Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/809

 LOGIC 785 nizable fact consists of combinations of elementary parts (irplara). These irpura appear in cognition as irreducible elements denoted by the simplest elements of speech, names. The name is the mark for the sense-impression by which each irp&rov is communicated to us, for they are only known by sense, and are strictly individual. A composite thing is known through the combination of names of its parts, and such a combination (ffvpir oich) is a proposition or definition (yos). Each thing has its specific yos (O&amp;lt;K?OS yos), and a judgment is merely the expression of this. There is therefore no distinction of subject and predicate possible ; even identical propositions, the only possible forms under this theory, are mere repetitions of the complex name. Predication is either impossible or reduces itself to naming in the predicate what is named in the subject. It is the simple result of so consistent a nominalism that all truth is arbitrary or relative ; there is no pos sibility of contradiction, not even of one s self. The theory of Antisthenes, strange as it may at first sight appear, rested on certain metaphysical difficulties, which lie at the root of all the perplexity regarding the import of propositions, and it is not too much to say that these difficulties were kept continually in mind by Plato and Aristotle in their several attempts to explain the nature of knowledge. Both thinkers find themselves confronted with the ultimate question, What is the ground of unity in things known, and in what way does thought unite the detached attri butes of things into a subjective whole ? What is the nature of the unity which binds things, themselves in a sense units, into classes or wholes, and how comes it that in the judgment subject and predicate are, in a sense, set at one ? In Plato, for whom the solution was found in the participation in or imitation of ideas by things, we find more distinctly conceived the series of logical processes involved obscurely in the Socratic method. So far as positive statements regarding the ideas can carry one, it may be said that in essence these processes concern only the formation of or deduction from the concrete universal con cept or general notion. The ideas, in the Platonic system, at least in reference to the thought which apprehends them, resemble most closely class notions. A deeper significance often appears to attach to the relative processes of induction, whereby the resemblances of things, the idea in them, is disclosed, definition, whereby the content of the idea is made explicit, and division, whereby the external con nexion of ideas with one another, their system, is deduced, but such significance attaches to the more purely metaphysical aspects of the theory, and had no particular bearing on the Aristotelian treatment of the same problems. Not much is given in Plato towards a theory of the proposition, though sometimes an analysis of its elements is sketched ; and the method of division could yield only a few of the types of deductive reasoning. But, over and above these more de finite contributions towards the construction of a theory of know ledge, there are general aspects of the Platonic work of not secondary importance for the Aristotelian logic. In Plato the fundamental differences of earlier philosophic views appear in a new phase, and are elevated to a higher stage. Sophistic method is analysed, not as in forms actually existing, but in its essential features, and the opposition between sophist and philosopher is viewed as the opposition between opinion and knowledge. Heraclitic principle of change and Eleatic doctrine of unity are resolved into the more comprehensive opposition of the universal and the particular, while hints of an ultimate solution, of a universal which is at once and per se particular, are not wanting. The Socratic method of thought appears as that by which alone a solution of philosophic difficulties is to be obtained, and the consideration of thought in its relation to facts is marked out for special investigation. A deeper view of thought was thus made at once possible and necessary. 8. (b) Much, then, had been effected by Aristotle s predecessors in the way of preparing a definite body of problems and a method of dealing with them, problems and method which might fairly be said to belong to a theory of knowledge as such, ami from the occasional references in the Organon to opinions of contemporaries it is evident that many isolated attempts at solution of such questions were being carried on. In Aristotle we find a systematic examination of many of these problems, but it is left by him doubtful what place in the general scheme of philosophic sciences should be assigned to it. The distribution into physics, mathe matics, and first philosophy, or the wider classification of doctrines as poetic, practical, or theoretical, in no way enables us to class logic or the body of speculations making up the Organon. That the forms of proof analysed in these writings are of universal scope is unambiguously declared ; that the first principles assumed in all proof are dealt with in first philosophy is also made clear ; but the relations between the two doctrines so reciprocally related cannot be determined from any statement made by Aristotle him self. That he should have regarded the inquiries of the analytics as propaedeutic in character, and should have held that those who assume to discuss problems of first philosophy ought to have made themselves acquainted with the general theory of proof, is intelligible, and more than this significance cannot, we think, be assigned to the passage in the Metaphysics, on the ground of which the logical inquiries have been classed as the general, common introduction to the whole system. 1 For the close connexion between the analytical researches of the Organon and the inquiry into essence or .being as such forbids us to accept, in any strict sense, a separation of these as forming distinct and independent sciences. To metaphysics is assigned the consideration of the principles of proof, and the kind of inquiry making up first philosophy is described by Aristotle in a fashion which assimilates it most closely to the researches of the analytics. That which is left undecided by the Aristotelian classification is the relation of the logical inquiries to the organic whole of which first philosophy is the main or sole part. 2 To obtain any fresh light we must turn to the consideration of indica tions supplied by Aristotle as to the nature of the inquiries grouped under the head Analytics. 9. (c) Such indications are unfortunately most scanty. As we probably have not the Metaphysics in its full extent, actual or contemplated, the want of a clear separation between the inquiries belonging specially to first philosophy and those appropriate to the analytical researches may be due in part to the deficiency of our materials. There are, however, two lines of separation discernible, from which some useful inferences may be drawn. What we call the logic of Aristotle, i.e., the treatises making up the Organon, is roughly divisible into three parts : (1) the formal analysis of syllogism and its allied types of reasoning, with the more particular discussion of the elementary parts of reasoning = the proposition; (2) the theory of scientific proof and definition (apodictic) ; (3) the theory of probable arguments, or of reasoning based on currently received opinions and leading to conclusions more or less probable (dialectic). Certainly for Aristotle there was no such distinction between the first and the remaining two parts as would in any way correspond to the .modern separation of general or formal logic from the theory of knowledge, or material logic ; the three parts in conjunction make up one body of doctrine. Now dialectic is very specially indicated as being of a formal character, i.e., as dealing with no special matter, but with KOIVO., opinions, or types of opinions common to all sciences. 3 Apodictic, we may assume, is in like manner the formal study of what constitutes knowledge strictly so-called, the nature of the principles on which knowledge rests, the special marks distinguishing it, and the method by which knowledge is framed. But in every body of doctrine we may distinguish, according to Aristotle, three things, the genus or class of objects with which the demonstration is concerned, the essential or fundamental attributes, qualities of these objects, which are to be demonstrated of them, and, thirdly, certain common axioms or principles of demonstration, not themselves demonstrable, and not entering as integral parts into the demonstration, but lying in the background as security for the reasoning carried out by thought employing them. Can anything corresponding to these three facts be discovered, if we assume for the moment, what certainly is not explicitly stated by Aristotle, that analytic constitutes a special body of doctrine ? The genus or class about which the doctrine is concerned can only be reasoning itself, either as apodictic or dialectic, and the latter for a special reason may be left out of account ; curo&amp;lt;5ei&amp;lt;y, then, is the matter concerning which the doc trine is put forward. But &amp;lt;xiro8ei&amp;lt;s is a form of knowledge, that is to say, is subjective. The properties, therefore, of apodictic science can only be made clear if we consider on the one hand the objective counterparts of necessity and universality in thought, and on the other hand the nature of universality and necessity of thought itself. The common principles or axioms, finally, can only be such presuppositions as are made in apodictic or reasoning generally respecting thought in its relation to fact, as grasping or apprehend ing reality. The consideration of such axioms, it has been already seen, pertains to first philosophy. Analytics then would appear as an independent doctrine, holding of first philosophy on the one hand, both in regard of the common axioms and in regard of the attributes of being, by which it is a possible object of science, and on the other hand referring to the subjective treatment of thought, whether in relation to principles or to fact generally. A very similar result may be attained if we follow out a line of distinction indicated in more than one portion of the Metaphysics.* Separating the modes in which being is spoken of into four (1) rb Iv Kara. (rv^^f&riKos ; (2) rb 6f oij ar)6es Kal rb ^77 ov ws rb l/ev8os ; (3) rb t&amp;gt;v Kara ra ffx^^a-ra. rrs Karrjyopias ; (4) rb %v Svvd/j.i KO! tvepyeia Aristotle excludes the second from the special researches peculiar to first philosophy, the study of being as being, but neither excludes it from general consideration in metaphysics as a whole, 1 Metaph.. Iv. 100&quot;&amp;gt;b, 2. Sec Zeller, Ph. d. Gr., ii. 2 (3d od.), p. 184, n. ; Rassow, De Dfftnit. Not., 40, 47 ; Scliweglt-r, Commtnt zitr Metaph., iii. 161; anrl, contra, Prantl, Geich. tier Logik, i. 137. Zeller maintains the view that Aristotle intends to indicate the place occupied by the analytics in his penenil scheme of philohophy. 2 On Aristotle s use of the term Aoyixos and its allies, see (in addition to Waltz, Com. in Organ., ii. p. 353-55) Schwegler, Commentar zu At: Metaph.. vol. iv p 48-51. 3 See Anal. Post., i. 11 ; Rhet., i. 1, and in many passages. Cf. Heyder, Method d. Arist.,?. 348. Metaph.,. 4, v. 2!). ix. in. Cf. SchweRlcr, Com., iii. 241, iv. 29 fq., 18G ; and Brentano, Btdeutvny des Stienden nach Arist., 21 sq. XIV. 99