TWO:It is remarkable that Aristotle, after repeatedly speaking of induction as an ascent from particulars to generals, when he comes to trace the process by which we arrive at the most general notions of any, does not admit the possibility of such a movement in one direction only. The universal and the individual are, according to him, combined in our most elementary sense-impressions, and the business of scientific393 experience is to separate them. Starting from a middle point, we work up to indivisible predicates on the one hand and down to indivisible subjects on the other, the final apprehension of both extremes being the office, not of science, but of Nous. This theory is equally true and acute. The perception of individual facts is just as difficult and just as slowly acquired as the conception of ultimate abstractions. Moreover, the two processes are carried on pari passu, each being only made possible by and through the other. No true notion can be framed without a firm grasp of the particulars from which it is abstracted; no individual object can be studied without analysing it into a group of common predicates, the idiosyncrasy of whichthat is, their special combinationdifferentiates it from every other object. What, however, we wish to remark is the illustration incidentally afforded by this striking aper?u of Aristotles analytical method, which is also the essentially Greek method of thought. We saw that, for our philosopher, syllogism was not the subsumption of a particular case under a general law, but the interpolation of a mean between two extremes; we now see that his induction is not the finding of a law for the particular phenomenon, but its analysis into two elementsone universal and the other individuala solution of the mean into the extremes. And the distinctive originality of his whole system was to fix two such extremes for the universea self-thinking thought in absolute self-identity at one end of the scale, and an absolutely indeterminate matter at the other; by combining which in various proportions he then re-constructed the whole intermediate phenomenal reality. In studying each particular class of facts, he follows the same method. The genus is marked by some characteristic attribute which one speciesthe prerogative species, so to speakexhibits in its greatest purity, while the others form a graduated scale by variously combining this attribute with its opposite or privation. Hence his theory, since revived by Goethe, that394 the colours are so many different mixtures of light and darkness.
TWO:
TWO:Our account of Neo-Platonism has, with the exception of a few illustrations, been derived exclusively from the earlier essays of Plotinus. His subsequent writings are exceedingly obscure and tedious, and they add little by way either of development or defence to the outlines which he had sketched with a masters hand. Whatever materials they may supply for a better appreciation, whether of his philosophy or of his general character as a thinker, will most profitably find their place in the final survey of both which we shall now attempt to give.
TWO:Bang! The shutter was closed again. But I did not give it up, for I needed the sisters' assistance to find a shelter somewhere. Once more I made the bell to clang, and although I was kept waiting a little longer, at last I heard voices whispering behind the gate and once more something appeared behind the trellis."It wants some time of two o'clock yet," he said. "My friend, Dr. Bruce, does not go to bed early, so I shall go round and look him up. We'll go into the other letters carefully when we have time, Prout, but for the present I should like to borrow this one if you have no objection. What do you say?"