[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.