Section Four

221. So far, I have been dealing with the systems of philosophers who were unable to suggest a sufficient cause to explain the fact of ideas. I now have to discuss those who put forward a superfluous cause of this fact. By offering over-facile explanations for the existence of ideas, the first group clearly showed that they had not really got to the heart of the difficulty of this arduous philosophical problem (cf. 41-45). The others produced tortuous explanations to solve the problem, of which they were certainly aware, but failed to find the simplest and most natural solution. Both groups were deficient in method; each rejected one of the two principles which I assigned for the purpose of method (cf. 26-28). The first group failed by defect; the second through excess. Amongst the second, head and shoulders above them all, stood the outstanding genius of Plato.

CHAPTER 1 (Part 1)

222. Plato grasped with real insight the problem faced by those who seek to explain coherently the origin of our ideas.
To see this, it is sufficient to refer to any one of the many passages in his fine dialogues where the problem I raise about the origin of ideas is expounded with real clarity and in substantially the same way as I have presented it.
Here is one of the most famous passages on the subject.

Meno of Thessaly, a friend of Aristippos of Larissa, and a disciple of the overbearing philosophy of the Thessalian sophists, begins to argue with Socrates, who professed to know nothing apart perhaps from his capacity for pointing out to others the difficulties contained in even the most obvious philosophical issues. Very soon, they come to the core of our problem. In the dialogue, which I transcribe below, Socrates says that although he could not define virtue, he would like to investigate it. Meno then puts forward the following objection:

In his reply, Socrates brings out the full force of the objection which Meno himself had probably not realised:

This difficulty was formidable. Anyone giving it careful thought must have grasped the need, in any investigation, to know something, but not everything, of what he is seeking. Total ignorance would make investigation impossible. It is clearly absurd for anyone to be seeking while totally ignorant of what he is seeking. Our desire cannot be focused upon an object of which we know absolutely nothing nor can our action be directed towards a type of object which, as totally unknown, does not exist for us. On the other hand, if we had full knowledge of the truth we were seeking, we would no longer seek it; our mind would already possess it.
Meno's observation, therefore - the full impact of which Socrates astutely tried to indicate - was sound and produced the following conclusion: 'We cannot mentally investigate anything unless it is partly unknown and partly known.'

223. First, note the distinction between seeking something real in order to possess it and seeking some truth in order to know it.
When we are looking for a friend lost in a crowd of people, or a household item mislaid in some corner of the house, the difficulty does not arise. The friend or the item can be known perfectly and still be looked for. Meno's argument refers to the investigation of truths which are being sought so that they may be known. In this case, possessing them is not distinct from knowing them, but is one with knowing them. The source of the difficulty lies here: how can we seek truths without knowing them or, if we know them, why are we looking for them?.

In short, an argument of this kind implies that there is an intermediate stage between knowing something perfectly and being totally ignorant of it, and that the solution to the problem must lie in this state of intermediate chiaroscuro knowledge of the thing under investigation. This stage provides just enough light to enable us to recognise what we are seeking and to identify it when we encounter it, and enough obscurity to oblige us to seek it in order to be able to say we really know it.

224. To overcome the dilemma, Socrates resorted to an intermediate form of knowledge which he located in knowledge forgotten at our birth.
To lend greater credence to his view, he took his stand on the fact that we sometimes possess knowledge which we do not remember - a kind of soporific knowledge roused and brought into play as soon as its objects come once more to our attention. We then remember having known the objects previously; in other words, we recognise them as objects which we had forgotten despite their being previously lodged in our memory. Socrates applied his observation of this phenomenon, which happens daily to us all, to the difficulty he was faced with; he thought that it offered an adequate explanation of the problem. His argument comes down to the following: 'I note that, in man, there exists knowledge expunged from the memory and knowledge present in the memory. Present knowledge cannot be investigated because we already possess it. But we can certainly investigate expunged knowledge because we retain a general memory of it. Although this general memory is unsatisfying, it is enough to lead us to investigate more fully what has been cancelled in our memory and to resurrect its lost traces. If this happens to us daily, we can now presume that from birth we possess some potential, not actual knowledge of things. This knowledge is comparable to that which we have when, after learning something, we do indeed forget it, but not so finally that, when it is put before the mind, we cannot recall that we have had it previously. This single assumption, based upon a commonly experienced phenomenon, clearly explains how, from our very first movements, we manifest a burning desire goading us to seek truths and how, when we discover them, we recognise them as those we are eagerly seeking and satiate ourselves with the object of our desire.'

225. Socrates' theory was an ingenious discovery and gave a complete answer to the difficulty raised by Meno. However, Socrates, the great logician, did not stop there. The explanation he offered was bolstered by other observations and facts.
One of these observations concerned a youth who had not yet received instruction on some subject. Socrates questioned him so deftly that the interrelated sequence of questions elicited quite naturally from the youth geometrical truths, first easy and then difficult. This method, entirely made up of questions, ensured that Socrates could truthfully affirm that he was not teaching the youth anything. In fact, he never said: 'This is how it is' but let the youth tell him. Socrates was quite happy merely asking questions. From this experiment he concluded that the youth, by enunciating truths which he had never heard from anyone, already had such truths within him. Initially, they had lain dormant. All that was needed was someone to rouse him and re-focus his attention upon truths which had as it were been abandoned and forgotten. This helped him to recall them.

The fact that Socrates proposed to explain was incontrovertible because 1. it was perfectly true that the youth had not learnt from anyone the truths he was uttering; and 2. it was also true that when he was questioned in a suitable way he was able to discover those truths for himself without his being told them by anyone.
Anyone who carefully considers Socrates' solution will see that it can be expressed alternatively as follows.

When I ask the youth a series of appropriate questions, he answers correctly even on things that no living person has told him. Consequently, the young man has a faculty for judging (this is the only strict consequence that can be inferred from the fact). Socrates has to explain how, therefore, human beings possess the faculty of judgment, that is, the capacity to form judgments even about something previously unperceived by the senses and unknown.

To explain this fact, we have to say either that the judgments upon such things have been conveyed to us by other persons - which is excluded by our hypothesis - or that, from birth, we have possessed some inner faculty enabling us to attain such judgments.(149) In short, to use St. Augustine's expression, we have an in-built faculty for judging,(150) a norm guiding us to judge in one way rather than another. To explain this fact, Socrates posits that such judgments or truths are themselves innate, but have been obliterated. Thus, by accepting as innate the ideas to which these judgments refer, he offers a complete explanation of such a singular fact.

226. Note carefully how Plato's difficulty in attempting to explain the origin of ideas is the same as the one I put forward. Reduced to its final terms, it asks: 'How can there be in us a faculty for judgment which must be present granted that acquired ideas are acquired only by means of a judgment?'
The only difference between my way of formulating the problem and Plato's lies in my confining the inquiry to an explanation of the first judgment which we form when we use our intellectual faculties for the first time. Plato, who thinks that the difficulty occurs in the case of all judgments, even after the first, formulates the problem far too widely.

He did not in fact grasp adequately the way in which ideas or truths - and therefore judgments - are inter-linked. I point out that this interconnection is such that when the first judgment has been explained, all other judgments, which depend on it entirely, raise no further difficulty. The nub of the question consists wholly in knowing how the first judgment, with which the first idea is acquired, can be made (granted that every acquired idea is the effect of a judgment), if no prior, nonacquired idea is possible. But if we presuppose a single, prior idea, the possibility of the first judgment is explained. Similarly, the possibility of acquiring further ideas which are then used to form further judgments, and so on, is explained. In short, it is now clear how the faculty of judgment, which is the same as the faculty of reasoning, exists in human beings.

227. Later, I shall deal more fully with the defect in Plato's argument. At present, I am concerned that readers should recognise how clearly Plato realised that the whole difficulty of indicating the origin of ideas consists ultimately in explaining the existence within us of a potency capable of producing them, which is impossible if reason is devoid of ideas.
If we require further persuasion that Plato was highly aware of the difficulty, we could examine his success in discovering the nature of thought which for him consisted in making interior judgments, or reasoning: 'As I see it,' he says in Theaetetus, 'thought is the discourse which the spirit carries out with itself.' This explains why Plato also called reason, or the faculty of thought, discourse or word. This was not the case for Plato alone. The meaning of the word (**) was deeply rooted in the Greek language. Such a conception of human thought seems to be based upon a common-sense feeling. If necessary, it would not be difficult to show that such a manner of conceiving it did not, in fact, originate with the Greek peoples when they began to philosophise but sprang from an ancient tradition shared by all oriental nations. Nothing is truer and more natural than to conceive a thinker as someone who says something to himself, who pronounces a word. Saying something to oneself, uttering an interior word merely means affirming or denying something. But every affirmation and negation may be reduced to a judgment. Thought, therefore, begins with a judgment; judgment is the first act of the faculty of thought in humans. Our use of reason begins with a judgment, and the basic error of modern systems of logic and psychology is to start with acquired ideas and to speak of the formation of ideas as prior to, and independent of, the faculty of judgment [App., no. 13].

228. If judgment is the first operation of our spirit and if, therefore, this operation is not preceded by any other enabling us to acquire ideas, we are forced to accept as necessarily prior to judgment some innate element which makes judgment possible as the first operation of our spirit.

229. Plato, then, had presented the difficulty in question in too extensive a form.

He should have been satisfied with showing that the first act of our reasoning faculty was a judgment. The acquisition of any idea whatsoever is not merely a sense experience on our part, but a mental act, a word we address to ourselves. In short, it is the judgment which we form upon our sensations by which we state, at least implicitly, what the felt element, the term of the sensation we have experienced, is. If he had done this, he would then have been able to prove that some prior notion was needed enabling us to carry out the act by which we acquire the first idea. This notion would serve as a rule for the judgment in question; judging is merely the application of some rule to the thing we judge.

230. But Plato pushed the difficulty too far. Instead of working backwards to the first judgment which a person makes as his intellective faculties develop, and seeking its explanation (all other judgments are easily explained after the first), he thought that the same difficulty necessarily arose with every judgment. He reasoned: 'When a human being judges something by himself, he learns through his judgment alone a truth of which previously he was ignorant. Now, if he discovers, of himself, this truth which previously he did not know, how does he recognise it as true? How does he distinguish it from falsity? This can only occur if he already possesses within himself the type of the truth he is seeking. Comparing the truth which he finds with its type, he recognises it as the truth which he is seeking!' Thus, he admitted the existence of innate types of all truths. In other words, he admitted the existence of innate but shadowy ideas in us, as I said. These ideas are then revised and clarified by means of the senses which perceive external things as a copy and likeness of the ideas in question.

The flaws in such an argument, as I said - these are different words though it amounts to the same thing - consisted in this: Plato did not notice that although I acquire a new truth when I make a judgment about something, I do not need to have within me the specific type of the truth which I acquire by my judgment. All I need is a general type with which to compare the various propositions I may formulate about a thing, and distinguish from among them which is true and which false. I do not need to recognise this new truth, which I discover by a judgment, as a particular truth already noted by me, but merely as truth. In fact, in any individual thing, I am seeking only to judge what is true [App., no. 14]. I do not need to have within me as many innate types as there are ideas obtained through judgment. All I need is the type of truth so that, in comparing any opinion about things with this, I can distinguish truth which, I maintain, has the same appearance everywhere from error in them all. Thus Plato was led to put forward a fuller solution than necessary, and posit the existence in us of something more innate than required to explain the fact of the origin of ideas. This is contrary to the second rule already established (cf. 27) [App., no. 15].

231. This inaccuracy in Plato's argument seems to have been the reason for Aristotle's defection from his master's school.
In very many passages of his works Aristotle points out that Plato is guilty of linguistic impropriety when he attributes knowledge to the boy who, under questioning from Socrates, gives an answer which he has never learnt, and produces interiorly the solution to some mathematical problem. The youth certainly knew the principles of reasoning on which the solution was based. However, strictly speaking, he did not yet know the solution, which he deduced as conclusions are deduced from known principles. It is true, says Aristotle, that if one wishes, conclusions may be said to be virtually contained in the principles and that anyone who knows the principles, potentially knows the conclusions. But what do we mean by 'knowing something potentially'? Simply 'being able to know'. But being able to know something does not yet mean knowing it truly. We should not say therefore that the young man knew the mathematical truths. Saying that he knew them sic et simpliciter would imply that he had known the truths in themselves, and not only in the principles in which they are contained as in a fountain. If we want to say that the young man knew these truths, we have to add 'in a certain respect', that is, potentially, insofar as they are virtually contained in what he already knew. This eliminates Plato's apparent contradiction that we learn what we already know. Stated correctly, and in unsophisticated language, we should say: We do indeed learn what was previously unknown; our previous knowledge was only virtual knowledge, in other words, the knowledge necessary to lead us to proper, actual knowledge.'(151)

232. Aristotle's comment, although true, demolished only the inexact part of Plato's argument, without destroying the fundamentally sound element.
It would appear that Aristotle experienced what normally happens to many thinkers of lesser status than himself. When we discover something erroneous in a theory, we do not bother to carry out a deeper investigation, but reject it a priori, assuming it to be wholly false. We fail to realise that the error found in it is perhaps only a small part of the teaching, due perhaps to poor presentation or a defect in some part of the concept. Consequently, when I examine the criticism to which Aristotle subjects Plato and see how he appears not to have penetrated Plato's teaching, I can easily understand how the Platonists maintained that the teaching on ideas was much too elevated for Aristotle to understand, pursue and make his own.(152) They felt that a fundamental core of truth remained in Plato's teaching, though even they were unable to purify it and indicate it clearly - thanks to the opposite error of accepting Plato's teaching en bloc.

233. Certainly, Plato's argument was flawed by its application to consequential truths, such as the solution to a mathematical problem. Its force and strength, however, is shown when it is applied to indemonstrable principles, and to these alone.
When Plato applied his mode of argument to an inferred truth, that is, in showing how the mathematical truth which Socrates was able to extract from a person unversed in mathematics must have been known to the youth previously, he was leaving himself open to Aristotle's reply: 'It was not necessary for the young man to have prior knowledge of such a truth. All he needed was prior knowledge of the principles from which such a truth might be deduced, and reason, that is, the faculty for making a similar deduction.' Such a reply was unanswerable: the particular instance put forward by Plato was disproved because it was restricted to proving only that the geometrical truth extracted from the young man was known to him before he was questioned. But Aristotle's reply showed that the geometrical truth was unknown to the young man; what he knew beforehand were universal principles from which the geometrical truth was derived.

However, even if the particular instance cited by Plato was disproved in this way, the general argument remained intact. The spirit of this argument was not shattered; it retained its power. Everything depended on making that power felt, and it is felt immediately when, instead of applying it to inferred truths, it is applied to the first, indemonstrable truth, that which contains all the others in itself and, as the first, and most universal truth, is not contained by any previous truths.

234. At this point Aristotle sins by omission, or at least is obscure.
He was clearly able to distinguish first truths from derived truths, and appears even to have reduced first truths to one alone, the principle of contradiction.(153)

As I have shown, he explains the origins of derived ideas by means of demonstration or deduction from first truths and proves - against Plato - that they are not innate.

However, in endeavouring to explain the origin of first truths, Aristotle shows that he no longer feels the strength of Plato's argument, doubtless because Plato himself did not apply it more to first truths than to others and, when Plato was refuted about derived truths, Aristotle took it that Plato's whole cause was in ruins.
According to Aristotle, therefore, first truths arise in the following way.
They are such, he argued, that they cannot be deduced from other, prior truths. Otherwise, they would not be first truths. It follows also that they are indemonstrable. Consequently, they have to be BELIEVED without any demonstration.(154) In fact, everyone BELIEVES them. It is therefore necessary to accept the presence in us of a certain potency which enables us to have an immediate intuition of these truths and to assent to them.(155)

235. This, in substance, is the way in which Aristotle explains the formation of first notions. He accepts that we have a faculty enabling us to form them. In many ways, this faculty is similar to reflection in Locke's system.
As I said, such thinkers seem to argue like this: 'How does our explanation of the origin of ideas prove inadequate? What more do you want us to admit in man? We admit the presence of a potency capable of forming such ideas; isn't that enough for you? If we have the potency for forming these ideas, aren't they fully explained?' The argument is perfectly correct. However, it cannot satisfy anyone because it does not answer the question arousing our curiosity about the origin of ideas. We all agree that, if we assume in the mind a potency enabling us to form ideas, no further explanation is required if our assumption is true. The difficulty lies in knowing how this potency must be made if it is to be put to such use, that is, to form, or rather to intuit first ideas. Aristotle, after saying that the mind forms a universal idea from the remembrance of a number of sensations, immediately adds: But the mind is such that it is able to suffer this internally.(156) It is obvious that every difficulty can easily be resolved in this way. We are asked if there is any possibility of resolving a problem and we claim that, by positing SOMETHING unknown, we have solved the problem.

As I see it, both Aristotle and Locke still have to propose a rational solution: 'You accept the existence of an intellectual potency, that is, something in the human soul from which its cognitions can arise. So far, we agree perfectly. But let us take the investigation further and see whether such a faculty of thought can exist without any primal notion, or whether this faculty of thought is nothing more than the potency for using some concept or first idea which the human spirit bears within. In short, is it possible to conceive any thought whatsoever which differs from the seeing or applying a standard, an idea?' At this point, if our two philosophers refuse to let us broaden our investigations, they show themselves very narrow-minded and, in their intolerance, sow the seeds of their own error. But it seems unlikely that the parameters laid down by Aristotle and Locke will be generally accepted as the limits of perfect wisdom.

236. Aristotle, therefore, focused solely on the refutation of Plato's innate ideas in relation to inferred and obviously acquired ideas. He was also convinced that he had easily settled the issue in respect of first, immediate ideas (as he calls them) by saying that they owe their origin to the senses through a particular potency designed for that purpose and possessing all that is needed for its fulfilment. This potency he calls intellect. These assertions of his provide reasonable grounds for suspecting that he had not got to the heart of the problem of the origin of ideas. This becomes perfectly clear when he sets about explaining the origin of the primal, most universal ideas, which cannot be deduced syllogistically from previous ideas simply because there are no ideas from which all others are deduced.

My opinion is confirmed when I see how, in some passages in his works, he appears not to emphasise sufficiently the distinction between the operation of sense, which receives sensations, and the operation of the intellect, which thinks.

237. Clearly, he saw that they are distinct potencies, and does not confuse them as Condillac and others do nowadays(157) but he distinguished them solely by their objects without realising that the terms of the senses are not objects and without noticing an essential difference in their mode of operation. He assigned particulars as objects to the external senses, and universals to the intellect.(158) He also assigned to the intellect the power of abstracting universals from particulars (the acting intellect, intellectus agens) and of intuiting them after abstracting them (possible intellect, intellectus possibilis). This, however, still does not clearly explain the intrinsic difference between the operation of intellect and sense which we are dealing with here.

238. What makes this difference difficult to see is the continual use of our understanding. Its operations and those of sense are constantly mingled and closely united. Consequently, it is really difficult to distinguish between them. Without our realising it, we assign to sense what belongs solely to the understanding, of which we never form a rigorous, precise concept.

239. This also explains how we tend to endow animals with our reasoning power. We imagine that their behaviour follows the same pattern as our own. We also tend to attribute our feelings and thoughts to inanimate entia. We find it exceedingly hard to form a pure, wholly separate idea of a completely inanimate ens or of a strictly sensitive ens, because we ourselves are neither solely material nor solely sensitive, but made in such a way that at one and the same time we share in matter, sense and intellect.

240. As a result, on this issue Aristotle seems to commit the same mistake as Condillac (cf. 81-85) by endowing sense with the faculty of judgment(159) - a totally absurd notion because this faculty can only be present in the intellect.
I argue thus: either judging is identical with feeling or judging is different from feeling. If the former, the statement, 'The faculty of feeling is capable of judging', simply means 'The faculty of feeling is capable of feeling'. If the latter, how can we attribute essentially different acts to a single faculty and say, 'Sense judges'? As I said, this is as absurd as saying, 'The ears speak, or the nose sees or the hands sneeze', or as affirming any wild notion in which a potency is associated with acts not its own.

241. In fact, as soon as the external sense is divested of whatever does not pertain to it, and therefore of any judgment whatsoever, it remains a passive potency whereby the sentient subject receives certain modifications. In other words, it feels differently from the way it did before and feels something different from itself. At this stage, there is no thought, no act drawing the subject to say to himself: 'Such a thing exists'. The subject has not yet attributed existence (an extremely universal concept) either to itself or to anything outside itself.

As I said, we find it extremely difficult to imagine an ens endowed with sense alone because we neither have nor can have experience of this state. Our experience is of a subject, ourselves, endowed simultaneously with sense and intellect. We should need to imagine, by an act of abstraction, a subject which truly exists and feels but has no concept of existence, and has not attributed it to its own feeling. This attribution gives rise to a judgment; it is thought itself thinking. As human beings, we are accustomed to feeling and, simultaneously, to attributing existence to ourselves with thought. Hence, thinking that we exist, and feeling are so connected, granted our constant habit, that we fuse them. We need a finely tuned intellectual act to separate them. Reflecting constantly on this, we come to see clearly how mere feeling and judgment about existence are two very different things. Equally far removed from one another are the act in which myself in its entirety is experienced strictly as feeling (and hence feels the mode in which it exists) and the act whereby not myself in its entirety but in one of its potencies, the understanding, reflects on its own feeling of myself and, having the idea of existence built into it by nature, unites this feeling with the idea of existence. It then declares: 'Myself has EXISTENCE'. In this affirmation, 'Myself has EXISTENCE', myself is judged; it is the OBJECT of the judgment. On the other hand, myself even though modified by sensation, is not judged; it is not the OBJECT of any judgment. It is simply a single, undivided SUBJECT, without any composition or analysis of ideas, in a motionless and inactive state except for the act whereby it is and motionlessly feels. In this state, it can hardly be called myself. Consequently, to attribute judgment to the senses in this way as Aristotle seems to do in certain passages is to confuse two very distinct potencies and to bestow upon sense what pertains to understanding alone.

242. Aristotle's distinction, therefore, between sense and understanding seems inadequate. 'In Aristotle's view' (writes an author who had studied his work in depth), 'the sole difference between sense and understanding is that a thing is felt in its particularity with the same disposition which it exhibits outside our soul; the nature of the thing which is understood, on the other hand, is indeed outside the soul but does not have the mode of being outside the soul according to which common nature is understood. In other words, anything understood, without the principles individuating it, does not have this manner of being outside the soul.'
This amounts to saying that sense and intellect differ only as regards their immediate terms. Sense perceives the external thing with its particularities; intellect only perceives what is common in the external thing since it has within itself the power to focus exclusively on this issue by setting aside all the rest.(160)

243. In the first place, granted what has been said, the difficulty would always be to discover how the understanding can perform such abstractions without first possessing a universal to guide its operation. When a person sets out to divide a number of objects into two classes, he has to have the distinctive idea constituting these two classes; he has to know in advance the universal quality which differentiates them. Thus, to enable the acting intellect to differentiate and separate what is common from what is particular, it is absolutely necessary that it has within itself some idea which acts as a norm for such a separation. This idea enables the intellect to know the various degrees of universality exhibited by the parts of the object which it endeavours to purify, if I may use this metaphor employed by the Ancients.

244. But leaving this issue and turning to our aim, it was not enough to point out that it is proper to sense to perceive the external, individualised thing with all its particularities just as it stands. We also had to ask whether, in such a perception, we address some message to ourselves, such as: 'That which I feel, exists.' If so, if we assent to this proposition, we express an internal judgment. But if we express it, is this judgment merely simultaneous with sensation, or is it the sensation itself? This is the nub of the question.

It does not take much thought on our part to realise that we experience sensation in some external part of our body; on the other hand, the judgment we form as a result of a sensation is an internal word spoken to ourselves. It does not relate to any point of the body, to a hand, a foot or to any other part, as it does in the case of a sensation. We are therefore forced to state that a judgment has nothing to do with organic sensation. Only sense feels, but it does not add any judgment to its sensations.(161) This act, completely different from feeling, is added by our understanding. Consequently, the difference between sense and understanding does not consist solely in perceiving what is particular and what is universal but also and above all in simply perceiving, and judging this perception. Sense perceives what it feels but the understanding judges what is felt, and thus understands it. To perceive is simply to feel; to understand is to judge.

245. Aristotle, therefore, did not distinguish clearly enough between simple, passive feeling and judgment, which is active and embraces two distinct terms, one at least of which is universal. From the union of these two, another composite apprehension is formed which is the product of the judgment. Consequently, he thought that, to explain the origin of first ideas, it was sufficient to posit an intellect which was a kind of sense. When acted upon by universals, this sense inevitably perceived them as a passion(162) similar to that by which sense perceives sensible things. Noting that these natural universals did not exist outside the mind, he pictured an inner faculty which he endowed with the potency of making particulars into universals, by a process of abstraction, that is, by removing from particulars any common features they had (as though common were not the same as universal) and leaving the rest. He took no care to see how this was done, or even if it were possible without supposing some innate element in the human spirit.

It would seem from a passage in Themistius' work that Aristotle reduced the operation which he attributed to the acting intellect to finding in particulars what was already there, that is, the common elements, without adding anything of its own. If this were true, we would have to believe that Aristotle had not grasped the nature of the universal which, as universal or common, is not in particular things. They contain only the act of the universal, if I may put it like that, which is not in any way common. The passage to which I am referring runs as follows:

246. It is no surprise that Aristotle should allocate to sense the power to perceive even the common nature in singular things; he had endowed it with the ability to judge.
It is impossible to judge in the absence of any common notion, because judging means placing some objects or qualities in a class. A class, however, is formed only by means of something common to the classified individuals.
To attribute judgment to sense, therefore, seems to go beyond endowing it with the apprehension of what is common in particulars, as Themistius claims Aristotle does. According to Themistius, apprehension for Aristotle is never alone, but always united with particulars. But judgment requires in addition the idea of what is common, distinct from the particular, so that this idea may be applied to different particulars and enable them to be classified and judged [App., no. 16].

247. Let us look once more at the statement: 'Sense perceives what is common but united with particulars.' This is either a contradiction or makes no sense.
What is common in particulars! This can only mean: 'The common element of that which is not common.' Can what is common be contained in particulars? Common merely means not being particularised, not being limited to a real individual. If ten thousand individuals were to come before my senses one after the other, I should, of course, register the impression of so many particulars but I would still not have perceived anything common. Briefly, what is common is merely a relationship of a several individuals with what is in my mind. After perceiving them I compare them with each other and note their differences, always, of course, as far as I perceive them within me. This means that in perceiving a number of individuals, I note what goes to make up one idea and what goes to make up different ideas in me. What is similar in them, this relationship of likeness, is called their common nature (cf. 180-187). But no relationship between a number of individuals and my ideas is to be found in any way in each one considered in itself and, therefore, outside my mind. They have to be seen in a single conception proper to my mind. The senses have no place here as they perceive only real individuals one at a time, in isolation from the rest [App., no. 17]. In short, what is required is an inner faculty entirely distinct from the bodily senses. This faculty, by comparing individuals after conceiving them intellectually, assigns something common to each of them. In other words, it finds an idea proper to a number of them which allows them to be thought under this concept. Only after this operation does the word common begin to have meaning and be used correctly. To say that the senses perceive what is common means supposing the completion of the operation with which we find something common in things that have acquired an existence in the mind. It also means supposing that this thing discovered by the understanding and in the understanding is the object of the senses.

248. Thus, we find ourselves in the odd and absurd situation of accepting that the matter proper to sense is a product of the understanding, and that sense no longer furnishes the understanding with the matter for thought, but the understanding furnishes the senses! Aristotle's misuse of the word common propels him from one extreme to another and causes him to accept a proposition directly contrary to the basic principle of his system on which his whole argument hinges, that is, that sense furnishes matter to the understanding.

249. Aristotle says that what is common, abstracted from what is particular, is the object of the intellect alone.
Let us see more closely if this statement harmonises with the previous teaching of our philosopher.
What is common cannot exist before it is abstracted; it is abstraction which brings it into existence (assuming it is not innate). The word common merely means what is similar in a number of individuals and separate from what is dissimilar, as one nature is separate from another and especially from its opposite.

Aristotle, in affirming that what is common is the object of the intellect alone, or asserting that universals exist only in the soul, or contradicting Plato in the statement: 'The universal animal is either nothing or subsequent to the individual animal - and the same can be said of every common element',(164) comes close to feeling the whole difficulty of explaining how we form universals or common elements. In doing this, he moves away from his own views. To say on the one hand: the object of the intellect is what is common in so far as it is common, or - to put it in another way - the object of the intellect are the relationships of subsistent entia with possible entia; and to say on the other hand: what is common in so far as it is common does not exist in individual acts but only in the mind, is to say one and the same thing.

But, if this is true, and if it is true that sense perceives individuals and not universals as such, it follows that sense does not perceive the object of the intellect, but that the term of sense and the term of the intellect are completely different. The first is essentially singular, and the second universal and common. However, if the singular is the opposite of the universal and in the singular as such there can be no universal or common element because they are essentially mutually exclusive notions, how can the intellect receive its object from sense? All that sense can give is of an essentially different and contrary nature to that which the mind can intuit.

This is where the difficulty lies and, as anyone examining it carefully will see, it is the same as that which forms the object of our discussion, and keeps reappearing in a new guise.(165)

(148) St. Augustine deals with this problem in an ingenious way in Book 10 of his De Trinitate and concludes: Quilibet igitur studiosus, quilibet curiosus non amat incognita, etiamsi cum ardentissimo appetitu instat scire quod nescit. Aut enim jam genere notum habet quod amat, idque nosse expetit etiam in aliqua re singula; vel in singulis rebus quae illi nondum notae forte laudantur, fingitque animo imaginariam formam qua excitetur in amorem. [No studious or inquisitive person loves what is unknown, even though he is most ardent and persistent in his quest to know things unknown to him. For he either knows in general what he loves, and desires to know it in an individual, or he forms - in individual things which he does not yet know, yet whose merits he has heard praised - an imaginary picture in his mind to stimulate his love]. The second way, by means of which we occasionally wish to know something unknown to us, assumes some development of faculties and acquired knowledge. The first way, by means of which we wish to know in particular what we know in general, can lead us to the source of all our cognitions, as we shall see later.

(149) A judgment is merely an inner word, an affirmation.

(150) De libero arbitrio 2,10.

(151) Posterior, 1.

(152) See Atticus' remark, quoted by Eusebius, Praep. Ev., 15: 13.

(153) Metaphy, 4.

(154) By demonstration is meant the deduction of one truth from another which is already accepted as indubitable.Now, if we believe in first truths without any demonstration, that is, without any deduction from other truths, does this mean that we believe them without any reason?If we answer affirmatively, we destroy human intelligence and sow deep scepticism. This is the dismal fate of the system of those who take as their criterion of truth blind common sense, that is, an authority lacking any reason to justify it. The most fatal of all the new types of scepticism was that sown involuntarily by Reid; it would reach its full development in Kant. If, on the other hand, we answer that we do not believe in first truths out of blind necessity but because they themselves are reasons, a shining light which overcomes and almost creates our assent, we shall have great difficulty in reconciling Aristotle's system (at least as it is commonly understood) with the belief which Aristotle claims we give without demur to first truths. In fact, if these first truths are reasons, how can they ever be deduced from the external senses? Such reasons are not to be found in external things which we perceive through our senses; external things are not reasons but facts. And facts are specific; reasons universal.These reasons or first truths in which we believe must therefore either be imparted to us instantaneously along with sensations, as the Arabs said, or they must somehow exist independently within us. If the Arab philosophers are correct, first truths are not posited innate within us but placed innate in intelligences other than ours - which does not explain how we acquire such truths from the senses. In the second case, they must somehow exist of themselves within us so that, by first believing in them, we may subsequently believe in all other derived ideas which have their motive for their credibility in first truths. In other words, we recognise first truths as innate. In short, we either have to accept scepticism or admit that there is in us some per se visible light bestowed by nature.

(155) Posterior, bk. 1.

(156) Posterior, bk. 2, final chapter. The term suffer, used repeatedly by Aristotle to indicate intellectual intuition, shows that he conceived intellectual intuition as a passive experience totally similar to that of sense. In fact, he accepts as a principle that, to explain the workings of the intellect, it is helpful to proceed on the analogy of sense operation. See De Anima, particularly book 3. Conversely, to explain sense operations, he often resorts to the operations of the intellect. Thus, he occasionally attributes to the senses what is proper solely to the mind (such as judgment), and attributes to the intellect what is proper to the senses (such as passive perception of the impressions of particulars). Or, to put it more clearly, he associates the operation of both faculties to both these distinct potencies. It is no longer difficult therefore to explain intellectual acts. Sense, in which intellectual operations are supposed, is used to explain them and, in sense, intellectual acts themselves are taken as presuppositions. This is an obvious petitio principii.

(157) The distinction made by Aristotle between sense and intellect is correctly noted by Sextus Empiricus in Book 7, Against the Logicians, §217 ss. In explaining the teaching of Aristotle and Theophrastus, he maintains that we receive into our spirit from the senses the likenesses of external things. These likenesses, however, do not constitute the soul's thinking. For thinking to arise, we must suppose that the soul is endowed with a certain personal energy or force entirely its own through which it can, by an act of will, derive from the fantasy of singular things the concept, say, of man in general. Without this internal power of the soul, an ens could receive sensations, even have memory and imagination, but would still be devoid of thought. The term by an act of will used to describe the operation of the mind in forming ideas, shows that Aristotle did not assume this to be a blind operation but one carried out by means of an inner light, as is the case with all acts of will. Anyone doubting this, only needs to see how Sextus Empiricus had a little earlier expressed the same concept. He said that, in forming ideas, the intellect operates by virtue of a judgment and by our choice. This shows also that Aristotle had at least glimpsed the extremely important truth that we cannot form an idea of anything determinate (we cannot begin to carry out particular cognitive acts) except through a judgment; forming ideas simply means judging about sensations. Although it seems that elsewhere Aristotle describes the formation of ideas differently, we have to put this down either to lack of consistency or to his having seen truth on one occasion without realising its importance and applying it consistently.

(158) In the passage above, Sextus Empiricus whilst expounding Aristotle's thought states: 'Generally speaking, things are twofold by nature; some are sensible things, some perceived by the mind.' Such expressions are often to be found in Aristotle's work. But if these things are different in nature, how do we pass from one nature to the other? Aristotle locates this transition in the fact that phantasms of singular things, as he calls them, are universal in potency (De Anima, bk. 2, Lect. 12).But what is meant by these expressions? How do you know that singular phantasms are universal in potency? Obviously, from the fact that you suppose that the intellect derives universals from them. Consequently you say: 'If the intellect derives universals from them, it is inevitable that phantasms are suitable recipients of an operation. But being suitable for handling by the intellect so that universals are derived from them is precisely the meaning of the expression, 'to be universal in potency.' In that case, however, being universal in potency cannot explain how the intellect's operation on them takes place. This operation is merely stated, not explained by the expression. Claiming to explain how singular phantasms communicate with ideas, or universals, by saying that ideas are derived from phantasms which are universal in potency, is a vicious circle. It is exactly the same as saying: 'Universals are derived from phantasms because universals can be derived from shadows.' In fact, saying that phantasms are universal in potency simply means asserting that ideas (a synonym for universals) can be derived from them; it asserts what we are trying to explain: it affirms in mysterious and obscure language what we propose, in clear, common words, to explain and demonstrate.

(159) De Anima, bk. 3, c. 9; Metaphysics 1, and in many other passages in his works.

(160) What kind of power would this be? Sense would be much more powerful, because it would perceive both the universal and what is proper to itself. Understanding in this case would be simply a limited sense. In so many passages, Aristotle shows a genuinely deep awareness of the superiority of the understanding over sense but we have to say either that he does not realise the consequences of his theory (and was thus inconsistent in his thought), or that his entire teaching must be interpreted by adopting a different, more profound and more learned approach. At this point, I wish the reader to note that I do not intend to condemn Aristotle's thinking directly, but the more obvious interpretation of some of his terms or, at least, the meaning put upon them by so many commentators.

(161) The instinct to pursue one thing and flee from another has its origin in the senses. This is not a judgment; it is a passive tendency, a spontaneous, involuntary fact. We are always inclined to assume, however, that animals act instinctively as a result of some knowledge or judgment. The precise reason for this is that we are accustomed never to act consciously without adding a judgment to our actions; we are rational beings. But sometimes we react so quickly that we do not avert to the judgment.

(162) As I have already pointed out, Aristotle attributed judgment to sense as he attributed feeling to the understanding. Thus in Aristotle's work, two intrinsically distinct operations, perception and judgment, are bestowed on each of these faculties (cf. De Anima, bk. 3, lect. 11). At this point, I should like to show how he overlooked a fertile truth about the understanding. This, however, would take too long, and I shall merely point out how in the process Aristotle bypasses the difficulty of the origin of ideas which we are trying to solve. As soon as one assumes that judgment is always associated with sensation, sense becomes a miniature intellect and there is no longer any difficulty about explaining the communication between sense and intellect, the only difficult step. Actually, the difficulty consists entirely in the transition from sensation to judgment. But as soon as these two things are combined to form a single potency, there is no question of a transition. The whole question is displaced from the transition between feeling and judgment to the transition between judgments. A really difficult problem has become the easiest in the world, and scarcely worthy of consideration as a serious issue. This would-be solution to the origin of ideas is like someone answering, when asked how to swim across a river, 'It's easy, you only need a boat.' The answer is quite irrelevant to the issue.

(163) Themistius: Paraphrasis in Aristotelis Posteriorum, bk. 2, c. 35. The truth is that sense does not perceive universals either in association with, or separate from particulars; consequently, it is absurd to say that they perceive it. In fact, the word universal refers to the end-product of the operation of the intellect, even in Aristotle's system. How, then, can sense perceive something not yet in existence? The universal has no existence prescinding from the intellect in which it acquires existence.

(164) De Anima, bk. 1, c. 1.

(165) I say that it is the same because the problem posed above was this: 'How can we begin to judge without an idea or a universal if the senses provide us only with mere particular sensations?' The difficulty is this: 'The intellect has only ideas as object, that is, universals. But the senses provide it only with sensations, which are solely particular. Will it shape these ideas for itself, that is, will the intellect make these individual perceptions universal? If so, it needs to have some universal element in itself; otherwise it can never add to sense perceptions the universality of which they are totally devoid.' These are merely two ways of putting forward the same difficulty. In the first, the problem consists in explaining how the understanding can judge without some concept with which it is naturally endowed. In the second, the problem lies in explaining how the understanding can begin to perceive something without itself possessing any idea. It will clearly be seen that the problem is the same if we notice carefully that perception for the understanding is the same as judgment when we are dealing with real things such as the existence of bodies. What the understanding perceives is a term which it judges. This term as judged is the object of the understanding, which makes a judgment about it, and thus makes an object of something that was not its object. I cannot stop to show how this judgment may be more or less explicit, or more or less adverted to. For our present purposes, it is sufficient to understand that the understanding perceives by judging.