Page:O. F. Owen's Organon of Aristotle Vol. 1 (1853).djvu/65

are symbols of the passions of the soul, and when written, are symbols of the (passions) in the voice, and as there are not the same letters among all men, so neither have all the same voices, yet those passions of the soul, of which these are primarily the signs, are the same among all, the things also, of which these are the similitudes, are the same. About these latter, we have spoken in the treatise "Of the Soul,"^[1] for they are parts belonging to another discussion, but as in the soul, there is sometimes a conception, without truth or falsehood, and at another time, it is such, as necessarily to have one of these, inherent in it, 2. Truth and falsehood of enunciation dependent on so also is it with the voice, for falsehood and truth are involved in composition and division.^[2] Nouns therefore and verbs of them-

tion, which is the result of the conjunction of simple terms, and discarding the other species of sentence, confines himself to the categoric form of the enunciative sentence simply, preparatory to the systematic inquiry into the nature of syllogism, hereafter to be conducted in the Analytics. Indeed, for this reason, as occupying a middle-place between simple terms and syllogism, this treatise is more properly introduced here, as Waitz, Buhle, Averrois, and Taylor place it, than after the Topics, as by Bekker. So highly is it esteemed by Ammonius, (in librum Aris. de Int., Venet. 1545,) that he states his gratitude to the god Hermes if he shall be able to add anything to its elucidation, from what he recollects of the interpretations of Proclus, the Platonist, his preceptor.
As to the title, notwithstanding much difference of opinion, the fruit of the primary misconception of the term (περὶ ἑρμηνείας), its application here seems well grounded, as descriptive of language in its construction, being enunciative of the gnostic powers of the soul; it may therefore, we think, (with the learned author of the Prolegomena Logica, Mansel,) be adequately Anglicized, "Of language as the interpretation of thought." Boethe defines it, "Interpretatio est vox significativa, per se ipsam, aliquid significans," to which Waitz adds the remark, "latius patet ἑρμενεία quam λέξις." Isidore of Seville observes: "Omnis elocutio conceptæ rei interpres est: inde perihermeniam nominant quam interpretationem nos appelamus." For various interpretations of the word, see St. Hilaire, de la Logique d' Aristote, p. i. ch. 10. The treatise itself may be divided into four parts: First, concerning the principles of the enunciative sentence, including definitions of its component parts; the three others informing us of proposition: as 1st, purely enunciative, 2nd, more complex, wherein something is added to the predicate, making in fact a fourth term; 3rd, modal: at the end he annexes an inquiry connected with a case of problematic contrariety.

1. Vide de Anim. iii. 6; also Metaph.
2. This is evident, since logic itself is psychological; but observe, he does not say all truth is conversant with composition and division, the last is indeed excluded from the idealities of Plato. Thought, per se, has no need of systematic language, the most accurate development of which does