[149] In the language of Porphyry, προϋφέστηκε (priority in real existence) means nothing more than προε̈πινοεῖται (priority in the order of conception), Eisagoge, cc. xv., xvi.; Schol. Br. p. 6, a. 7-21.
[CHAPTER IV.]
DE INTERPRETATIONE.
In the preceding chapter I enumerated and discussed what Aristotle calls the Categories. We shall now proceed to the work which stands second in the aggregate called the Organon — the treatise De Interpretatione.
We have already seen that the Aristotelian Ontology distinguishes one group of varieties of Ens (or different meanings of the term Ens) as corresponding to the diversity of the ten Categories; while recognizing also another variety of Ens as Truth, with its antithesis Non-Ens as Falsehood.[1] The former group was dealt with in the preceding chapter; the latter will form the subject of the present chapter. In both, indeed, Ontology is looked at as implicated with Logic; that is, Ens is considered as distributed under significant names, fit to be coupled in propositions. This is the common basis both of the Categoriæ and of the treatise De Interpretatione. The whole classification of the Categories rests on the assumption of the proposition with its constituent parts, and on the different relation borne by each of the nine genera of predicates towards their common Subject. But in the Categoriæ no account was taken of the distinction between truth and falsehood, in the application of these predicates to the Subject. If we say of Sokrates, that he is fair, pug-nosed, brave, wise, &c., we shall predicate truly; if we say that he is black, high-nosed, cowardly, stupid, &c., we shall predicate falsely; but in each case our predicates will belong to the same Category — that of Quale. Whether we describe him as he now is, standing, talking, in the market-place at Athens; or whether we describe him as he is not, sitting down, singing, in Egypt — in both speeches, our predicates rank under the same Categories, Jacere, Agere, Ubi. No account is taken in the Categoriæ of the distinction between true and false application of predicates; we are only informed under what number of general heads all our predicates must be included, whether our propositions be true or false in each particular case.
[1] See above in the preceding chapter, [p. 60].
But this distinction between true and false, which remained unnoticed in the Categoriæ, comes into the foreground in the treatise De Interpretatione. The Proposition, or enunciative speech,[2] is distinguished from other varieties of speech (interrogative, precative, imperative) by its communicating what is true or what is false. It is defined to be a complex significant speech, composed of two terms at least, each in itself significant, yet neither of them, separately taken, communicating truth or falsehood. The terms constituting the Proposition are declared to be a Noun in the nominative case, as Subject, and a Verb, as Predicate; this latter essentially connoting time, in order that the synthesis of the two may become the enunciation of a fact or quasi-fact, susceptible of being believed or disbelieved. All this mode of analysing a proposition, different from the analysis thereof given or implied in the Categoriæ, is conducted with a view to bring out prominently its function of imparting true or false information. The treatise called the Categoriæ is a theory of significant names subjicible and predicable, fit to serve as elements of propositions, but not yet looked at as put together into actual propositions; while in the treatise De Interpretatione they are assumed to be put together, and a theory is given of Propositions thus completed.
[2] Aristot. De Interpret. p. 17, a. 1: λόγος ἀποφαντικός.
Words spoken are marks significant of mental impressions associated with them both by speaker and hearer; words written are symbols of those thus uttered. Both speech and writing differ in different nations, having no natural connection with the things signified. But these last, the affections or modifications of the mind, and the facts or objects of which they are representations or likenesses, are the same to all. Words are marks primarily and directly of the first, secondarily and indirectly of the second.[3] Aristotle thus recognizes these two aspects — first, the subjective, next the objective, as belonging, both of them conjointly, to significant language, yet as logically distinguishable; the former looking to the proximate correlatum, the latter to the ultimate.