Note 21 — Chapter IV · DE INTERPRETATIONE.

The Stoics were opposed to Aristotle on this point. They recognized no logical difference in the character of the Antiphasis, whether applied to past and present, or to future. Nikostratus defended the thesis of Aristotle against them. See the Scholia of Simplikius on the Categoriæ, p. 87, b. 30-p. 88, a. 24. αἱ γὰρ εἰς τὸν μέλλοντα χρόνον ἐγκλινόμεναι προτάσεις οὔτε ἀληθεῖς εἰσὶν οὔτε ψευδεῖς διὰ τὴν τοῦ ἐνδεχομένου φύσιν.

The remarks of Hobbes, upon the question here discussed by Aristotle, well deserve to be transcribed (De Corpore, part II. ch. X. s. 5):—

“But here, perhaps, some man may ask whether those future things, which are called contingents, are necessary. I say, therefore, that generally all contingents have their necessary causes, but are called contingents in respect of other events, upon which they do not depend; as the rain, which shall be to-morrow, shall be necessary, that is, from necessary causes; but we think and say, it happens by chance, because we do not yet perceive the causes thereof, though they exist now. For men commonly call that casual or contingent, whereof they do not perceive the necessary cause; and in the same manner they use to speak of things past, when not knowing whether a thing be done or no, they say, it is possible it never was done.

“Wherefore, all propositions concerning future things, contingent or not contingent — as this, It will rain to-morrow, or this, To-morrow the sun will rise — are either necessarily true, or necessarily false; but we call them contingent, because we do not yet know whether they be true or false; whereas their verity depends not upon our knowledge, but upon the foregoing of their causes. But there are some, who, though they confess this whole proposition, To-morrow it will either rain or not rain, to be true, yet they will not acknowledge the parts of it, as To-morrow it will rain, or To-morrow it will not rain, to be either of them true by itself; because they say neither this nor that is true determinately. But what is this determinately true, but true upon our knowledge, or evidently true? And therefore they say no more, but that it is not yet known whether it be true or no; but they say it more obscurely, and darken the evidence of the truth with the same words with which they endeavour to hide their own ignorance.”

Compare also the fuller elucidation of the subject given by Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his System of Logic, Bk. III. ch. xvii. s. 2:— “An event occurring by chance may be better described as a coincidence from which we have no ground to infer an uniformity; the occurrence of an event in certain circumstances, without our having reason on that account to infer that it will happen again in those circumstances. This, however, when looked closely into, implies that the enumeration of the circumstances is not complete. Whatever the fact was, since it has occurred once, we may be sure that if all the circumstances were repeated, it would occur again; and not only if all, but there is some particular portion of those circumstances, on which the phenomenon is invariably consequent. With most of them, however, it is not connected in any permanent manner: its conjunction with those is said to be the effect of chance, to be merely casual. Facts casually conjoined are separately the effect of causes, and therefore of laws; but of different causes, and causes not connected by any law. It is incorrect then to say that any phenomenon is produced by chance; but we may say that two or more phenomena are conjoined by chance, that they co-exist or succeed one another only by chance.”