214 APPENDICES 



Taine rebuked Descartes for developing concepts that applied 

 only to mathematics, whereas Aristotle's Analytics were of more 

 general application: This mathematical tendency prevented him 

 from granting to the senses the authority that they ought to have, 

 to the inductive method the power of which it is capable, to 

 bodily extension the forces which are proper to them.'^i As a 

 result, Descartes' cogito ergo sum is 'infallible, but useless'. '*2 



Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, though complete as a theory of 

 demonstration, "^3 were insufficient as a theory of science. Taine 

 found Aristotle's theory of definition incomplete, by comparison 

 with that of Spinoza, which went beyond the analysis of terms to 

 the 'essences' of things, so that 'given the definition, one can 

 deduce from it all the properties of the thing'. ^4 A true definition 

 will not express 'the position of the being in question in an 

 arbitrary hierarchy of logical generalities [as in Hegel, S. J. K.] 

 but its position in the real hierarchy of the development of Being; 

 for example, it says of man that he is a rational animal'. ^5 Since 

 'rationality' was a real characteristic of men which was added to 

 the species in the course of its evolution, this definition both serves 

 to differentiate him from other animals and expresses 'all the 

 reality which is in him'.46 



Not only was Aristotle's theory of definition incomplete, but he 

 followed an 'Imperfect order in the solution of problems. '^7 So, 

 to return to the Philosophy, Dogmatism notebook, under the heading 

 of 'Theory of Science' we find: 'Aristotle grants at first the con- 

 clusion and afterwards seeks the minor and the major. We grant 

 at first the notion and afterwards we seek the conclusion. '^8 



Induction and the Absolute 



The relation between method and metaphysics is especially 

 clear in Taine's notes 'On the Absolute': 



'Now we know the cause of the question why^ Having arrived at 

 the perception that each essence has an equal right to existence, 

 and admitting in principle that something exists, we ask our- 

 selves: why this rather than that? . . . One cannot seek in the 

 given essence a reason which makes it exist rather than not, . . . 

 For the essence, separated by hypothesis from existence, no longer 

 contains existence. . . . We conclude that the essence isn't the 

 absolute primitive; it does not contain the last reason of things. 

 The existing essence is anterior to the pure essence. Essence 



