Yet Aristotle was so far consistent with his own doctrine of the derivation of knowledge from experience, that he made in almost every province of human knowledge, a vast collection of such special facts as the experience of his time supplied. These collections are almost unrivalled, even to the present day, especially in Natural History; in other departments, when to the facts we must add the right Inductive Idea, in order to obtain truth, we find little of value in the Aristotelic works. But in those parts which refer to Natural History, we find not only an immense and varied collection of facts and observations, but a sagacity and acuteness in classification which it is impossible not to admire. This indeed appears to have been the most eminent faculty in Aristotle's mind.
The influence of Aristotle in succeeding ages will come under our notice shortly.
CHAPTER V.
Additional Remarks on Aristotle.
1. ONE of the most conspicuous points in Aristotle's doctrines as bearing upon the philosophy of Science is his account of that mode of attaining truth which is called Induction; for we are accustomed to consider Induction as the process by which our Sciences have been formed; and we call them collectively the Inductive Sciences. Aristotle often speaks of Induction, as for instance, when he says that Socrates introduced the frequent use of it. But the cardinal passage on this subject is in his Analytics, in which he compares Syllogism and Induction as two modes of drawing conclusions[20]. He there says that all belief arises either from Syllogism or from Induction: and adds that Induction is, when by means of one extreme term we infer the other extreme to be true of the middle term. The example which he gives is this: knowing that particular animals are long-lived, as elephant, horse, mule; and finding that these animals agree in having no gall-bladder; we infer, by Induction, that all animals which have no gall-bladder are long-lived. This may be done, he says, if the middle and the second extreme are convertible: as the following formal statement may show.
Elephant, horse, mule, &c. are long-lived.
Elephant, horse, mule, &c. are all gall-less.
If we might convert this proposition, and say
All gall-less animals are as elephant, horse, mule, &c.:
we might infer syllogistically that
All gall-less animals are long-lived.