principia, since we do not know them by demonstration? This is the second question to be answered, in appreciating Aristotle's views about the Philosophy of Common Sense.

He is very explicit in his way of answering this question. He pronounces it absurd to suppose that these immediate principia are innate or congenital,-in other words, that we possess them from the beginning, and yet that we remain for a long time without any consciousness of possessing them, seeing that they are the most accurate of all our cognita. What we possess at the beginning (Aristotle says) is only a mental power of inferior accuracy and dignity. We, as well as all other animals, begin with a congenital discriminative power called sensible perception. With many animals, the data of perception are transient, and soon disappear altogether, so that the cognition of such animals consists in nothing but successive acts of sensible perception. With us, on the contrary, as with some other animals, the data of perception are preserved by memory; accordingly our cognitions include both perceptions and remembrances. Farthermore, we are distinguished even from the better animals by this difference -that with us, but not with them, a rational order of thought grows out of such data of perception, when multiplied and long preserved. And thus, out of perception grows memory: out of memory of the same matter often repeated, grows experience— since many remembrances of the same thing constitute one numerical experience. Out of such experience, a farther consequence arises-That what is one and the same, in all the particulars, (the Universal or the one alongside of the many) becomes fixed or rests steadily within the mind. Herein lies the principium of Art, in reference to Agenda, or Facienda-of Science, in reference to Entia.

Thus these cognitive principia are not original and determinate possessions of the mind-nor do they spring from any other mental possessions of a higher cognitive order, but simply from data of sensible perception: which data are like runaway soldiers in a panic-first one stops his flight and halts, then a second follows the example, afterwards a third and fourth, until at length an orderly array is obtained. Our minds are so constituted as to render this possible. If a single individual impression is thus detained, it will presently acquire the character of a Universal in the mind: for though we perceive the particular, our perception is of the universal (i.e., when we perceive Kallias, our perception is of man generally, not of the man Kallias). Again, the fixture of these lowest Universals in the mind will bring in those of the next highest order; until at length the Summa Genera and the absolute Universals acquire a steady establishment therein. Thus, from this or that particular animal, we shall rise as high as Animal Universally and so on from Animal upwards.

We thus see clearly (Aristotle says)-That only by Induction can we come to know the first principia of demonstration: for it ic by this process that sensible perception engraves the Universal

FIRST PRINCIPLES COME AT BY INDUCTION.

39

on our minds. We begin by the notiora nobis (Particulars), and ascend to the notiora naturâ or simpliciter (Universals). Some among our mental habits that are conversant with truth, are also capable of falsehood (such as Opinion and Reasoning): others are not so capable, but embrace uniformly truth, and nothing but truth-sch are Science and Intellect (Nouc). Intellect is the only source more accurate than Science. Now, the principia of Demonstration are more accurate than the Demonstrations themselves-yet they cannot (as we have already observed) be the objects of Science. They must therefore be the object of what is more accurate than Science: namely, of Intellect. lect and the objects of Intellect will thus be the principia of Science and of the objects of Science. But these principles are not intuitive data or revelations. They are acquisitions gradually made: and there is a regular road whereby we travel up to them, quite distinct from the road whereby we travel down from them to scientific conclusions.

Intel

The chapter just indicated in the Analytica Posteriora, attesting the growth of those universals that form the principia of demonstration out of the particulars of sense, may be illustrated by a similar statement in the first book of the Metaphysica. Here, after stating that sensible perception is common to all animals, he distinguishes the lowest among animals, who have this alone; then, a class next above them, who have it along with phantasy and memory, and some of whom are intelligent (like bees), yet still cannot learn, from being destitute of hearing; farther, another class, one stage higher, who hear, and therefore can be taught something, yet arrive only at a scanty sum of experience; lastly, still higher, the class men, who possess a large stock of phantasy, memory, and experience, fructifying into science and art.t Experience (Aristotle says) is of particular facts; art and science

Aristot. Anal. Post. II., p. 100, b. 2, dîλov dǹ örɩ ýμïv rà πowτa ἐπαγωγῇ γνωρίζειν ἀναγκαῖον· καὶ γὰρ καὶ αἴσθησις οὕτω τὸ καθόλου Toi; also Anal. Post. I., p. 81, b. 3, c. 18,-upon which passage, Waitz, in his note, explains as follows (p. 347): Sententia nostri loci hæc est. Universales propositiones omnes inductione comparantur, quum etiam in iis, quæ a sensibus maxime aliena videntur, et quæ (ut mathematica, rà ¿ž ȧpaipéσews) cogitatione separantur a materia quacum conjuncta sunt, inductione probentur ea quæ de genere (e.g. de linea, de corpore mathematico) ad quod demonstratio pertineat prædicentur ka☺' ávra et cum ejus natura conjuncta sint. Inductio autem iis nititur quæ sensibus percipiuntur: nam res singulares sentiuntur, scientia vero rerum singularium non datur sine inductione, non datur inductio sine sensu.'

Aristot. Metaphys. A. I. 980, a. 25, b. 27, ppóviμa μèv ävεv Tou μανθάνειν, ὅσα μὴ δύναται τῶν ψόφων ἀκούειν, οἷον μέλιττα, καὶ εἴ τι τοιοῦτον ἄλλο γένος ζώων 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.

are of universals. Art is attained, when out of many conceptions of experience there arises one universal persuasion respecting phenomena similar to each other. We may know that Kallias, sick of a certain disease-that Sokrates, likewise sick of it-thst A, B, C, and other individuals besides,-have been cured by a given remedy; but this persuasion respecting ever so many individual cases, is mere matter of experience. When, however, we proceed to generalize these cases, and then affirm that the remedy cures all persons suffering under the same disease, circumscribed by specific marks-fever or biliousness-this is art or science. One man may know the particular cases empirically, without having generalized them into a doctrine; another may have learnt the general doctrine, with little or no knowledge of the particular cases. Of these two, the last is the wiser and more philosophical man; but the first may be the more effective and successful as a practitioner.

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 amoris 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

ARISTOTLE OPPOSED TO INTUITIVE COGNITIONS. 41

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. 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.

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 Nicomachean Ethics), 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 (Nous) 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 (Nous) 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,

Aristot. Anal. Post. II. 19, p. 99, b. 26, εἰ δὴ ἔχομεν αὐτὰς, ἄτοποι συμβαίνει γὰρ ἀκριβεστέρας ἔχοντας γνώσεις ἀποδείξεως λανθάνειν — φανερὸν τοίνον ὅτι οὔτ ̓ ἔχειν οἷον τε, οὔτ ̓ ἀγνοοῦσι καὶ μηδεμίαν ἔχουσιν ἕξιν ἐγγίνεσθαι. ἀνάγκη ἄρα ἔχειν μέν τινα δύναμιν, μὴ τοιάυτην δ' ἔχειν ἢ ἔσται τούτων τιμιωτέρα κατ' ακρίβειαν. See Metaphys. A. 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. 2,982, a. 22) 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.

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 (Nouc) 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 (Nous), 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 (Nous). 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

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. 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-and then to descend downward by demonstration or deduction. The fact of motion he

*See also Aristot. Metaphys. Z. p. 1029, b. 1-14.