following Aristotle there flourished Pyrrho, the father of the Skeptics, an assailant of all philosophy, who taught that all things are equally unknown and uncertain.14
VII. About 140 A.D. flourished Galen, the first of the commentators. The floruit of Porphyrius is 325. In 525 Boethius was born: he was the first to translate Aristotle’s Logic into Latin. 614: John Philoponus the grammarian. 800: John of Damascus. 1000: Eustathius and Eustratius. 1100: Michael of Ephesus and Michael Psellus. 1200: George Pachymerus. In these same times the Arabs Alfarabius, Avicenna, and Averroes won a great reputation. Then followed the age of the Scholastics, whose thorny and uncouth philosophy retained its influence until 1453, when after the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, the literary heritage of the Greeks was brought over to the West.15
VIII. The Eclectics.16 Although the best of the ancients, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc., are rightly included among the Eclectics because they were not enslaved to any master but adopted the views that seemed to them to be closest to the truth, the term “eclectic” was especially given to those who, after the formation of the different schools, refused to join any one of them. We note Potamon of Egypt, who flourished about the time of Augustus and was imitated by the philosophers of Alexandria, though they leaned more toward the views of Plato; some of them were pagan, others Christian. [They include] from the third and fourth centuries, Ammonius, Plotinus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Syrianus, and Olympiodorus. With the revival of humane letters in the West, philosophy too was improved, especially through the strenuous efforts of those who have earned the gratitude of the human race by editing and interpreting the books of the ancients. With great acclaim, however, [moderns] have pointed out or entered upon a new road: in physics, Bacon, Descartes, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton; in ethics Grotius, Cumberland, and Pufendorf (for it was the Old Academy that was revived by Mirandula, Ficino, and the Earl of Shaftesbury); and Locke in logic and metaphysics.
Prolegomena The Definitions and Divisions of Logic
A faculty (habitus) is a more or less efficacious ability (facultas) to act, formed by repeated actions. Faculties are either intellectual or moral: the former strengthen and perfect the powers of the intellect, the latter the powers of the will.
There are five distinct names (they are not distinct kinds) given to our intellectual faculties: intelligence, wisdom, prudence, science, and skill, which in Greek are: nous, sophia, phronesis, episteme, techne.1 Intelligence is the faculty of first principles. Wisdom is knowledge of the most excellent things. Prudence is the faculty of acting with right reason. Science is the faculty of demonstration. Skill is the faculty of producing things with right reason. Philosophy is the whole bundle of these liberal arts, and is commonly defined as “acquisition of the knowledge (cognitio) of human and divine things, which we pursue by the sole power of human reason.” Philosophy is frequently divided into rational philosophy (or logic), natural philosophy, and moral philosophy.2 Logic is the art which directs the mind in its acquisition of knowledge of things, and may also be called science (scientia).3 Others define it as “the art of investigating and expressing truth.”4 The material object of any skill or science is the material which it treats. The formal object is the reason or purpose of treating it. The material object of logic is the intellectual operations. The formal object is to be directed to the discovery of truth. There are two natural faculties of the mind, the understanding and the will. The understanding is the faculty (facultas) which is concerned with getting to know the truth. The will is the faculty (facultas) which seeks good and avoids evil.5
There are three classes of operations in the intellect: (1) apprehension, (2) judgment, and (3) discourse; a twofold division into apprehension and judgment is also possible. Judgments are subdivided into noetic and dianoetic judgments. Hence logic is divided into three parts, defined by the kind of operation each is dealing with.6
CHAPTER 1
On the Divisions of Apprehension
Apprehension is also called perception, concept, notion, intention,1 and idea; the word which signifies it is called a term.
Apprehension is a bare representation of a thing without any opinion (sententia) of the mind, and is either noncomplex, for instance pen, or complex, for instance, pen in the hand.
Judgment is an act of the mind by which it forms an opinion about two ideas. The sign [of a judgment] is a proposition or expression, which is an utterance that affirms or denies something of something; it is also called predication.
Discourse is an act of the mind by which from two or more judgments a third is inferred.
1. Ideas are divided into sensations, imaginations, and pure intellections.2
Sensation is twofold, external and internal. External sensation is “the perception of a corporeal thing impacting the organs of the body.”
Imagination is “the idea of a corporeal thing which is not impacting the body.”
A pure intellection is “any idea which is not reached or grasped by any of the bodily senses.” By intellection we not only discern things which are different from body as well as their modes, but we also attain more accurate ideas of numbers and of shapes which have several parts than those which the senses provide.3
The powers of bodies to excite ideas of “colors, sounds, smells, tastes, heat and cold” are called secondary qualities, or qualities which are sensible in the proper sense that we perceive each of them only by a single sense. Things which are perceived by more than one sense, by both sight and touch, for example, such as extension, figure, position, motion and rest, are primary and true qualities of bodies; hence they have the power to excite ideas of secondary qualities to which there is nothing corresponding in the bodies themselves. There are also two ideas which can be perceived both by internal and by external sense, and these are duration and number.
2. Imagination calls up a rather weak idea of a thing that had been formerly perceived by sense. And the mind can form only images whose elements have all been perceived by sense.
3. There is also an internal sense which above all furnishes pure intellections; this is called consciousness (conscientia) or the power of reflection. This sense affects all the actions, passions, and modes of the mind: namely, judgment, discourse, certainty, doubt, joy, sorrow, desires, aversions, love and hatred, virtues, vices. The more precise and abstract ideas of primary qualities are also attributed to pure intellections. But in truth all ideas arise from reflection or from [an] external sense.4
CHAPTER 25
1. Ideas are either clear or obscure: a clear idea is one which “vividly affects the mind”; an obscure idea is one which affects the mind faintly.
2. Ideas may be proper [ideas] and truly depict the thing put before it or at least represent the appearance (speciem) which nature commonly intended; or they may be analogical [ideas] and exhibit a kind of general and imperfect impression of a thing, not as it is in itself or as it is represented in the common order of nature, but by a kind of analogy with other, very different things
