Aristotle (384-322 BC)

Posterior Analytics

Translated by G. R. G. Mure

Book I

Chapter 8

It is also clear that if the premisses from which the syllogism proceeds are commensurately universal, the conclusion of such – i.e. in the unqualified sense – must also be eternal. Therefore no attribute can be demonstrated nor known by strictly scientific knowledge to inhere in perishable things. The proof can only be accidental, because the attribute’s connexion with its perishable subject is not commensurately universal but temporary and special. If such a demonstration is made, one premiss must be perishable and not commensurately universal (perishable because only if it is perishable will the conclusion be perishable; not commensurately universal, because the predicate will be predicable of some instances of the subject and not of others); so that the conclusion can only be that a fact is true at the moment – not commensurately and universally. The same is true of definitions, since a definition is either a primary premiss or a conclusion of a demonstration, or else only differs from a demonstration in the order of its terms. Demonstration and science of merely frequent occurrences – e.g. of eclipse as happening to the moon – are, as such, clearly eternal: whereas so far as they are not eternal they are not fully commensurate. Other subjects too have properties attaching to them in the same way as eclipse attaches to the moon.

Book I Chapter 7

Book I Chapter 9