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.