ARISTOTLE'S PRIOR AND POSTERIOR ANALYTICS

RELATION OF PRIOR TO POSTERIOR ANALYTICS 2IMight that awareness not have led him directly to trying to discoverthe form that was common to both kinds? And having got,in the syllogism, a form that guaranteed the entailment of certainconclusions by certain premisses, was it not natural that he shouldthen turn to ask what further characteristics than syllogisticvalidity reasoning must possess in order to be worthy of the nameof demonstrative science? Apart from the matters of detail inwhich, as I have pointed out, the Posterior Analytics presupposesthe Prior, I have the impression that throughout it Aristotlebetrays the conviction that he already has a method (viz. thesyllogism) which guarantees that if certain premisses are truecertain conclusions follow, but guarantees no more than this, andthat he is searching for a logic of truth to add to his logic ofconsistency.The second general argument of Solmsen's to which I wouldrefer is this. He contrasts! the assured mastery of its subjectwhich the Prior Analytics shows from start to finish with thetentative, halting, repetitive manner characteristic of the PosteriorAnalytics, and treats this as evidence of the greater maturityof the first-named work. To this argument two answers naturallypresent themselves. First, it is well known that some of Aristotle'sworks have come down to us in a much more finished form thanothers. For reasons which we do not know, some received muchmore revision from him than others; and there is no difficulty inseeing that the Prior Analytics was much more nearly ready forthe press, to use the modem phrase, than the Posterior. Andsecondly, the nature of their subject-matters naturally leads to adifference of treatment. The syllogism was a brilliant discovery;but, once its principle was discovered, the detail of syllogistictheory. the discrimination of valid from invalid syllogisms. wasalmost a mechanical matter; while the philosophical logic treatedof in the Posterior A nalytics is a very difficult subject naturallyleading to hesitation, to false starts, and to repetition. Anyonewho has taught both elementary formal logic and philosophicallogic to students will at once see the truth of this, and the falsityof treating the Posterior Analytics as immature because it treatsin a tentative way a subject which is in fact very difficult.The con ne xi on of the syllogism with an Eidos-Kette is Solmsen'scentral theme; and if he had confined himself to asserting this, andthe consequent priority, in Aristotle's thought, of the recognitionI pp. 143-4·