Such is the impressive closing chapter of the Sophistici Elenchi. It is remarkable in two ways: first, that Aristotle expressly addresses himself to hearers and readers in the second person; next, that he asserts emphatically his own claim to originality as a theorist on Logic, and declares himself to have worked out even the first beginnings of such theory by laborious application. I understand his claim to originality as intended to bear, not simply on the treatise called Sophistici Elenchi and on the enumeration of Fallacies therein contained, but, in a larger sense, on the theory of the Syllogism; as first unfolded in the Analytica Priora, applied to Demonstration in the Analytica Posteriora, applied afterwards to Dialectic in the Topica, applied lastly to Sophistic (or Eristic) in the Sophistici Elenchi. The phrase, “Respecting the process of syllogizing,[143] I found absolutely nothing prepared, but worked it out by laborious application for myself� — seems plainly to denote this large comprehension. And, indeed, in respect to Sophistic separately, the remark of Aristotle that nothing whatever had been done before him, would not be well founded: we find in his own treatise of the Sophistici Elenchi allusion to various prior doctrines, from which he dissents.[144] In these prior doctrines, however, his predecessors had treated the sophistical modes of refutation without reference to the Syllogism and its general theory.[145] It is against such separation that Aristotle distinctly protests. He insists upon the necessity of first expounding the Syllogism, and of discussing the laws of good or bad Refutation as a corollary or dependant of the syllogistic theory. Accordingly he begins this treatise by intimating that he intends to deduce these laws from the first and highest generalities of the subject;[146] and he concludes it by claiming this method of philosophizing as original with himself.
[143] Soph. El. xxxiv. p. 184, b. 1: περὶ δὲ τοῦ συλλογίζεσθαι παντελῶς οὐδὲν εἴχομεν πρότερον ἄλλο λέγειν, &c. (cited in a preceding [note]).
[145] Soph. El. x. p. 171, a. 1: ὅλως τε ἄτοπον, τὸ περὶ ἐλέγχου διαλέγεσθαι, ἀλλα’ μὴ πρότερον περὶ συλλογισμοῦ· ὁ γὰρ ἔλεγχος συλλογισμός ἐστιν, ὥστε χρὴ καὶ περὶ συλλογισμοῦ πρότερον ἢ περὶ ψευδοῦς ἐλέγχου.
[146] Ibid. i. p. 164, a. 21: λέγωμεν, ἀρξάμενοι κατὰ φύσιν ἀπὸ τῶν πρώτων.
[CHAPTER XI.]
PHYSICA AND METAPHYSICA.
Aristotle distinguishes, in clear and explicit language, a science which he terms Wisdom, Philosophy, or First Philosophy; the subject-matter of which he declares to be Ens quatenus Ens, together with the concomitants belonging to it as such. With this Ontology the treatise entitled Metaphysica purports to deal, and the larger portion of it does really so deal. At the same time, the line that parts off Ontology from Logic (Analytic and Dialectic) on the one hand, and from Physics on the other, is not always clearly marked. For, though the whole process of Syllogism, employed both in Analytic and Dialectic, involves and depends upon the Maxim of Contradiction, yet the discussion of this Maxim is declared to belong to First Philosophy;[1] while not only the four Aristotelian varieties of Cause or Condition, and the distinction between Potential and Actual, but also the abstractions Form, Matter and Privation, which play so capital a part in the Metaphysica, are equally essential and equally appealed to in the Physica.[2]
[1] Metaphys. Γ. iii. p. 1005, a 19-b. 11. Whether that discussion properly belongs to Philosophia Prima, or not, stands as the first Ἀπορία enumerated in the list which occupies Book B. in that treatise, p. 995, b. 4-13; compare K. i. p. 1059, a. 24.