Posterior Analytics   

and opinion of the same thing can co-exist in two different people
in the sense we have explained, but not simultaneously in the same
person. That would involve a man's simultaneously apprehending, e.g.
(1) that man is essentially animal-i.e. cannot be other than
animal-and (2) that man is not essentially animal, that is, we may
assume, may be other than animal.
Further consideration of modes of thinking and their distribution
under the heads of discursive thought, intuition, science, art,
practical wisdom, and metaphysical thinking, belongs rather partly
to natural science, partly to moral philosophy.

34

Quick wit is a faculty of hitting upon the middle term
instantaneously. It would be exemplified by a man who saw that the
moon has her bright side always turned towards the sun, and quickly
grasped the cause of this, namely that she borrows her light from him;
or observed somebody in conversation with a man of wealth and
divined that he was borrowing money, or that the friendship of these
people sprang from a common enmity. In all these instances he has seen
the major and minor terms and then grasped the causes, the middle
terms.
Let A represent 'bright side turned sunward', B 'lighted from the
sun', C the moon. Then B, 'lighted from the sun' is predicable of C,
the moon, and A, 'having her bright side towards the source of her
light', is predicable of B. So A is predicable of C through B.


Book II

1

THE kinds of question we ask are as many as the kinds of things
which we know. They are in fact four:-(1) whether the connexion of
an attribute with a thing is a fact, (2) what is the reason of the
connexion, (3) whether a thing exists, (4) What is the nature of the
thing. Thus, when our question concerns a complex of thing and
attribute and we ask whether the thing is thus or otherwise
qualified-whether, e.g. the sun suffers eclipse or not-then we are
asking as to the fact of a connexion. That our inquiry ceases with the
discovery that the sun does suffer eclipse is an indication of this;
and if we know from the start that the sun suffers eclipse, we do
not inquire whether it does so or not. On the other hand, when we know
the fact we ask the reason; as, for example, when we know that the sun
is being eclipsed and that an earthquake is in progress, it is the
reason of eclipse or earthquake into which we inquire.
Where a complex is concerned, then, those are the two questions we
ask; but for some objects of inquiry we have a different kind of
question to ask, such as whether there is or is not a centaur or a
God. (By 'is or is not' I mean 'is or is not, without further
qualification'; as opposed to 'is or is not [e.g.] white'.) On the
other hand, when we have ascertained the thing's existence, we inquire
as to its nature, asking, for instance, 'what, then, is God?' or 'what
is man?'.

2

These, then, are the four kinds of question we ask, and it is in the
answers to these questions that our knowledge consists.
Now when we ask whether a connexion is a fact, or whether a thing
without qualification is, we are really asking whether the connexion
or the thing has a 'middle'; and when we have ascertained either
that the connexion is a fact or that the thing is-i.e. ascertained
either the partial or the unqualified being of the thing-and are