[93] Ibid. xxxiv. p. 89, b. 10-20.

[CHAPTER VIII.]

ANALYTICA POSTERIORA II.

Aristotle begins the Second Book of the Analytica Posteriora by an enumeration and classification of Problems or Questions suitable for investigation. The matters knowable by us may be distributed into four classes:—

Ὅτι. Διότι.Εἰ ἔστι.Τί ἐστι.
1. Quod.2. Cur.3. An sit.4. Quid sit.

Under the first head come questions of Fact; under the second head, questions of Cause or Reason; under the third, questions of Existence; under the fourth, questions of Essence. Under the first head we enquire, Whether a fact or event is so or so? Whether a given subject possesses this or that attribute, or is in this or that condition? enumerating in the question the various supposable alternatives. Under the second head, we assume the first question to have been affirmatively answered, and we proceed to enquire, What is the cause or reason for such fact, or such conjunction of subject and attribute? Under the third head, we ask, Does a supposed subject exist? And if the answer be in the affirmative, we proceed to enquire, under the fourth head, What is the essence of the subject?[1]

[1] Analyt. Post. II. i. p. 89, b. 23, seq. Themistius observes, p. 67, Speng.: ζητοῦμεν τίνυν ἢ περὶ ἁπλοῦ τινὸς καὶ ἀσυνθέτου, ἢ περὶ συνθέτου καὶ ἐν προτάσει. Themistius has here changed Aristotle’s order, and placed the third and fourth heads before the first and second. Compare Schol. p. 240, b. 30; p. 241, a. 18. The Scholiast complains of the enigmatical style of Aristotle: τῇ γριφώδει τοῦ ῥητοῦ ἐπαγγελία (p. 240, b. 25).

We have here two distinct pairs of Quæsita: Obviously the second head presupposes the first, and is consequent thereupon; while the fourth also presupposes the third. But it might seem a more suitable arrangement (as Themistius and other expositors have conceived) that the third and fourth heads should come first in the list, rather than the first and second; since the third and fourth are simpler, and come earlier in the order of philosophical exposition, while the first and second are more complicated, and cannot be expounded philosophically until after the philosophical exposition of the others. This is cleared up by adverting to the distinction, so often insisted on by Aristotle, between what is first in order of cognition relatively to us (nobis notiora), and what is first in order of cognition by nature (naturâ notiora). To us (that is to men taken individually and in the course of actual growth) the phenomena of nature[2] present themselves as particulars confused and complicated in every way, with attributes essential and accidental implicated together: we gradually learn first to see and compare them as particulars, next to resolve them into generalities, bundles, classes, and partially to explain the Why of some by means of others. Here we start from facts embodied in propositions, that include subjects clothed with their attributes. But in the order of nature (that is, in the order followed by those who know the scibile as a whole, and can expound it scientifically) that which comes first is the Universal or the simple Subject abstracted from its predicates or accompaniments: we have to enquire, first, whether a given subject exists; next, if it does exist, what is its real constituent essence or definition. We thus see the reason for the order in which Aristotle has arranged the two co-ordinate pairs of Quæsita or Problems, conformable to the different processes pursued, on the one hand, by the common intellect, growing and untrained — on the other, by the mature or disciplined intellect, already competent for philosophical exposition and applying itself to new incognita.

[2] Schol. Philopon. p. 241, a. 18-24: τούτων τὸ εἰ ἔστι καὶ τὸ τί ἐστιν εἰσὶν ἁπλᾶ, τὸ δὲ ὅτι καὶ τὸ διότι σύνθετα — πρότερα γὰρ ἡμῖν καὶ γνωριμώτερα τὰ σύνθετα, ὡς τῇ φύσει τὰ ἁπλᾶ.