METAPHYSICS
Aristotle
Jan 1976 · YouHui Culture Publishing Company
eBook
429
Pages
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About this eBook
METAPHYSICS
by Aristotle
translated by W. D. Ross
Book I
1
ALL men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the
delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness
they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of
sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not
going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything
else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know
and brings to light many differences between things.
By nature animals are born with the faculty of sensation, and from
sensation memory is produced in some of them, though not in others.
And therefore the former are more intelligent and apt at learning than
those which cannot remember; those which are incapable of hearing
sounds are intelligent though they cannot be taught, e.g. the bee, and
any other race of animals that may be like it; and those which besides
memory have this sense of hearing can be taught.
The animals other than man live by appearances and memories, and
have but little of connected experience; but the human race lives also
by art and reasonings. Now from memory experience is produced in
men; for the several memories of the same thing produce finally the
capacity for a single experience. And experience seems pretty much
like science and art, but really science and art come to men through
experience; for 'experience made art', as Polus says, 'but
inexperience luck.' Now art arises when from many notions gained by
experience one universal judgement about a class of objects is
produced. For to have a judgement that when Callias was ill of this
disease this did him good, and similarly in the case of Socrates and
in many individual cases, is a matter of experience; but to judge that
it has done good to all persons of a certain constitution, marked
off in one class, when they were ill of this disease, e.g. to
phlegmatic or bilious people when burning with fevers-this is a matter
of art.
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