Page:O. F. Owen's Organon of Aristotle Vol. 1 (1853).djvu/331

 proposition. But intellect, science, and opinion, and what is asserted through these, are true, wherefore it remains that opinion is conversant with the true or false, which yet may have a various subsistence, but this is the notion of an immediate and not necessary proposition. This also agrees with what appears, for both opinion is unstable, and its nature is of this kind, besides, no one thinks that he opines, but that he knows, when he thinks it impossible for a thing to subsist otherwise than it does, but when he thinks that it is indeed thus, yet that nothing hinders it being otherwise, then he thinks that he opines; opinion as it were being conversant with a thing of this kind, but science with what is necessary.

How then is it possible to opine and know the same thing, and why will opinion not be science, if a person admits that every thing which he knows he may opine? for both he who knows and he who opines will follow through media till they come to things immediate, so that if the former knows, he also who opines knows. For as it is possible to opine that a thing is, so likewise why it is, and this is the medium. Or if he so conceives things which cannot subsist otherwise, as if he had the definitions through which the demonstrations are framed, he will not opine, but know; but if that they are true, yet that these are not present with them essentially, and according to form, he will opine and not know truly both the that and the why, if indeed he should opine through things immediate; but if not