Compare Eth. Nik. VI. iii. p. 1139, b. 25, where the Analytica is cited by name — ἡ μὲν δὴ ἐπαγωγὴ ἀρχή ἐστι καὶ τοῦ καθόλου, ὁ δὲ συλλογισμὸς ἐκ τῶν καθόλου· εἰσὶν ἄρα ἀρχαὶ ἐξ ὧν ὁ συλλογισμός, ὧν οὔκ ἐστι συλλογισμός· ἐπαγωγὴ ἄρα. — ib. p. 1141, a. 7: λείπεται νοῦν εἶναι τῶν ἀρχῶν. — p. 1142, a. 25: ὁ μὲν γὰρ νοῦς τῶν ὅρων, ὧν οὔκ ἐστι λόγος. — p. 1143, b. 1.
[75] Analyt. Post. I. ii. p. 72, a. 37: τὸν δὲ μέλλοντα ἕξειν τὴν ἐπιστήμην τὴν δι’ ἀποδείξεως οὐ μόνον δεῖ τὰς ἀρχὰς γνωρίζειν καὶ μᾶλλον αὐταῖς πιστεύειν ἢ τῷ δεικνυμένῳ, ἀλλὰ μηδ’ ἄλλο αὐτῷ πιστότερον εἶναι μηδὲ γνωριμώτερον τῶν ἀντικειμένων ταῖς ἀρχαῖς, ἐξ ὧν ἔσται συλλογισμὸς ὁ τῆς ἐναντίας ἀπάτης, εἴπερ δεῖ τὸν ἐπιστάμενον ἁπλῶς ἀμετάπειστον εἶναι.
Aristotle had inherited from Plato this doctrine of an infallible Noûs or Intellect, enjoying complete immunity from error. But, instead of connecting it (as Plato had done) with reminiscences of an anterior life among the Ideas, he assigned to it a position as terminus and correlate to the process of Induction.[76] The like postulate and pretension passed afterwards to the Stoics, and various other philosophical sects: they could not be satisfied without finding infallibility somewhere. It was against this pretension that the Academics and Sceptics entered their protest; contending, on grounds sometimes sophistical but often very forcible, that it was impossible to escape from the region of fallibility, and that no criterion of truth, at once universal and imperative, could be set up.
[76] Ibid. iii. p. 72, b. 20-30. καὶ οὐ μόνον ἐπιστήμην ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀρχὴν ἐπιστήμης εἶναι τινά φαμεν, ᾗ τοὺς ὅρους γνωρίζομεν.
Themistius, p. 14: ὧν δὴ ἄρχει πάλιν ὁ νοῦς ᾧ τοὺς ὅρους θηρεύομεν, ἐξ ὧν συγκεὶται τὰ ἀξιώματα.
The Paraphrase of Themistius (pp. 100-104) is clear and instructive, where he amplifies the last chapter, and explains Νοῦς as the generalizing or universalizing aptitude of the soul, growing up gradually out of the particulars furnished by Sense and Induction.
It is to be regretted that Aristotle should have contented himself with proclaiming this Inductive process as an ideal, culminating in the infallible Noûs; and that he should only have superficially noticed those conditions under which it must be conducted in reality, in order to avoid erroneous or uncertified results. This is a deficiency however which has remained unsupplied until the present century.[77]
[77] Sir W. Hamilton, Lectures on Logic, Vol. III. Lect. xix. p. 380, says:— “In regard to simple syllogisms, it was an original dogma of the Platonic School, and an early dogma of the Peripatetic, that philosophy (science strictly so-called) was only conversant with, and was exclusively contained in, universals; and the doctrine of Aristotle, which taught that all our general knowledge is only an induction from an observation of particulars, was too easily forgotten or perverted by his followers. It thus obtained almost the force of an acknowledged principle, that everything to be known must be known under some general form or notion. Hence the exaggerated importance attributed to definition and deductions, it not being considered that we only take out of a general notion what we had previously placed therein, and that the amplification of our knowledge is not to be sought for from above but from below, — not from speculation about abstract generalities, but from the observation of concrete particulars. But however erroneous and irrational, the persuasion had its day and influence, and it perhaps determined, as one of its effects, the total neglect of one half, and that not the least important half, of the reasoning process. For while men thought only of looking upward to the more extensive notions, as the only objects and the only media of science, they took little heed of the more comprehensive notions, and absolutely contemned individuals, as objects which could neither be scientifically known in themselves nor supply the conditions of scientifically knowing aught besides. The Logic of Comprehension and of Induction was therefore neglected or ignored, — the Logic of Extension and Deduction exclusively cultivated, as alone affording the rules by which we might evolve higher notions into their subordinate concepts.�
(Hamilton, in this passage, considers the Logic of Induction to be the same as the Logic of Comprehension.)