Note (return) — Chapter XII

The doctrine of Aristotle regarding "first principles" may perhaps be summed up as follows: All demonstrative science is based upon universals "prior in nature"--that is, upon à priori, self-evident, necessary, and immutable principles. Our knowledge of these "first and immediate principles" is dependent primarily on intellect (νοῦς) or intuitive reason, and secondarily on sense, experience, and induction. Prior to experience, the intellect contains these principles in itself potentially, as "forms," "laws," "habitudes," or "predicaments" of thought; but they can not be "evoked into energy," can not be revealed in consciousness, except on condition of experience, and they can only be scientifically developed by logical abstraction and definition. The ultimate ground of all truth and certainty is thus a mode of our own mind, a subjective necessity of thinking, and truth is not in things, but in our own minds. 714 "Ultimate knowledge, as well as primary knowledge, the most perfect knowledge which the philosopher can attain, as well as the point from which he starts, is still a proposition. All knowledge seems to be included under two forms--knowledge that it is so; knowledge why it is so. Neither of these can, of course, include the knowledge at which Plato is aiming--knowledge which is correlated with Being--a knowledge, not about things or persons, but of them." 715