much short of complete Entity that he describes them as near to Non-Entia.[20] But all of them, essential or unessential, are alike constituents or appendages of the First Substance or Particular Subject, and have no reality in any other character.

[20] Aristot. Metaph. E. p. 1026, b. 21: φαίνετας γάρ τό συμβεβηκὸς ἐγγύς τι τοῦ μὴ ὄντος.

There cannot be a stronger illustration of the difference between the Platonic and the Aristotelian point of view, than the fact that Plato applies the same designation to all particular objects of sense — that they are only midway between Entia and Non-Entia (Republic, v. pp. 478-479).

We thus have the counter-theory of Aristotle against the Platonic Realism. Instead of separate Universal Substances, containing in themselves full reality, and forfeiting much of that reality when they faded down into the shadowy copies called Particulars, he inverts the Platonic order, announces full reality to be the privilege of the Particular Sensible, and confines the function of the Universal to that of a predicate, in or along with the Particular. There is no doctrine that he protests against more frequently than the ascribing of separate reality to the Universal. The tendency to do this, he signalizes as a natural but unfortunate illusion, lessening the beneficial efficacy of universal demonstrative reasoning.[21] And he declares it to be a corollary from this view of the Particular as indispensable subject along with the Universal as its predicate — That the first principles of Demonstration in all the separate theoretical sciences must be obtained by Induction from particulars: first by impressions of sense preserved in the memory; then by multiplied remembrances enlarged into one experience; lastly, by many experiences generalized into one principle by the Noûs.[22]

[21] Aristot. Analyt. Poster. I. xxiv. p. 85, a. 31, b. 19.

[22] See the concluding chapter of the Analytica Posteriora.

A similar doctrine is stated by Plato in the Phædon (p. 96, B) as one among the intellectual phases that Sokrates had passed through in the course of his life, without continuing in them.

While Aristotle thus declares Induction to be the source from whence Demonstration in these separate sciences draws its first principles, we must at the same time acknowledge that his manner of treating Science is not always conformable to this declaration, and that he often seems to forget Induction altogether. This is the case not only in his First Philosophy, or Metaphysics, but also in his Physics. He there professes to trace out what he calls beginnings, causes, elements, &c., and he analyses most of the highest generalities. Yet still these analytical enquiries (whatever be their value) are usually, if not always, kept in subordination to the counter-theory that he had set up against the Platonic Realism. Complete reality resides (he constantly repeats) only in the particular sensible substances and sensible facts or movements that compose the aggregate Kosmos: which is not generated, but eternal, both as to substance and as to movement. If these sensible substances disappear, nothing remains. The beginnings and causes exist only relatively to these particulars. Form, Matter, Privation, are not real Beings, antecedent to the Kosmos, and pre-existent generators of the substances constituting the Kosmos; they are logical fragments or factors, obtained by mental analysis and comparison, assisting to methodize our philosophical point of view or conception of those substances, but incapable of being understood, and having no value of their own, apart from the substances. Some such logical analysis (that of Aristotle or some other) is an indispensable condition even of the most strictly inductive philosophy.

There are some portions of the writings of Aristotle (especially the third book De Animâ and the twelfth book of the Metaphysica) where he appears to lose sight of the limit here indicated; but, with few exceptions, we find him constantly remembering, and often repeating, the great truth formulated in his Categories: that full or substantive reality resides only in the Hoc Aliquid, with its predicates implicated with it, and that even the highest of these predicates (Second Substances) have no reality apart from some one of their particulars. We must recollect that, though Aristotle denies to the predicates a separate reality, he recognizes in them an adjective reality, as accompaniments and determinants: he contemplates all the ten Categories as distinct varieties of existence.[23] This is sufficient as a basis for abstraction, whereby we can name them and reason upon them as distinct objects of thought or points of view, although none of them come into reality except as implicated with a sensible particular. Of such reasoning Aristotle’s First Philosophy chiefly consists; and he introduces peculiar phrases to describe this distinction of reason between two different points of view, where the real object spoken of is one and the same. The frequency of the occasions taken to point out that distinction marks his anxiety to keep the First Philosophy in harmony with the theory of Reality announced in his Categories.

[23] Aristot. Metaphys. Δ. p. 1017, a. 23: ὀσαχῶς γὰρ λέγεται (τὰ σχήματα τῆς κατηγορίας), τοσαυταχῶς τὸ εἶναι σημαίνει.

The Categories of Aristotle appear to have become more widely known than any other part of his philosophy. They were much discussed by the sects coming after him; and, even when not adopted, were present to speculative minds as a scheme to be amended.[24] Most of the arguments turned upon the nine later Categories: it was debated whether these were properly enumerated and discriminated, and whether the enumeration as a whole was exhaustive.

[24] This is the just remark of Trendelenburg, Kategorienlehre, p. 217.

With these details, however, the question between Realism and its counter-theory (whether Conceptualism or Nominalism) is not materially concerned. The standard against Realism was raised by Aristotle in the First Category, when he proclaimed the Hoc Aliquid to be the only complete Ens, and the Universal to exist only along with it as a predicate, being nothing in itself apart; and when he enumerated Quality as one among the predicates, and nothing beyond. In the Platonic Realism (Phædon, Timæus, Parmenides) what Aristotle called Quality was the highest and most incontestable among all Substances — the Good, the Beautiful, the Just, &c.; what Aristotle called Second Substance was also Substance in the Platonic Realism, though not so incontestably; but what Aristotle called First Substance was in the Platonic Realism no Substance at all, but only one among a multitude of confused and transient shadows. It is in the First and Third Categories that the capital antithesis of Aristotle against the Platonic Realism is contained. As far as that antithesis is concerned, it matters little whether the aggregate of predicates be subdivided under nine general heads (Categories) or under three.

In the century succeeding Aristotle, the Stoic philosophers altered his Categories, and drew up a new list of their own, containing only four distinct heads instead of ten. We have no record or explanation of the Stoic Categories from any of their authors; so that we are compelled to accept the list on secondary authority, from the comments of critics, mostly opponents. But, as far as we can make out, they retained in their First Category the capital feature of Aristotle’s First Category — the primacy of the First Substance or Hoc Aliquid and its exclusive privilege of imparting reality to all the other Categories. Indeed, the Stoics seem not only to have retained this characteristic, but to have exaggerated it. They did not recognize so close an approach of the Universal to the Particular, as is implied by giving to it a second place in the same Category, and calling it Second Substance. The First Category of the Stoics (Something or Subject) included only particular substances; all Universals were by them ranked in the other Categories, being regarded as negations of substances, and designated by the term Non-Somethings — Non-Substances.[25]

[25] Prantl, Gesch. der Logik, I. vi. p. 420: οὔτινα τἀκοινὰ παρ’ αὐτοῖς λέγεται. &c.

The Neo-Platonist Plotinus, in the third century after the Christian era, agreed with the Stoics (though looking from the opposite point of view) in disapproving Aristotle’s arrangement of Second Substance in the same Category with First Substance.[26] He criticizes at some length both the Aristotelian list of Categories, and the Stoic list; but he falls back into the Platonic and even the Parmenidean point of view. His capital distinction is between Cogitables and Sensibles. The Cogitables are in his view the most real (i.e. the Aristotelian Second Substance is more real than the First); among them the highest, Unum or Bonum, is the grand fountain and sovereign of all the rest. Plotinus thus departed altogether from the Aristotelian Categories, and revived the Platonic or Parmenidean Realism; yet not without some Aristotelian modifications. But it is remarkable that in this departure his devoted friend and scholar Porphyry did not follow him. Porphyry not only composed an Introduction to the Categories of Aristotle, but also vindicated them at great length, in a separate commentary, against the censures of Plotinus; Dexippus, Jamblichus, and Simplikius, followed in the same track.[27] Still, though Porphyry stood forward both as admirer and champion of the Aristotelian Categories, he did not consider that the question raised by the First Category of Aristotle against the Platonic Realism was finally decided. This is sufficiently proved by the three problems cited above out of the Introduction of Porphyry; where he proclaims it to be a deep and difficult enquiry, whether Genera and Species had not a real substantive existence apart from the individuals composing them. Aristotle, both in the Categories and in many other places, had declared his opinion distinctly in the negative against Plato; but Porphyry had not made up his mind between the two, though he insists, in language very Aristotelian, on the distinction between First and Second Substance.[28]

[26] Plotinus, Ennead. vi. 1, 2.

[27] Simplikius, Schol. in Aristotel. Categ. p. 40, a, b, Brandis.

[28] Prantl, Geschichte der Logik, I. xi. p. 634, n. 69. Upon this account Prantl finds Porphyry guilty of “empiricism in its extreme crudeness� — “jene äusserste Rohheit des Empirismus.�

Through the translations and manuals of Boëthius and others, the Categories of Aristotle were transmitted to the Latin Churchmen, and continued to be read even through the darkest ages, when the Analytica and the Topica were unknown or neglected. The Aristotelian discrimination between First and Second Substance was thus always kept in sight, and Boëthius treated it much in the same manner as Porphyry had done before him.[29] Alcuin, Rhabanus Maurus, and Eric of Auxerre,[30] in the eighth and ninth centuries, repeated what they found in Boëthius, and upheld the Aristotelian tradition unimpaired. But Scotus Erigena (d. 880 A.D.) took an entirely opposite view, and reverted to the Platonic traditions, though with a large admixture of Aristotelian ideas. He was a Christian Platonist, blending the transcendentalism of Plato and Plotinus with theological dogmatic influences (derived from the Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita and others) and verging somewhat even towards Pantheism. Scotus Erigena revived the doctrine of Cogitable Universalia extra rem and ante rem. He declared express opposition to the arrangement of the First Aristotelian Category, whereby the individual was put first, in the character of subject; the Universal second, in the character only of predicate; complete reality belonging to the two in conjunction. Scotus maintained that the Cogitable or Incorporeal Universal was the first, the true and complete real; from whence the sensible individuals were secondary, incomplete, multiple, derivatives.[31] But, though he thus adopts and enforces the Platonic theory of Universals ante rem and extra rem, he does not think himself obliged to deny that Universals may be in re also.

[29] Prantl, Geschichte der Logik, I. xii. p. 685; Trendelenburg, Kategorienlehre, p. 245.

[30] Ueberweg, Geschichte der Philosophie der scholastischen Zeit, p. 13.

[31] Prantl, Gesch. der Logik, II. xiii, pp. 29-35.

The contradiction of the Aristotelian traditions, so far as concerns the First Category, thus proclaimed by Scotus Erigena, appears to have provoked considerable opposition among his immediate successors. Nevertheless he also obtained partizans. Remigius of Auxerre and others not only defended the Platonic Realism, but carried it as far as Plato himself had done; affirming that not merely Universal Substances, but also Universal Accidents, had a real separate existence, apart from and anterior to individuals.[32] The controversy for and against the Platonic Realism was thus distinctly launched in the schools of the Middle Ages. It was upheld both as a philosophical revival, and as theologically orthodox, entitled to supersede the traditional counter-theory of Aristotle.

[32] Prantl, Gesch. der Logik, II. xiii, pp. 44, 45-47.

[II.]

FIRST PRINCIPLES.

A. — Sir William Hamilton on Aristotle’s Doctrine.

In reading attentively Hamilton’s “Dissertation on the Philosophy of Common Sense� (Note A, annexed to ed. of Reid’s Works, p. 742, seq.), I find it difficult to seize accurately what he means by the term. It seems to me that he unsays in one passage what he says in another; and that what he tells us (p. 750, b.), viz. that “philosophers have rarely scrupled, on the one hand, quietly to supersede the data of consciousness, so often as these did not fall in with their pre-adopted opinions; and on the other clamorously to appeal to them as irrecusable truths, so often as they could allege them in corroboration of their own, or in refutation of a hostile, doctrine� — is illustrated by his own practice.

On page 752, a., he compares Common Sense to Common Law, and regards it as consisting in certain elementary feelings and beliefs, which, though in possession of all, can only be elicited and declared by philosophers, who declare it very differently. This comparison, however, sets aside unassisted Common Sense as an available authority. To make it so we must couple with it the same supplement that Common Law requires; that is, we must agree on some one philosopher as authoritative exponent of Common Sense. The Common Law of one country is different from that of another. Even in the same country, it is differently construed and set forth by different witnesses, advocates, and judges. In each country, a supreme tribunal is appointed to decide between these versions and to declare the law. The analogy goes farther than Hamilton wishes.

On the same page, he remarks:— “In saying (to use the words of Aristotle) simply and without qualification, that this or that is a known truth, we do not mean that it is in fact recognized by all, but only by such as are of a sound understanding; just as, in saying absolutely that a thing is wholesome, we must be held to mean, to such as are of a hale constitution.� The passage of Aristotle’s Topica here noticed will be found to have a different bearing from that which Hamilton gives it.

Aristotle is laying down (Topica, VI. iv. p. 141, a. 23-p. 142, a. 16) the various lines of argument which may be followed out, when you are testing in dialectical debate a definition given or admitted by the opponent. There cannot be more than one definition of the same thing: the definition ought to declare the essence of the thing, which can only be done by means of priora and notiora. But notiora admits of two meanings: (1) notiora simpliciter; (2) notiora nobis or singulis hominibus. Under the first head, that which is prius is absolutely more knowable than that which is posterius; thus, a point more than a line, a line more than a plane, a plane more than a solid. But under the second head this order is often reversed: to most men the solid (as falling more under sense) is more knowable than the plane, the plane than the line, the line than the point. The first (notiora simpliciter) is the truly scientific order, suited to superior and accurate minds, employed in teaching, learning, and demonstration (p. 141, a. 29: καθάπερ ἐν ταῖς ἀποδείξεσιν, οὕτω γὰρ πᾶσα διδασκαλία καὶ μάθησις ἔχει, — b. 16: ἐπιστημονικώτερον γὰρ τὸ τοιοῦτόν ἐστιν). The second (notiora nobis) is adapted to ordinary minds, who cannot endure regular teaching, nor understand a definition founded on the first order. But definitions founded on the second alone (Aristotle says) are not satisfactory, nor do they reveal the true essence of the thing defined: there can be no satisfactory definition unless what is notius simpliciter coincides with what is notius nobis (p. 141, b. 24). He then proceeds to explain what is meant by notius simpliciter; and this is the passage quoted by Hamilton. After having said that the notiora nobis are not fixed and uniform, but vary with different individuals, and even in the same individual at different times, he goes on: “It is plain therefore that we ought not to define by such characteristics as these (the notiora nobis), but by the notiora simpliciter: for it is only in this way that we can obtain a definition one and the same at all times. Perhaps, too, the notius simpliciter is not that which is knowable to all, but that which is knowable to those who are well trained in their intelligence; just as the absolutely wholesome is that which is wholesome to those who are well constituted in their bodiesâ€� (ἴσως δὲ καὶ τὸ ἁπλῶς γνώριμον οὐ τὸ πᾶσι γνώριμόν ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ τὸ τοῖς εὖ διακειμένοις τὴν διάνοιαν, καθάπερ καὶ τὸ ἁπλῶς ὑγιεινὸν τὸ τοῖς εὖ ἔχουσι τὸ σῶμα — p. 142, a. 9).

Hamilton’s translation misses the point of Aristotle, who here repeats what he frequently also declares in other parts of his writings (see Analyt. Post. I. i. p. 71, b. 33), namely, the contrast and antithesis between notius simpliciter (or naturâ) and notius nobis. This is a technical distinction of his own, which he had explained very fully in the page preceding the words translated by Hamilton; and the words are intended as a supplementary caution, to guard against a possible misunderstanding of the phrase. Hamilton’s words — “saying simply, and without qualification, that this or that is a known truth,â€� do not convey Aristotle’s meaning at all; again, the words — “such as are of a sound understanding,â€� fail equally in rendering what Aristotle means by τοῖς εὖ διακειμένοις τὴν διάνοιαν. Aristotle tells us distinctly (in the preceding part of the paragraph) that he intends to contrast the few minds scientific or prepared for scientific discipline, with the many minds unscientific or unprepared for such discipline: he does not intend to contrast “men of sound understandingâ€� with men “not of sound understanding.â€�

It appears to me that Hamilton has here taken a passage away from its genuine sense in the Aristotelian context, and has pressed it into his service to illustrate a view of his own, foreign to that of Aristotle. He has done the like with some other passages, to which I will now advert.

What he says, pp. 764-766, about Aristotle’s use of the term ἀξίωμα is quite opposed to the words of Aristotle himself, who plainly certifies it as being already in his time a technical term with mathematicians (Met. Γ. p. 1005, a. 20). On p. 766, a., Hamilton says that the word ἀξίωμα is not used in any work extant prior to Aristotle in a logical sense. This is true as to any work remaining to us, but Aristotle himself talks of previous philosophers or reasoners who had so used it; thus he speaks of κατὰ τὸ Ζήνωνος ἀξίωμα (Metaph. B. p. 1001, b. 7) — “according to the assumption laid down by Zeno as authoritative.â€� Of this passage Hamilton takes no notice: he only refers to the Topica, intimating a doubt (in my judgment groundless and certainly professed by few modern critics, if any) whether the Topica is a genuine work of Aristotle. In the time of Aristotle, various mathematical teachers laid down Axioms, such as, If equals be taken from equals, the remainders will be equal; In all propositions, either the affirmative or the negative must be true, &c. But the case of Zeno shows us that other philosophers also laid down Axioms of their own, which were not universally accepted by others. What Hamilton here says, about Axioms, has little pertinence as a contribution to the Philosophy of Common Sense.

Again, Hamilton says, p. 770, a.: “The native contributions by the mind itself to our concrete cognitions have, prior to their elicitation into consciousness through experience, only a potential, and in actual experience only an applied, engaged, or implicate, existence.�

These words narrow the line of distinction between the two opposite schools so much, that I cannot see where it is drawn. Every germ has in it the potentialities of that which it will afterwards become. No one disputes that a baby just born has mental potentialities not possessed by a puppy, a calf, or an acorn. What is the difference between cognitions elicited through experience, and cognitions derived from experience? To those who hold the doctrine of Relativity, both our impressions of sense and our mental activities (such as memory, discrimination, comparison, abstraction, &c.) are alike indispensable to experience. The difference, so far as I can see, between Hamilton and the Inductive School, is not so much about the process whereby cognitions are acquired, as about the mode of testing and measuring the authority of those cognitions when acquired. Hamilton will not deny that many of the cognitions which he describes as elicited by experience are untrue or exaggerated. How are we to discriminate these from the true? The Inductive School would reply: “By the test of experience, and by that alone: if these cognitions, which have been elicited in your mind through experience, are refuted or not confirmed when tested by subsequent experience carefully watched and selected for the purpose, they are not true or trustworthy cognitions.� But Hamilton would not concur in this answer: he would say that the cognitions, though elicited through experience, did not derive their authority or trustworthiness from experience, but were binding and authoritative in themselves, whether confirmed by experience or not. In speaking about Axioms, p. 764, b., he says: “Aristotle limited� (this is not correct: Aristotle did not limit as here affirmed) “the expression Axiom to those judgments which, on occasion of experience, arise naturally and necessarily in the conscious mind, and which are therefore virtually prior to experience.� That they are not prior to experience in order of time, is admitted in the words just cited from Hamilton himself: he means, therefore, prior in logical authority — carrying with them the quality of necessity, even though experience may afford no confirmation of them. This is what he says, on pp. 753-754, about causality: metaphysical causality must be believed, as a necessary and subjective law of the observer — though there is no warrant for it in experience.

The question between Hamilton and the Inductive School, I repeat, is not so much about the psychological genesis of beliefs, as about the test for distinguishing true from false or uncertified beliefs, among those beliefs which arise, often and usually, in the minds of most men. Is there any valid test other than experience itself, as intentionally varied by experiments and interpreted by careful Induction? Are we ever warranted in affirming what transcends experience, except to the extent to which the inference from Induction (from some to all) always transcends actual observation? This seems to me the real question at issue between the contending schools of Metaphysics. Hamilton, while he rejects experience as the test, furnishes no other test whereby we can discriminate the erroneous beliefs “which are elicited into consciousness through experience,� from the true beliefs which are elicited in like manner.

In discussing the doctrine which Hamilton and other philosophers entitle Common Sense (in the metaphysical import which they assign to it), it is proper to say a few words on the legitimate meaning of this phrase, before it was pressed into service by a particular school of metaphysicians. Every one who lives through childhood and boyhood up to man’s estate will unavoidably acquire a certain amount of knowledge and certain habits of believing, feeling, judging, &c.; differing materially in different ages and countries, and varying to a less degree in different individuals of the same age and country, yet still including more or less which is common to the large majority. That fire burns; that water quenches thirst and drowns; that the sun gives light and heat; that animals are all mortal and cannot live long without nourishment, — these and many other beliefs are not possessed by a very young child, but are acquired by every man as he grows up, though he cannot remember how or when he learnt them. The sum total of the beliefs thus acquired, by the impressions and influences under which every growing mind might pass, constitutes the Common Sense of a particular age and country. A person wanting in any of them would be considered, by the majority of the inhabitants, as deficient in Common Sense. If I meet an adult stranger, I presume as a matter of course that he has acquired them, and I talk to him accordingly. I also presume (being in England) that he has learnt the language of the country; and that he is familiar with the forms of English speech whereby such beliefs and their correlative disbeliefs are enunciated. If I affirm to him any one of these beliefs, he assents to it at once: it appears to him self-evident — that is, requiring no farther or extraneous evidence to support it. Though it appears to him self-evident, however, the proposition may possibly be false. To a Greek of the Aristotelian age, no proposition could appear more self-evident than that of the earth being at rest. No term can be more thoroughly relative than the term self-evident: that which appears so to one man, will often not appear so to another, and may sometimes appear altogether untrue.

But, if we suppose an individual to whom one of these beliefs does not appear self-evident, and who requires proof, he will not be satisfied to be told that every one else believes it, and that it is a dictate of Common Sense. He probably knows that already, and yet, nevertheless, he is not convinced. Aristarchus of Samos was told doubtless, often enough, that the doctrine of the earth being at rest was the plain verdict of Common Sense; but he did not the less controvert it. You must produce the independent proof which the recusant demands; and, if your doctrine is true and trustworthy, such proof can be produced. I will here remark that, in so far as Common Sense can properly be quoted as an authority or presumptive authority, it is such only in the sense proclaimed by Herakleitus and La Mennais, as cited by Hamilton, pp. 770-771: “as a magazine of ready-fabricated dogmas.� Hamilton finds fault with both of them; but it appears to me that they rightly interpret, and that he wrongly interprets, what Common Sense, as generally understood, is; and moreover, that most of the other authorities whom he himself quotes understand the phrase as these two understand it. Common Sense is “a magazine of ready-fabricated dogmas,� as La Mennais (see p. 771, a.) considers it — dogmas assumed as self-evident, and as requiring no proof. It only becomes “a source of elementary truths� when analysed and remodelled by philosophers. Now philosophers differ much in their mode of analysing it (as Hamilton himself declares emphatically), and bring out of it different elementary truths; each of them professing to follow Common Sense and quoting Common Sense as warranty. It is plain that Common Sense is no authority for either one of two discrepant modes of analysis. Its authority counts for those dogmas out of which the analysis is made, in so far as Common Sense is authoritative at all.

Hamilton cites or indicates thirteen different Aristotelian passages, in order to support his view that Aristotle is to be numbered among the champions of authoritative Common Sense. It will be seen that most of the passages prove nothing, and that only one proves much, in favour of that view. I shall touch upon them seriatim.

(a) “First truths are such as are believed, not through aught else� (say rather through other truths) “but through themselves alone. For, in regard to the first principles of science, we ought not to require the reason Why; for each such principle behoves to be itself a belief in and of itself.�[1] After the words reason Why, Hamilton inserts the following additional words of his own in brackets — “but only the fact That they are given.�

[1] Aristot. Topic. I. i. p. 100, a. 30; Hamilton’s Reid, p. 772, a.

I demur to the words in brackets, as implying an hypothesis not contained in Aristotle; who says only that the truth affirmed by the teacher must be such as the learner is prepared to believe without asking any questions. It may be an analytical truth (sensu Kantiano), in which the predicate asserts only what the learner knows to be already contained in the definition of the subject. It may be a synthetical truth; yet asserting only what he is familiar with by constant, early, uncontradicted, obvious, experience. In either case, he is prepared to believe it at once; and thus the conditions of a First Scientific Truth are satisfied, as here described by Aristotle; who says nothing about the truth being given.

The next passage cited (b) is from the Analytica Posteriora (the reference is printed by mistake Priora). According to Hamilton, Aristotle says:—“We assert not only that science does exist, but also that there is given a certain beginning or principle of science, in so far as (or, on another interpretation of the term ᾗ — by which) we recognize the import of the terms.â€�[2] I think Hamilton has not exactly rendered the sense of the original when he translates it — “we recognize the import of the terms;â€� and he proceeds to add expository words of his own which carry us still farther away from what I understand in Aristotle. If Hamilton’s rendering is correct, all the principia of Science would be analytical propositions (sensu Kantiano), which I do not think that Aristotle intended to affirm or imply. In the last chapter of the Analytica Posteriora, Aristotle not only affirmed that there were First Principles of Science, but described at length the inductive process by which we reached them: referring them ultimately to the cognizance and approval of Noûs or Intellect. What Aristotle means is, that, in ascending from propositions of lower to propositions of higher universality, we know when we have reached the extreme term of ascent; and this forms the principium.

[2] Aristot. Anal. Post. I. iii. p. 72, b. 23: ταῦτά τ’ οὖν οὕτω λέγομεν, καὶ οὐ μόνον ἐπιστήμην ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀρχὴν ἐπιστήμης εἶναί τινά φαμεν, ᾗ τοὺς ὅρους γνωρίζομεν.

Neither Philoponus, nor Buhle, nor M. Barthélemy St.-Hilaire, translate the words τοὺς ὅρους γνωρίζομεν in the same way as Sir W. Hamilton. It rather seems to me that the words mean terms or limits of regress, which coincides with the paraphrase of Philoponus: τούτῳ γὰρ (τῷ νῷ) τὰς ἀρχοειδεστάτας καὶ οἱονεὶ ὅρους οὔσας γνωρίζομεν (Schol. p. 201, b. 13, Br.), as well as substantially with the note of M. St.-Hilaire.

Sir W. Hamilton next gives us another passage (c) from the Analytica Posteriora, in which Aristotle affirms that the First Principles must be believed in a superlative degree, because we know and believe all secondary truths through them:[3] a doctrine which appears to me to require both comment and limitation; but about which I say nothing, because, even granting it to be true, I do not see how it assists the purpose — to prove that Aristotle is the champion of authoritative Common Sense. Nor do I find any greater proof in another passage previously (p. 764, b.) produced from Aristotle: “Of the immediate principles of syllogism, that which cannot be demonstrated, but which it is not necessary to possess as the pre-requisite of all learning, I call Thesis: and that Axiom, which he who would learn aught, must himself bring (and not receive from his instructor). For some such principles there are; and it is to these that we are accustomed to apply the name.�[4] Such principles there doubtless are, which the learner must bring with him; but Aristotle does not assert, much less prove, that they are intuitions given by authoritative Common Sense. Nay, in the passage cited in my former page, he both asserted and proved that the principia of Science were raised from Sense by Induction. The learner, when he comes to be taught, must bring some of these principia with him, if he is to learn Science from his teacher; just as he must also bring with him a knowledge of the language, of the structure of sentences, of the forms for affirmation and denial, &c., and various other requisites. A recruit, when first coming to be drilled, must bring with him a certain power of walking and of making other movements of the limbs. But these pre-requisites, on the part of the learner as well as on that of the recruit, are not intuitive products or inspirations of the mind: they are acquirements made by long and irksome experience, though often forgotten in its details. We are not to reason upon the learner or the recruit as if they were children just born.

[3] Analyt. Poster. I. ii. p. 72, a. 27.

[4] Analyt. Poster. I. iii. p. 72, a. 17: τοῦτο γὰρ μάλιστ’ ἐπὶ τοῖς τοιούτοις εἰώθαμεν ὄνομα λέγειν — “we are for the most part accustomed:â€� Hamilton has not translated the word μάλιστα, which it would have been better for him to do, because he founds upon the passage an argument to prove that Aristotle limited in a certain way the sense of the word Axiom.

The passages out of the Rhetorica and the Metaphysica (cited on p. 772, b., and marked d and e) are hardly worth notice. But that which immediately follows (marked f), out of the Nikomachean Ethica, is the most pertinent of all that are produced. Hamilton writes:— “Arguing against a paradox of certain Platonists in regard to the Pleasurable, Aristotle says — ‘But they who oppose themselves to Eudoxus, as if what all nature desiderates were not a good, talk idly. For what appears to all, that we affirm to be; and he who would subvert this belief, will himself assuredly advance nothing more deserving of credit.’[5] Compare also L. vii. c. 13 (14). In his paraphrase of the above passage, the Pseudo-Andronicus in one place uses the expression common opinion, and in another all but uses (what indeed he could hardly do in this meaning as an Aristotelian, if indeed in Greek at all) the expression common sense, which D. Heinsius in his Latin version actually employs.� Thus far Hamilton; but the words of Aristotle which immediately follow are even stronger:— “For, in so far as foolish creatures desire pleasure, the objection taken would be worth something; but, when intelligent creatures desire it also, how can the objectors make out their case? Even in mean and foolish creatures, moreover, there is perhaps a certain good natural appetite, superior to themselves, which aims at their own good.�[6] Or as Aristotle (according to some critics, the Aristotelian Eudemus) states it in the Seventh Book of the Nikomachean Ethica, referred to by Sir W. Hamilton without citing it:— “Perhaps all creatures (brutes as well as men) pursue, not that pleasure which they think they are pursuing, nor what they would declare themselves to be pursuing, but all of them the same pleasure; for all creatures have by nature something divine.�[7]

[5] Aristot. Ethic. Nik. X. ii. p. 1172, b. 36: ὃ γὰρ πᾶσι δοκεῖ, τοῦτ’ εἶναί φαμεν· ὁ δ’ ἀναιρῶν ταύτην τὴν πίστιν, οὐ πάνυ πιστότερα ἐρεῖ.

[6] Aristot. Ethic. Nik. X. ii. p. 1173, a. 2: ᾗ μὲν γὰρ τὰ ἀνόητα ὀρέγεται αὐτῶν, ἦν ἄν τι τὸ λεγόμεν· εἰ δὲ καὶ τὰ φρόνιμα, πῶς ἂν λέγοιέν τι; ἴσως δὲ καὶ ἐν τοῖς φαύλοις ἐστί τι φυσικὸν ἀγαθὸν κρεῖττον ἢ καθ’ αὑτά, ὃ ἐφίεται τοῦ οἰκείου ἀγαθοῦ. (I adopt here the text as given by Michelet, ᾗ μὲν in place of εἰ μὲν, but not in leaving out τὸ before λεγόμενον.) I think the sentence would stand better if ἀγαθὸν were omitted after φυσικόν.

[7] Eth. Nikom. VII. xiv. p. 1153, b. 31: ἴσως δὲ καὶ διώκουσιν οὐχ ἢν οἴονται (ἡδονήν) οὐδ’ ἢν ἂν φαῖεν, ἀλλὰ τὴν αὐτήν· πάντα γὰρ φύσει ἔχει τι θεῖον. The sentiment is here declared even more strongly respecting the appetency of all animals — brutes as well as men.

In this passage, Aristotle does really appear as the champion of authoritative Common Sense. He enunciates the general principle: That which appears to all, that we affirm to be. And he proceeds to claim (with the qualification of perhaps) for this universal belief a divine or quasi-divine authority; like Hesiod in the verses cited by Sir W. Hamilton, p. 770, b., and like Dr. Reid in the motto prefixed to his ‘Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense.’ If Aristotle had often spoken in this way, he would have been pre-eminently suitable to figure in Sir W. Hamilton’s list of authorities. But the reverse is the fact. In the Analytica and Topica, Aristotle is so far from accepting the opinion and belief of all as a certificate of truth and reality, that he expressly ranks the matters so certified as belonging to the merely probable, and includes them in his definition thereof. Universal belief counts for more or less, as a certificate of the truth of what is believed, according to the matter to which it refers; and there are few matters on which it is of greater value than pleasure and pain. Yet even upon this point Aristotle rejects the authority of the many, and calls upon us to repose implicit confidence in the verdict of the just and intelligent individual, whom he enthrones as the measure. “Those alone are pleasures� (says Aristotle) “which appear pleasures to this man; those alone are pleasant things in which he takes delight. If things which are revolting to him appear pleasurable to others, we ought not to wonder, since there are many corruptions and degenerations of mankind; yet these things are not really pleasurable, except to these men and to men of like disposition.�[8] This declaration, repeated more than once in the Nikomachean Ethica, and supported by Analytica and Topica, more than countervails the opposite opinion expressed by Aristotle, in the passage where he defends Eudoxus.

[8] Aristot. Ethic. Nik. X. v. p. 1176, a. 15: δοκεῖ δ’ ἐν ἅπασι τοιούτοις εἶναι τὸ φαινόμενον τῷ σπουδαίῳ. εἰ δὲ τοῦτο καλῶς λέγεται, καθάπερ δοκεῖ, καὶ ἔστιν ἑκάστου μέτρον ἡ ἀρετὴ καὶ ὁ ἀγαθὸς ᾗ τοιοῦτος, καὶ ἡδοναὶ εἶεν ἂν αἱ τούτῳ φαινόμεναι, καὶ ἡδέα οἷς οὗτος χαίρει &c. Ib. vi. p. 1176, b. 24: καθάπερ οὖν πολλάκις εἴρηται, καὶ τίμια καὶ ἡδέα ἐστὶ τὰ τῷ σπουδαίῳ τοιαῦτα ὄντα.

The next passage (g) produced by Sir W. Hamilton is out of the Eudemian Ethica. But this passage, when translated more fully and exactly than we read it in his words, will be found to prove nothing to the point which he aims at. He gives it as follows, p. 773, a.:— “But of all these we must endeavour to seek out rational grounds of belief, by adducing manifest testimonies and authorities. For it is the strongest evidence of a doctrine, if all men can be adduced as the manifest confessors of its positions; because every individual has in him a kind of private organ of the truth. Hence we ought not always to look to the conclusions of reasoning, but frequently rather to what appears [and is believed] to be.� The original is given below.[9]

[9] Aristot. Eth. Eud. I. vi. p. 1218, b. 26: πειρατέον δὲ περὶ τούτων πάντων ζητεῖν τὴν πίστιν διὰ τῶν λόγων, μαρτυρίοις καὶ παραδείγμασι χρώμενον τοῖς φαινομένοις. κράτιστον μὲν γὰρ πάντας ἀνθρώπους φαίνεσθαι συνομολογοῦντας τοῖς πάντως, ὅπερ μεταβιβαζόμενοι ποιήσουσιν· ἔχει γὰρ ἕκαστος οἰκεῖόν τι πρὸς τὴν ἀλήθειαν, ἐξ ὧν ἀναγκαῖον δεικνύναι πως περὶ αὐτῶν. ἐκ γὰρ τῶν ἀληθῶς μὲν λεγομένων, οὐ σαφῶς δέ, προϊοῦσιν ἔσται καὶ τὸ σαφῶς, μεταλαμβάνουσιν ἀεὶ τὰ γνωριμώτερα τῶν εἰωθότων λέγεσθαι συγκεχυμένως. Then after an interval of fifteen lines: καλῶς δ’ ἔχει καὶ τὸ χωρὶς κρίνειν τὸν τῆς αἰτίας λόγον καὶ τὸ δεικνύμενον, διά τε τὸ ῥηθὲν ἀρτίως, ὅτι προσέχειν οὐ δεῖ πάντα τοῖς διὰ τῶν λόγων, ἀλλὰ πολλάκις μᾶλλον τοῖς φαινομένοις (νῦν δ’ ὅποτ’ ἂν λύειν μὴ ἔχωσιν, ἀναγκάζονται πιστεύειν τοῖς εἰρημένοις), καὶ διότι πολλάκις τὸ μὲν ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγου δεδεῖχθαι δοκοῦν ἀληθὲς μέν ἐστιν, οὐ μέντοι διὰ ταύτην τὴν αἰτίαν δι’ ἥν φησιν ὁ λόγος. ἔστι γὰρ διὰ ψεύδους ἀληθὲς δεῖξαι· δῆλον δ’ ἐκ τῶν Ἀναλυτικῶν.

The following is a literal translation, restoring what Sir W. Hamilton omits:— “But, respecting all these matters, we must endeavour to seek belief through general reasoning, employing the appearances before us (i.e. the current dicta and facta of society) as testimonies and examples. For it is best that all mankind should be manifestly in agreement with what we are about to say; but, if that cannot be, that at all events they should be in some sort of agreement with us; which they will come to be when brought round (by being addressed in the proper style). For every man has in him some tendencies favourable to the truth, and it is out of these that we must somehow or other prove our conclusions. By taking our departure from what is said around us truly but not clearly, we shall by gradual advance introduce clearness, taking along with us such portion of the confused common talk as is most congruous to Science.… It is well also to consider apart the causal reasoning (syllogistic, deductive premisses), and the conclusion shown: first, upon the ground just stated, that we must not pay exclusive attention to the results of deductive reasoning, but often rather to apparent facts, whereas it often happens now that, when men cannot refute the reasoning, they feel constrained to believe in the conclusion; next, because the conclusion, shown by the reasoning, may often be true in itself, but not from the cause assigned in the reasoning. For a true conclusion may be shown by false premisses; as we have seen in the Analytica.�

Whoever reads the original words of Aristotle (or Eudemus) will see how much Sir W. Hamilton’s translation strains their true meaning. Κράτιστον does not correspond to the phrase — “it is the strongest evidence of a doctrine.â€� Κράτιστον is the equivalent of ἄριστον, as we find in chap. iii. of this Book of the Eudemian Ethica (p. 1215, a. 3): ἐπεὶ δ’ εἰσὶν ἀπορίαι περὶ ἑκάστην πραγματείαν οἰκεῖαι, δῆλον ὅτι καὶ περὶ βίου τοῦ κρατίστου καὶ ζωῆς τῆς ἀρίστης εἰσίν. Nor ought the words οἰκεῖόν τι πρὸς τὴν ἀλήθειαν to be translated — “a kind of private organ of the truth:â€� they mean simply — “something in him favourable or tending towards the truth,â€� as we read in chap. ii. of this same Book — οἰκεῖον πρὸς εὐεξίαν (p. 1214, b. 22). Moreover, Hamilton has omitted to translate both the words preceding and the words following; accordingly he has missed the real sense of the passage. Aristotle inculcates upon the philosopher never to neglect the common and prevalent opinions, but to acquaint himself with them carefully; because, though these opinions are generally full of confusion and error (εἰκῇ γὰρ λέγουσι σχεδὸν περὶ ἁπάντων (οἱ πολλοί) — Ethic. Eudem. I. iii. p. 1215, a. 1), he will find in them partial correspondences with the truth, of which he may avail himself to bring the common minds round to better views; but, unless he knows pretty well what the opinions of these common minds are, he will not be able to address them persuasively. This is the same reasonable view which Aristotle expresses at the beginning of the Topica (in a passage already cited, above), respecting the manner of dealing proper for a philosopher towards current opinion. But it does not at all coincide with the representation given by Hamilton.

The next piece of evidence (h) which we find tendered is another passage out of the Eudemian Ethica. It will be seen that this passage is strained with even greater violence than the preceding. Hamilton writes as follows, first translating the words of Aristotle, then commenting on them:— “The problem is this — What is the beginning or principle of motion in the soul? Now it is evident, as God is in the universe, and the universe in God, that [I read κινεῖν καί â€” W. H.] the divinity in us is also, in a certain sort, the universal mover of the mind. For the principle of Reason is not Reason but something better. Now what can we say is better than even Science, except God?â€�[10] So far Hamilton’s translation; now follows his comment:— “The import of this singular passage is very obscure. It has excited, I see, the attention, and exercised the ingenuity, of Pomponatius, J. C. Scaliger, De Raei, Leibnitz, Leidenfrost, Jacobi, &c. But without viewing it as of pantheistic tendency, as Leibnitz is inclined to do, it may be interpreted as a declaration, that Intellect, which Aristotle elsewhere allows to be pre-existent and immortal, is a spark of the Divinity; whilst its data (from which as principles more certain than their deductions, Reason, Demonstration, Science, must depart) are to be reverenced as the revelation of truths which would otherwise lie hid from man: That, in short,

“‘The voice of Nature is the voice of God.’

By the bye, it is remarkable that this text was not employed by any of those Aristotelian philosophers who endeavoured to identify the Active Intellect with the Deity.�

[10] Ethic. Eud. VII. xiv. p. 1248, a. 24: τὸ δὲ ζητούμενον τοῦτ’ ἐστί, τίς ἡ τῆς κινήσεως ἀρχὴ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ; δῆλον δή, ὥσπερ ἐν τῷ ὅλῳ θεός, καὶ πᾶν (Fritzsche reads ἐν) ἐκείνῳ. κινεῖ γάρ πως πάντα τὸ ἐν ἡμῖν θεῖον. λόγου δ’ ἀρχὴ οὐ λόγος ἀλλὰ τι κρεῖττον. τί οὖν ἂν κρεῖττον καὶ ἐπιστήμης εἴποι πλὴν θεός; Instead of εἴποι (the last word but two) Fritzsche reads εἴη καὶ νοῦ.

This is the passage translated by Sir W. Hamilton. The words of the original immediately following are these: ἡ γὰρ ἀρετὴ τοῦ νοῦ ὄργανον· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο οἱ πάλαι ἔλεγον — “εὐτυχεῖς καλοῦνται, οἱ ἂν ὁρήσωσι κατοπθοῦσιν ἄλογοι ὄντες, καὶ βουλεύεσθαι οὐ συμφέρει αὐτοῖςâ€� — ἔχουσι γὰρ ἀρχὴν τοιούτην ἡ κρείττων τοῦ νοῦ καὶ βουλεύσεως. οἱ δὲ τὸν λόγον· τοῦτο δ’ οὐκ ἔχουσι. καὶ ἐνθουσισμοί· τοῦτο δ’ οὐ δύνανται· ἄλογοι γὰρ ὄντες ἐπιτυγχάνουσι (so Fritzsche reads in place of ἀποτυγχάνουσι).

I maintain that this passage noway justifies the interpretation whereby Sir W. Hamilton ascribes to Aristotle a doctrine so large and important. The acknowledged obscurity of the passage might have rendered any interpreter cautious of building much upon it: but this is not all: Sir W. Hamilton has translated it separately, without any allusion to the chapter of which it forms part. This is a sure way of misunderstanding it; for it cannot be fairly construed except as bearing on the problem enunciated and discussed in that chapter. Aristotle (or Eudemus) propounds for discussion explicitly in this chapter a question which had been adverted to briefly in the earlier part of the Eudemian Ethica (I. i. p. 1214, a. 24) — What is the relation between good fortune and happiness? Upon what does good fortune depend? Is it produced by special grace or inspiration from the Gods? This question is taken up and debated at length in the chapter from which Sir W. Hamilton has made his extract. It is averred, as a matter of notoriety, that some men are fortunate. Though fools, they are constantly successful — more so than wiser men; and this characteristic is so steady, that men count upon it and denominate them accordingly. (See this general belief illustrated in the debate at Athens recorded by Thukydides, vi. 17, the good fortune of Nikias being admitted even by his opponents.) Upon what does this good fortune depend? Upon nature? Upon intelligence? Upon fortune herself as a special agent? Upon the grace and favour of the gods to the fortunate individual? Aristotle (or Eudemus) discusses the problem in a long and perplexed chapter, stating each hypothesis, together with the difficulties and objections attaching to it. As far as we can make out from an obscure style and a corrupt text, the following is the result arrived at. There are two varieties of the fortunate man: one is, he who succeeds through a rightly directed impulse, under special inspiration of the divine element within him and within all men; the other is, he who succeeds without any such impulse, through the agency of Fortune proper. The good fortune of the first is more constant than that of the second; but both are alike irrational or extra-rational.[11] Now the divine element in the soul is the beginning or principle of motion for all the manifestations in the soul — for reason as well as feeling: that which calls reason into operation, is something more powerful than reason. But in the intelligent man this divine mover only calls reason into operation, leaving reason, when once in operation, to its own force and guidance, of course liable to err; whereas in the fortunate man (first variety) the divine element inspires all his feelings and volitions, without any rational deliberation, so that he executes exactly the right thing at the right time and place, and accordingly succeeds.[12]

[11] Eth. Eudem. VII. xiv. p. 1248, b. 3: φανερὸν δὲ ὅτι δύο εἴδη εὐτυχίας, ἡ μὲν θεία, διὸ καὶ δοκεῖ ὁ εὐτυχὴς διὰ θεὸν κατορθοῦν· οὗτος δ’ ἐστὶν ὁ κατὰ τὴν ὁρμὴν διορθωτικός, ὁ δ’ ἕτερος ὁ παρὰ τὴν ὁρμὴν· ἄλογοι δ’ ἀμφότεροι. καὶ ἡ μὲν συνεχὴς εὐτυχία μᾶλλον, αὕτη δ’ οὐ συνεχής.

The variety ὁ παρὰ τὴν ὁρμὴν διορθωτικός is exemplified in the Physica (II. iv. p. 196, a. 4), where Aristotle again discusses τύχη: the case of a man who comes to the market-place on his ordinary business, and there by accident meets a friend whom he particularly wished to see, but whom he never dreamt of seeing there and then.

[12] Eth. Eud. VII. xiv. p. 1248, a. 27-32: εὐτυχεῖς καλοῦνται, &c. Compare also ib. p. 1247, b. 18.

Aristotle (or Eudemus) thus obtains a psychological explanation (good or bad) of the fact, that there are fools who constantly succeed in their purposes, and wise men who frequently fail. He tells us that there is in the soul a divine principle of motion, which calls every thing — reason as well as appetite or feeling — into operation. But he says nothing of what Sir W. Hamilton ascribes to him — about Intellect as a spark of the Divinity, or about data of Intellect to be reverenced as the revelation of hidden truths. His drift is quite different and even opposite: to account for the success of individuals without intellect or reason — to bring forward a divine element in the soul, which dispenses with intellect, and which conducts these unintelligent men to success, solely by infusing the most opportune feelings and impulses. Sir W. Hamilton has misunderstood this passage, by taking no notice of the context and general argument to which it belongs.

Besides, when Hamilton represents Aristotle here as declaring: “That the data of Intellect are to be reverenced as the revelation of truths which would otherwise lie hid from man� — how are we to reconcile this with what we read two pages before (p. 771, a.) as the view of Aristotle about these same data of Intellect, that “they are themselves pre-eminently certain; and, if denied in words, they are still always mentally admitted�? Is it reasonable to say that the Maxim of Contradiction, and the proposition, That if equals be subtracted from equals, the remainders will be equal — are data “to be reverenced as the revelation of truths which would otherwise lie hid from man�? At any rate, I protest against the supposition that Aristotle has ever declared this.

The next two passages cited from Aristotle have really no bearing upon the authority of Common Sense in its metaphysical meaning: they are (i) from Physic. VIII. iii. and (k) from De Gen. Animal. III. x. Both passages assert the authority of sensible perception against general reasoning, where the two are conflicting. They assert, in other words, that general reasoning ought to be tested by experience and observation, and is not to be accepted when disallowed by these tests. (The only condition is, that the observation be exact and complete.) This is just, and is often said, though often disregarded in fact, by Aristotle. But it has no proper connexion with the problem about the trustworthiness of Common Sense.

Next Sir W. Hamilton refers us to (without citing) three other places of Aristotle. Of these, the first (De Cœlo, I. iii. p. 270, b. 4-13, marked l) is one which I am much surprised to find in a modern champion of Common Sense: since it represents Common Sense as giving full certificate to errors now exploded and forgotten. Aristotle had begun by laying down and vindicating his doctrine of the First or Celestial Body, forming the exterior portion of the Kosmos, radically distinct from the four elements; revolving eternally in uniform, perfect, circular motion, eternal, unchangeable, &c. Having stated this, he proceeds to affirm that the results of these reasonings coincide with the common opinions of mankind, that is, with Common Sense; and that they are not contradicted by any known observations of perceptive experience. This illustrates what I have before observed about Aristotle’s position in regard to Common Sense. He does not extol it as an authority, or tell us that “it is to be reverenced as a revelation�; but, when he has proved a conclusion on what he thinks good grounds, he is glad to be able to show that it tallies with common opinions; especially when these opinions have some alliance with the received religion.

The next passage (m) referred to (De CÅ“lo, III. vii. p. 306, a. 13) has nothing to do with Common Sense, but embodies a very just protest by Aristotle against those philosophers who followed out their theories consistently to all possible consequences, without troubling themselves to enquire whether those consequences were in harmony with the results of observation.

There follows one other reference (n) which was hardly worth Sir W. Hamilton’s notice. In Meteorologic. I. xiii. p. 349, a. 25, Aristotle, after reciting a theory of some philosophers (respecting the winds) which he considers very absurd, then proceeds to say:— “The many, without going into any enquiry at all, talk better sense than those who after enquiry bring forward such conclusions as these.� It is not saying much for the authority of Common Sense, to affirm that there have been occasionally philosophical theories so silly as to be worse than Common Sense.

---

B. — Aristotle’s Doctrine.

In regard to Aristotle, there are two points to be examined —

I. What position does he take up in respect to the authority of Common Sense?

II. What doctrine does he lay down about the first principia or beginnings of scientific reasoning — the ἀρχαὶ συλλογιστικαί?

I. — That Aristotle did not regard Cause, Substance, Time, &c., as Intuitions, is shown by the subtle and elaborate reasonings that he employs to explain them, and by the censure that he bestows on the erroneous explanations and shortcomings of others. Indeed, in regard to Causality, when we read the great and perplexing diversity of meaning which Aristotle (and Plato before him in the Phædon) recognizes as belonging to this term, we cannot but be surprised to find modern philosophers treating it as enunciating a simple and intuitive idea. But as to Common Sense — taking the term as above explained, and as it is usually understood by those that have no particular theory to support — Aristotle takes up a position at once distinct and instructive; a position (to use the phraseology of Kant) not dogmatical, but critical. He constantly notices and reports the affirmations of Common Sense; he speaks of it with respect, and assigns to it a qualified value, partly as helping us to survey the subject on all sides, partly as a happy confirmation, where it coincides with what has been proved otherwise; but he does not appeal to it as an authority in itself trustworthy or imperative.

Common Sense belongs to the region of Opinion. Now the distinction between matters of Opinion on the one hand, and matters of Science or Cognition on the other, is a marked and characteristic feature of Aristotle’s philosophy. He sets, in pointed antithesis, Demonstration, or the method of Science — which divides itself into special subjects, each having some special principia of its own, then proceeds by legitimate steps of deductive reasoning from such principia, and arrives at conclusions sometimes universally true, always true for the most part — against Rhetoric and Dialectic, which deal with and discuss opinions upon all subjects, comparing opposite arguments, and landing in results more or less probable. Contrasting them as separate lines of intellectual procedure, Aristotle lays down a theory of both. He recognizes the procedure of Rhetoric and Dialectic as being to a great degree the common and spontaneous growth of society; while Demonstration is from the beginning special, not merely as to subject, but as to persons, implying teacher and learner.

Rhetoric and Dialectic are treated by Aristotle as analogous processes. Of the matter of opinion and belief, with which both of them deal, he distinguishes three varieties: (1) Opinions or beliefs entertained by all; (2) By the majority; (3) By a minority of superior men, or by one man in respect to a science wherein he has acquired renown. It is these opinions or beliefs that the rhetorician and the dialectician attack and defend; bringing out all the arguments available for or against each.

The Aristotelian treatise on Rhetoric opens with the following words:— “Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic; for both of them deal with such matters as do not fall within any special science, but belong in a certain way to the common knowledge of all. Hence every individual has his share of both, greater or less; for every one can, up to a certain point, both examine others and stand examination from others; every one tries to defend himself and to accuse others.â€�[13] To the same purpose Aristotle speaks about Dialectic, in the beginning of the Topica:— “The dialectical syllogism takes its premisses from matters of opinion, that is, from matters that seem good to (or are believed by) all, or the majority, or the wise — either all the wise, or most of them, or the most celebrated.â€� Aristotle distinguishes these matters of common opinion or belief from three distinct other matters:— (1) From matters that are not really such, but only in appearance; in which the smallest attention suffices to detect the false pretence of probability, while no one except a contentious Sophist ever thinks of advancing them; on the contrary, the real matters of common belief are never thus palpably false, but have always something deeper than a superficial show; (2) From the first truths or principia, upon which scientific demonstration proceeds; (3) From the paralogisms, or fallacious assumptions (ψευδογραφήματα), liable to occur in each particular science.

Now what Aristotle here designates and defines as “matters of common opinion and beliefâ€� (τὰ ἔνδοξα) includes all that is usually meant, and properly meant, by Common Sense — what is believed by all men or by most men. But Aristotle does not claim any warrant or authority for the truth of these beliefs, on the ground of their being deliverances of Common Sense, and accepted (by all or by the majority) always as indisputable, often as self-evident. On the contrary, he ranks them as mere probabilities, some in a greater, some in a less degree; as matters whereon something may be said both pro and con, and whereon the full force of argument on both sides ought to be brought out, notwithstanding the supposed self-evidence in the minds of unscientific believers. Though, however, he encourages this dialectical discussion on both sides as useful and instructive, he never affirms that it can by itself lead to certain scientific conclusions, or to anything more than strong probability on a balance of the countervailing considerations. The language that he uses in speaking of these deliverances of Common Sense is measured and just. After distinguishing the real Common Opinion from the fallacious simulations of Common Opinion set up (according to him) by some pretenders, he declares that in all cases of Common Opinion there is always something more than a mere superficial appearance of truth. In other words, wherever any opinion is really held by a large public, it always deserves the scrutiny of the philosopher to ascertain how far it is erroneous, and, if it be erroneous, by what appearances of reason it has been enabled so far to prevail.

[13] Aristot. Rhetor. I. i. p. 1354, a. 1. Compare Sophist. Elench. xi. p. 172, a. 30.

Again, at the beginning of the Topica (in which he gives both a theory and precepts of dialectical debate), Aristotle specifies four different ends to be served by that treatise. It will be useful (he says) —

1. For our own practice in the work of debate. If we acquire a method and system, we shall find it easier to conduct a debate on any new subject, whenever such debate may arise.

2. For our daily intercourse with the ordinary public. When we have made for ourselves a full collection of the opinions held by the many, we shall carry on our conversation with them out of their own doctrines, and not out of doctrines foreign to their minds; we shall thus be able to bring them round on any matter where we think them in error.

3. For the sciences belonging to philosophy. By discussing the difficulties on both sides, we shall more easily discriminate truth and falsehood in each separate scientific question.

4. For the first and highest among the principia of each particular science. These, since they are the first and highest of all, cannot be discussed out of principia special and peculiar to any separate science; but must be discussed through the opinions commonly received on the subject-matter of each. This is the main province of Dialectic; which, being essentially testing and critical, is connected by some threads with the principia of all the various scientific researches.

We see thus that Aristotle’s language about Common Opinion or Common Sense is very guarded; that, instead of citing it as an authority, he carefully discriminates it from Science, and places it decidedly on a level lower than Science, in respect of evidence; yet that he recognizes it as essential to be studied by the scientific man, with full confrontation of all the reasonings both for and against every opinion; not merely because such study will enable the scientific man to study and converse intelligibly and efficaciously with the vulgar, but also because it will sharpen his discernment for the truths of his own science, and because it furnishes the only materials for testing and limiting the first principia of that science.

II. We will next advert to the judgment of Aristotle respecting these principia of science: how he supposes them to be acquired and verified. He discriminates various special sciences (geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, &c.), each of which has its own appropriate matter, and special principia from which it takes its departure. But there are also certain principia common to them all; and these he considers to fall under the cognizance of one grand comprehensive science, which includes all the rest; First Philosophy or Ontology — the science of Ens in its most general sense, quatenus Ens; while each of the separate sciences confines itself to one exclusive department of Ens. The geometer does not debate nor prove the first principia of his own science; neither those that it has in common with other sciences, nor those peculiar to itself. He takes these for granted, and demonstrates the consequences that logically follow from them. It belongs to the First Philosopher to discuss the principia of all. Accordingly, the province of the First Philosopher is all-comprehensive, co-extensive with all the sciences. So also is the province of the Dialectician alike all-comprehensive. Thus far the two agree; but they differ as to method and purpose. The Dialectician seeks to enforce, confront, and value all the different reasons pro and con, consistent and inconsistent; the First Philosopher performs this too, or supposes it to be performed by others, but proceeds farther: namely, to determine certain Axioms that may be trusted as sure grounds (along with certain other principia) for demonstrative conclusions in science.

Aristotle describes in his Analytica the process of Demonstration, and the conditions required to render it valid. But what is the point of departure for this process? Aristotle declares that there cannot be a regress without end, demonstrating one conclusion from certain premisses, then demonstrating those premisses from others, and so on. You must arrive ultimately at some premisses that are themselves undemonstrable, but that may be trusted as ground from whence to start in demonstrating conclusions. All demonstration is carried on through a middle term, which links together the two terms of the conclusion, though itself does not appear in the conclusion. Those undemonstrable propositions, from which demonstration begins, must be known without a middle term, that is, immediately known; they must be known in themselves, that is, not through any other propositions; they must be better known than the conclusions derived from them; they must be propositions first and most knowable. But these two last epithets (Aristotle often repeats) have two meanings: first and most knowable by nature or absolutely, are the most universal propositions; first and most knowable to us, are those propositions declaring the particular facts of sense. These two meanings designate truths correlative to each other, but at opposite ends of the intellectual line of march.

Of these undemonstrable principia, indispensable as the grounds of all Demonstration, some are peculiar to each separate science, others are common to several or to all sciences. These common principles were called Axioms, in mathematics, even in the time of Aristotle. Sometimes, indeed, he designates them as Axioms, without any special reference to mathematics; though he also uses the same name to denote other propositions, not of the like fundamental character. Now, how do we come to know these undemonstrable Axioms and other immediate propositions or principia, since we do not knew them by demonstration? This is the second question to be answered, in appreciating Aristotle’s views about the Philosophy of Common Sense.

He is very explicit in his way of answering this question. He pronounces it absurd to suppose that these immediate principia are innate or congenital, — in other words, that we possess them from the beginning, and yet that we remain for a long time without any consciousness of possessing them; seeing that they are the most accurate of all our cognitions. What we possess at the beginning (Aristotle says) is only a mental power of inferior accuracy and dignity. We, as well as all other animals, begin with a congenital discriminative power called sensible perception. With many animals, the data of perception are transient, and soon disappear altogether, so that the cognition of such animals consists in nothing but successive acts of sensible perception. With us, on the contrary, as with some other animals, the data of perception are preserved by memory; accordingly our cognitions include both perceptions and remembrances. Farthermore, we are distinguished even from the better animals by this difference — that with us, but not with them, a rational order of thought grows out of such data of perception, when multiplied and long preserved. And thus out of perception grows memory; out of memory of the same matter often repeated grows experience, since many remembrances of the same thing constitute one numerical experience. Out of such experience, a farther consequence arises, that what is one and the same in all the particulars, (the Universal or the One alongside of the Many), becomes fixed or rests steadily within the mind. Herein lies the principium of Art, in reference to Agenda or Facienda — of Science, in reference to Entia.

Thus these cognitive principia are not original and determinate possessions of the mind, nor do they spring from any other mental possessions of a higher cognitive order, but simply from data of sensible perception; which data are like runaway soldiers in a panic, first one stops his flight and halts, then a second follows the example, afterwards a third and fourth, until at length an orderly array is obtained. Our minds are so constituted as to render this possible. If a single individual impression is thus detained, it will presently acquire the character of a Universal in the mind; for, though we perceive the particular, our perception is of the Universal (i.e., when we perceive Kallias, our perception is of man generally, not of the man Kallias). Again the fixture of these lowest Universals in the mind will bring in those of the next highest order; until at length the Summa Genera and the absolute Universals acquire a steady establishment therein. Thus, from this or that particular animal, we shall rise as high as Animal universally; and so on from Animal upwards.

We thus see clearly (Aristotle says) that only by Induction can we come to know the first principia of Demonstration; for it is by this process that sensible perception engraves the Universal on our minds.[14] We begin by the notiora nobis (Particulars), and ascend to the notiora naturâ or simpliciter (Universals). Some among our mental habits that are conversant with truth, are also capable of falsehood (such as Opinion and Reasoning): others are not so capable, but embrace uniformly truth and nothing but truth; such are Science and Intellect (Νοῦς). Intellect is the only source more accurate than Science. Now the principia of Demonstration are more accurate than the demonstrations themselves, yet they cannot (as we have already observed) be the objects of Science. They must therefore be the object of what is more accurate than Science, namely, of Intellect. Intellect and the objects of Intellect will thus be the principia of Science and of the objects of Science. But these principles are not intuitive data or revelations. They are acquisitions gradually made; and there is a regular road whereby we travel up to them, quite distinct from the road whereby we travel down from them to scientific conclusions.

[14] Aristot. Anal. Post. II. p. 100, b. 3: δῆλον δὴ ὅτι ἡμῖν τὰ πρῶτα ἐπαγωγῇ γνωρίζειν ἀναγκαῖον· καὶ γὰρ καὶ αἴσθησις οὕτω τὸ καθόλου ἐμποιεῖ; also ibid. I. xviii., p. 81, b. 3, upon which passage Waitz, in his note, explains as follows (p. 347):— “Sententia nostri loci hæc est. Universales propositiones omnes inductione comparantur, quum etiam in iis, quæ a sensibus maxime aliena videntur, et quæ, ut mathematica (τὰ ἐξ ἀφαιρέσεως), cogitatione separantur a materia quacum conjuncta sunt, inductione probentur ea quæ de genere (e.g., de linea vel de corpore mathematico), ad quod demonstratio pertineat, prædicentur καθ’ αὑτά et cum ejus natura conjuncta sint. Inductio autem iis nititur quæ sensibus percipiuntur: nam res singulares sentiuntur, scientia vero rerum singularium non datur sine inductione, non datur inductio sine sensu.â€�

The chapter just indicated in the Analytica Posteriora, attesting the growth of those universals that form the principia of demonstration out of the particulars of sense, may be illustrated by a similar statement in the First Book of the Metaphysica. Here, after stating that sensible perception is common to all animals, Aristotle distinguishes the lowest among animals, who have this alone; then, a class next above them, who have it along with phantasy and memory, and some of whom are intelligent (like bees), yet still cannot learn, from being destitute of hearing; farther another class, one stage higher, who hear, and therefore can be taught something, yet arrive only at a scanty sum of experience; lastly, still higher, the class men, who possess a large stock of phantasy, memory, and experience, fructifying into science and art.[15] Experience (Aristotle says) is of particular facts; Art and Science are of Universals. Art is attained, when out of many conceptions of experience there arises one universal persuasion respecting phenomena similar to each other. We may know that Kallias, sick of a certain disease — that Sokrates, likewise sick of it — that A, B, C, and other individuals besides, have been cured by a given remedy; but this persuasion respecting ever so many individual cases, is mere matter of experience. When, however, we proceed to generalize these cases, and then affirm that the remedy cures all persons suffering under the same disease, circumscribed by specific marks — fever or biliousness — this is Art or Science. One man may know the particular cases empirically, without having generalized them into a doctrine; another may have learnt the general doctrine, with little or no knowledge of the particular cases. Of these two, the last is the wiser and more philosophical man; but the first may be the more effective and successful as a practitioner.

[15] Aristot. Metaphys. A. i. p. 980, a. 26, seq.: φρόνιμα μὲν ἄνευ τοῦ μανθάνειν, ὅσα μὴ δύναται τῶν ψόφων ἀκούειν, οἷον μέλιττα, καὶ εἴ τι τοιοῦτον ἄλλο γένος ζῴων ἔστιν.

We remark here the line that he draws between the intelligence of bees — depending altogether upon sense, memory, and experience — and the higher intelligence which is superadded by the use of language; when it becomes possible to teach and learn, and when general conceptions can be brought into view through appropriate names.

In the passage above noticed, Aristotle draws the line of intellectual distinction between man and the lower animals. If he had considered that it was the prerogative of man to possess a stock of intuitive general truths, ready-made, and independent of experience, this was the occasion for saying so. He says the exact contrary. No modern psychologist could proclaim more fully than Aristotle here does the derivation of all general concepts and general propositions from the phenomena of sense, through the successive stages of memory, association, comparison, abstraction. No one could give a more explicit acknowledgment of Induction from particulars of sense, as the process whereby we reach ultimately those propositions of the highest universality, as well as of the highest certainty; from whence, by legitimate deductive syllogism, we descend to demonstrate various conclusions. There is nothing in Aristotle about generalities originally inherent in the mind, connate although dormant at first and unknown, until they are evoked or elicited by the senses; nothing to countenance that nice distinction eulogized so emphatically by Hamilton (p. 772, a. note): “Cognitio nostra omnis à mente primam originem, à sensibus exordium habet primum.� In Aristotle’s view, the senses furnish both originem and exordium: the successive stages of mental procedure, whereby we rise from sense to universal propositions, are multiplied and gradual, without any break. He even goes so far as to say that we have sensible perception of the Universal. His language undoubtedly calls for much criticism here. We shall only say that it discountenances altogether the doctrine that represents the Mind or Intellect as an original source of First or Universal Truths peculiar to itself. That opinion is mentioned by Aristotle, but mentioned only to be rejected. He denies that the mind possesses any such ready-made stores, latent until elicited into consciousness. Moreover, it is remarkable that the ground whereon he denies it is much the same as that whereon the advocates of intuitions affirm it, viz., the supreme accuracy of these axioms. Aristotle cannot believe that the mind includes cognitions of such value, without being conscious thereof. Nor will he grant that the mind possesses any native and inherent power of originating these inestimable principia.[16] He declares that they are generated in the mind only by the slow process of induction, as above described; beginning from the perceptive power (common to man with animals), together with that first stage of the intelligence (judging or discriminative) which he combines or identifies with perception, considering it to be alike congenital. From this humble basis men can rise to the highest grades of cognition, though animals cannot. We even become competent (Aristotle says) to have sensible perception of the Universal; in the man Kallias, we see Man; in the ox feeding near us, we see Animal.

[16] Aristot. Anal. Post. II. xix. p. 99, b. 26: εἰ μὲν δὴ ἔχομεν αὐτάς, ἄτοπον· συμβαίνει γὰρ ἀκριβεστέρας ἔχοντας γνώσεις ἀποδείξεως λανθάνειν. — φανερὸν τοίνυν ὅτι οὔτ’ ἔχειν οἷόν τε, οὔτ’ ἀγνοοῦσι καὶ μηδεμίαν ἔχουσιν ἕξιν ἐγγίνεσθαι. ἀνάγκη ἄρα ἔχειν μέν τινα δύναμιν, μὴ τοιαύτην δ’ ἔχειν ἣ ἔσται τούτων τιμιωτέρα κατ’ ἀκρίβειαν. See Metaphys. A. ix. p. 993, a. 1.

Some modern psychologists, who admit that general propositions of a lower degree of universality are raised from induction and sense, contend that propositions of the highest universality are not so raised, but are the intuitive offspring of the intellect. Aristotle does not countenance such a doctrine: he says (Metaphys. A. ii. p. 982, a. 25) that these truths furthest removed from sense are the most difficult to know of all. If they were intuitions they would be the common possession of the race.

It must be remembered that, when Aristotle, in this analysis of cognition, speaks of Induction, he means induction completely and accurately performed; just as, when he talks of Demonstration, he intends a good and legitimate demonstration; and just as (to use his own illustration in the Nikomachean Ethica), when he reasons upon a harper, or other professional artist, he always tacitly implies a good and accomplished artist. Induction thus understood, and Demonstration, he considers to be the two processes for obtaining scientific faith or conviction; both of them being alike cogent and necessary, but Induction even more so than Demonstration; because, if the principia furnished by the former were not necessary, neither could the conclusions deduced from them by the latter be necessary. Induction may thus stand alone without Demonstration, but Demonstration pre-supposes and postulates Induction. Accordingly, when Aristotle proceeds to specify those functions of mind wherewith the inductive principia and the demonstrated conclusions correlate, he refers both of them to functions wherein (according to him) the mind is unerring and infallible — Intellect (Νοῦς) and Science. But, between these two he ranks Intellect as the higher, and he refers the inductive principia to Intellect. He does not mean that Intellect (Νοῦς) generates or produces these principles. On the contrary, he distinctly negatives such a supposition, and declares that no generative force of this high order resides in the Intellect; while he tells us, with equal distinctness, that they are generated from a lower source — sensible perception, and through the gradual upward march of the inductive process. To say that they originate from Sense through Induction, and nevertheless to refer them to Intellect (Νοῦς) as their subjective correlate, — are not positions inconsistent with each other, in the view of Aristotle. He expressly distinguishes the two points, as requiring to be separately dealt with. By referring the principia to Intellect (Νοῦς), he does not intend to indicate their generating source, but their evidentiary value and dignity when generated and matured. They possess, in his view, the maximum of dignity, certainty, cogency, and necessity, because it is from them that even Demonstration derives the necessity of its conclusions; accordingly (pursuant to the inclination of the ancient philosophers for presuming affinity and commensurate dignity between the cognitum and the cognoscens), they belong as objective correlates to the most unerring cognitive function — the Intellect (Νοῦς). It is the Intellect that grasps these principles, and applies them to their legitimate purpose of scientific demonstration; hence Aristotle calls Intellect not only the principium of Science, but the principium principii.

In the Analytica, from which we have hitherto cited, Aristotle explains the structure of the Syllogism and the process of Demonstration. He has in view mainly (though not exclusively) the more exact sciences, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, &c. But he expressly tells us that all departments of inquiry are not capable of this exactness; that some come nearer to it than others; that we must be careful to require no more exactness from each than the subject admits; and that the method adopted by us must be such as will attain the admissible maximum of exactness. Now each subject has some principia, and among them definitions, peculiar to itself; though there are also some principia common to all, and essential to the march of each. In some departments of study (Aristotle says) we get our view of principia or first principles by induction; in others, by sensible perception; in others again, by habitual action in a certain way; and by various other processes also. In each, it is important to look for first principles in the way naturally appropriate to the matter before us; for this is more than half of the whole work; upon right first principles will mainly depend the value of our conclusions. For what concerns Ethics, Aristotle tells us that the first principles are acquired through a course of well-directed habitual action; and that they will be acquired easily, as well as certainly, if such a course be enforced on youth from the beginning. In the beginning of the Physica, he starts from that antithesis, so often found in his writings, between what is more knowable to us and what is more knowable absolutely or by nature. The natural march of knowledge is to ascend from the first of these two termini (particulars of sense) upward to the second or opposite,[17] and then to descend downward by demonstration or deduction. The fact of motion he proves (against Melissus and Parmenides) by an express appeal to induction, as sufficient and conclusive evidence. In physical science (he says) the final appeal must be to the things and facts perceived by sense. In the treatise De CÅ“lo he lays it down that the principia must be homogeneous with the matters they belong to: the principia of perceivable matters must be themselves perceivable; those of eternal matters must be eternal; those of perishable matters, perishable.

[17] See also Aristot. Metaphys. Z. iv. p. 1029, b. 1-14.

The treatises composing the Organon stand apart among Aristotle’s works. In them he undertakes (for the first time in the history of mankind) the systematic study of significant propositions enunciative of truth and falsehood. He analyses their constituent elements; he specifies the conditions determining the consistency or inconsistency of such propositions one with another; he teaches to arrange the propositions in such ways as to detect and dismiss the inconsistent, keeping our hold of the consistent. Here the signification of terms and propositions is never out of sight: the facts and realities of nature are regarded as so signified. Now all language becomes significant only through the convention of mankind, according to Aristotle’s express declaration: it is used by speakers to communicate what they mean to hearers that understand them. We see thus that in these treatises the subjective point of view is brought into the foreground — the enunciation of what we see, remember, believe, disbelieve, doubt, anticipate, &c. It is not meant that the objective point of view is eliminated, but that it is taken in implication with, and in dependence upon, the subjective. Neither the one nor the other is dropped or hidden. It is under this double and conjoint point of view that Aristotle, in the Organon, presents to us, not only the processes of demonstration and confutation, but also the fundamental principia or axioms thereof; which axioms in the Analytica Posteriora (as we have already seen) he expressly declares to originate from the data of sense, and to be raised and generalized by induction.

Such is the way that Aristotle represents the fundamental principles of syllogistic Demonstration, when he deals with them as portions of Logic. But we also find him dealing with them as portions of Ontology or First Philosophy (this being his manner of characterizing his own treatise, now commonly known as the Metaphysica). To that science he decides, after some preliminary debate, that the task of formulating and defending the axioms belongs, because the application of these axioms is quite universal, for all grades and varieties of Entia. Ontology treats of Ens in its largest sense, with all its properties quatenus Ens, including Unum, Multa, Idem, Diversum, Posterius, Prius, Genus, Species, Totum, Partes, &c. Now Ontology is with Aristotle a purely objective science; that is, a science wherein the subjective is dropt out of sight and no account taken of it, or wherein (to state the same fact in the language of relativity) the believing and reasoning subject is supposed constant. Ontology is the most comprehensive among all the objective sciences. Each of these sciences singles out a certain portion of it for special study. In treating the logical axioms as portions of Ontology, Aristotle undertakes to show their objective value; and this purpose, while it carries him away from the point of view that we remarked as prevailing in the Organon, at the same time brings him into conflict with various theories, all of them in his time more or less current. Several philosophers — Herakleitus, Anaxagoras, Demokritus, Protagoras — had propounded theories which Aristotle here impugns. We do not mean that these philosophers expressly denied his fundamental axioms (which they probably never distinctly stated to themselves, and which Aristotle was the first to formulate), but their theories were to a certain extent inconsistent with these axioms, and were regarded by Aristotle as wholly inconsistent.

The two Axioms announced in the Metaphysica, and vindicated by Aristotle, are —

1. The Maxim of Contradiction: It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be; It is impossible for the same to belong and not to belong to the same, at the same time and in the same sense. This is the statement of the Maxim as a formula of Ontology. Announced as a formula of Logic, it would stand thus: The same proposition cannot be both true and false at the same time; You cannot both believe and disbelieve the same proposition at the same time; You cannot believe, at the same time, propositions contrary or contradictory. These last-mentioned formulae are the logical ways of stating the axiom. They present it in reference to the believing or disbelieving (affirming or denying) subject, distinctly brought to view along with the matter believed; not exclusively in reference to the matter believed, to the omission of the believer.

2. The Maxim of Excluded Middle: A given attribute either does belong, or does not belong to a subject (i.e., provided that it has any relation to the subject at all) — there is no medium, no real condition intermediate between the two. This is the ontological formula; and it will stand thus, when translated into Logic: Between a proposition and its contradictory opposite there is no tenable halting ground; If you disbelieve the one, you must pass at once to the belief of the other — you cannot at the same time disbelieve the other.

These two maxims thus teach — the first, that we cannot at the same time believe both a proposition and its contradictory opposite; the second, that we cannot at the same time disbelieve them both.[18]

[18] We have here discussed these two maxims chiefly in reference to Aristotle’s manner of presenting them, and to the conceptions of his predecessors and contemporaries. An excellent view of the Maxims themselves, in their true meaning and value, will be found in Mr. John Stuart Mill’s Examination of the Philosophy of Sir W. Hamilton, ch. xxi. pp. 406-421.

Now, Herakleitus, in his theory (a theory propounded much before the time of Protagoras and the persons called Sophists), denied all permanence or durability in nature, and recognized nothing except perpetual movement and change. He denied both durable substances and durable attributes; he considered nothing to be lasting except the universal law or principle of change — the ever-renewed junction or co-existence of contraries and the perpetual transition of one contrary into the other. This view of the facts of nature was adopted by several other physical philosophers besides.[19] Indeed it lay at the bottom of Plato’s new coinage — Rational Types or Forms, at once universal and real. The Maxim of Contradiction is intended by Aristotle to controvert Herakleitus, and to uphold durable substances with definite attributes.

[19] See ‘Plato and other Comp. of Sokr.’ I. i. [pp. 28-38].

Again, the theory of Anaxagoras denied all simple bodies (excepting Noûs) and all definite attributes. He held that everything was mingled with everything else, though there might be some one or other predominant constituent. In all the changes visible throughout nature, there was no generation of anything new, but only the coming into prominence of some constituent that had before been comparatively latent. According to this theory, you could neither wholly affirm, nor wholly deny, any attribute of its subject. Both affirmation and denial were untrue: the real relation between the two was something half-way between affirmation and denial. The Maxim of Excluded Middle is maintained by Aristotle as a doctrine in opposition to this theory of Anaxagoras.[20]

[20] Ibid. [pp. 49-57].

Both the two above-mentioned theories are objective. A third, that of Protagoras — “Homo Mensura� — brings forward prominently the subjective, and is quite distinct from either. Aristotle does indeed treat the Protagorean theory as substantially identical with that of Herakleitus, and as standing or falling therewith. This seems a mistake: the theory of Protagoras is as much opposed to Herakleitus as to Aristotle.

We have now to see how Aristotle sustains these two Axioms (which he calls “the firmest of all truths and the most assuredly knownâ€�) against theories opposed to them. In the first place, he repeats here what he had declared in the Analytica Posteriora — that they cannot be directly demonstrated, though they are themselves the principia of all demonstration. Some persons indeed thought that these Axioms were demonstrable; but this is an error, proceeding (he says) from complete ignorance of analytical theory. How, then, are these Axioms to be proved against Herakleitus? Aristotle had told us in the Analytica that axioms were derived from particulars of sense by Induction, and apprehended or approved by the Νοῦς. He does not repeat that observation here; but he intimates that there is only one process available for defending them, and that process amounts to an appeal to Induction. You can give no ontological reason in support of the Axioms, except what will be condemned as a petitio principii; you must take them in their logical aspect, as enunciated in significant propositions. You must require the Herakleitean adversary to answer some question affirmatively, in terms significant both to himself and to others, and in a proposition declaring his belief on the point. If he will not do this, you can hold no discussion with him: he might as well be deaf and dumb: he is no better than a plant (to use Aristotle’s own comparison). If he does it, he has bound himself to something determinate: first, the signification of the terms is a fact, excluding what is contrary or contradictory; next, in declaring his belief, he at the same time declares that he does not believe in the contrary or contradictory, and is so understood by the hearers. We may grant what his theory affirms — that the subject of a proposition is continually under some change or movement; yet the identity designated by its name is still maintained,[21] and many true predications respecting it remain true in spite of its partial change. The argument in defence of the Maxim of Contradiction is, that it is a postulate implied in all the particular statements as to matters of daily experience, that a man understands and acts upon when heard from his neighbours; a postulate such that, if you deny it, no speech is either significant or trustworthy to inform and guide those who hear it. If the speaker both affirms and denies the same fact at once, no information is conveyed, nor can the hearer act upon the words. Thus, in the Acharnenses of Aristophanes, Dikæopolis knocks at the door of Euripides, and inquires whether the poet is within; Kephisophon, the attendant, answers — “Euripides is within and not within.â€� This answer is unintelligible; Dikæopolis cannot act upon it; until Kephisophon explains that “not withinâ€� is intended metaphorically. Then, again, all the actions in detail of a man’s life are founded upon his own belief of some facts and disbelief of other facts: he goes to Megara, believing that the person whom he desires to see is at Megara, and at the same time disbelieving the contrary: he acts upon his belief both as to what is good and what is not good, in the way of pursuit and avoidance. You may cite innumerable examples both of speech and action in the detail of life, which the Herakleitean must go through like other persons; and when, if he proceeded upon his own theory, he could neither give nor receive information by speech, nor ground any action upon the beliefs which he declares to co-exist in his own mind. Accordingly, the Herakleitean Kratylus (so Aristotle says) renounced the use of affirmative speech, and simply pointed with his finger.[22]

[21] This argument is given by Aristotle, Metaph. Γ. v. p. 1010, a. 7-25, contrasting change κατὰ τὸ ποσόν and change κατὰ τὸ ποιόν.

[22] Aristot. Metaph. Γ. v. p. 1010, a. 12. Compare Plato, Theætêt. pp. 179-180, about the aversion of the Herakleiteans for clear issues and propositions.

The Maxim of Contradiction is thus seen to be only the general expression of a postulate implied in all such particular speeches as communicate real information. It is proved by a very copious and diversified Induction, from matters of experience familiar to every individual person. It is not less true in regard to propositions affirming changes, motions, or events, than in regard to those declaring durable states or attributes.

In the long pleading of Aristotle on behalf of the Maxim of Contradiction against the Herakleiteans, the portion of it that appeals to Induction is the really forcible portion; conforming as it does to what he had laid down in the Analytica Posteriora about the inductive origin of the principia of demonstration. He employs, however, besides, several other dialectical arguments built more or less upon theories of his own, and therefore not likely to weigh much with an Herakleitean theorist; who — arguing, as he did argue, that (because neither subject nor predicate was ever unchanged or stable for two moments together) no true proposition could be framed but was at the same time false, and that contraries were in perpetual co-existence — could not by any general reasoning be involved in greater contradiction and inconsistency than he at once openly proclaimed.[23] It can only be shown that such a doctrine cannot be reconciled with the necessities of daily speech, as practised by himself, as well as by others. We read, indeed, one ingenious argument whereby Aristotle adopts this belief in the co-existence of contraries, but explains it in a manner of his own, through his much employed distinction between potential and actual existence. Two contraries cannot co-exist (he says) in actuality; but they both may and do co-exist in different senses — one or both of them being potential. This, however, is a theory totally different from that of Herakleitus; coincident only in words and in seeming. It does indeed eliminate the contradiction; but that very contradiction formed the characteristic feature and keystone of the Herakleitean theory. The case against this last theory is, that it is at variance with psychological facts, by incorrectly assuming the co-existence of contradictory beliefs in the mind; and that it conflicts both with postulates implied in the daily colloquy of detail between man and man, and with the volitional preferences that determine individual action. All of these are founded on a belief in the regular sequence of our sensations, and in the at least temporary durability of combined potential aggregates of sensations, which we enunciate in the language of definite attributes belonging to definite substances. This language, the common medium of communication among non-theorizing men, is accepted as a basis, and is generalized and regularized, in the logical theories of Aristotle.

[23] This is stated by Aristotle himself, Metaph. Γ. vi. p. 1011, a. 15: οἱ δ’ ἐν τῷ λόγῳ τὴν βίαν μόνον ζητοῦντες ἀδύνατον ζητοῦσιν· ἐναντία γὰρ εἰπεῖν ἀξιοῦσιν, εὐθὺς ἐναντία λέγοντες. He here, indeed, applies this observation immediately to the Protagoreans, against whom it does not tell, instead of the Herakleiteans, against whom it does tell. The whole of the reasoning in this part of the Metaphysica is directed indiscriminately, and in the same words, against Protagoreans and Herakleiteans.

The doctrine here mentioned is vindicated by Aristotle, not only against Herakleitus, by asserting the Maxim of Contradiction, but also against Anaxagoras, by asserting the Maxim of Excluded Middle. Here we have the second principium of Demonstration, which, if it required to be defended at all, can only be defended (like the first) by a process of Induction. Aristotle adduces several arguments in support of it, some of which involve an appeal to Induction, though not broadly or openly avowed; but others of them assume what adversaries, and Anaxagoras especially, were not likely to grant. We must remember that both Anaxagoras and Herakleitus propounded their theories as portions of Physical Philosophy or of Ontology; and that in their time no such logical principles and distinctions as those that Aristotle lays down in the Organon, had yet been made known or pressed upon their attention. Now, Aristotle, while professing to defend these Axioms as data of Ontology, forgets that they deal with the logical aspect of Ontology, as formulated in methodical propositions. His view of the Axioms cannot be properly appreciated without a classification of propositions, such as neither Herakleitus nor Anaxagoras found existing or originated for themselves. Aristotle has taught us what Herakleitus and Anaxagoras had not been taught — to distinguish separate propositions as universal, particular and singular; and to distinguish pairs of propositions as contrary, sub-contrary, and contradictory. To take the simplest case, that of a singular proposition, in regard to which the distinction between contrary and contradictory has no application, — such as the answer (cited above) of Kephisophon about Euripides. Here Aristotle would justly contend that the two propositions — Euripides is within, Euripides is not within — could not be either both of them true, or both of them false; that is, that we could neither believe both, nor disbelieve both. If Kephisophon had answered, Euripides is neither within nor not within, Dikæopolis would have found himself as much at a loss with the two negatives as he was with the two affirmatives. In regard to singular propositions, neither the doctrine of Herakleitus (to believe both affirmation and negation) nor that of Anaxagoras (to disbelieve both) is admissible. But, when in place of singular propositions we take either universal or particular propositions, the rule to follow is no longer so simple and peremptory. The universal affirmative and the universal negative are contrary; the particular affirmative and the particular negative are sub-contrary; the universal affirmative and the particular negative, or the universal negative and the particular affirmative, are contradictory. It is now noted in all manuals of Logic, that of two contrary propositions, both cannot be true, but both may be false; that of two sub-contraries, both may be true, but both cannot be false; and that of two contradictories, one must be true and the other false.

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[III.]