ARISTOTLE'S PRIOR AND POSTERIOR ANALYTICS

THE PURE OR ASSERTORIC SYLLOGISM 25And 'we have made clear ... the number both of the points withreference to which, and of the materials from which, this will beaccomplished, and also from what sources we can become wellsupplied with these: we have shown, moreover, how to questionor arrange the questioning as a whole, and the problems concerningthe answers and solutions to be used against the reasoningsof the questioner'. I And a little later he definitely refers tologic as an art, the art which teaches people how to avoid badarguments, as the art of shoemaking teaches shoemakers how toavoid giving their customers sore feet. 2This passage, it is true, is an epilogue to his treatment ofdialectical reasoning, in the Topics; but his attitude to the studyof the syllogism in Prior Analytics i is the same. That work begins,indeed, with a purely theoretical study of the syllogism. But afterthis first section J there comes another· which begins with thewords: 'We must now state how we may ourselves always have asupply of syllogisms in reference to the problem proposed, and bywhat road we may reach the principles relative to the problem;for perhaps we ought not only to investigate the construction ofsyllogisms, but also to have the power of making them.' Thispurpose of logic-the acquiring of the faculty of discoveringsyllogisms-is laterS again mentioned as one of the three mainthemes of Prior A nalytics i.So far, then, Aristotle's attitude to logic is not unlike hisattitude to ethics. In his study of each there is much that is puretheory, but in both cases the theory is thought of as ancillary topractice-to right living in the one case, to right thinking in theother. But a change seems to come over his attitude to logic. Inthe second book of the Prior Analytics, which scholars believe tobe later than the first, ch. 19 seems to be the only one that isdefinitely practical. In the Posterior A nalytics there seems to benone that is so.lt is with Prior A nalytics i that we shall be first concerned; forit is here that Aristotle, by formulating the theory of syllogism,laid the foundation on which all subsequent logic has been builtup, or sowed the seed from which it has grown. How did Aristotlecome by the theory of the syllogism? He nowhere tells us, andwe are reduced to conjecture. Now in one passage 6 he says thatthe Platonic 'division' 'is but a small part of the method we haveI lb. 8-12.• i. 27-30.z lb. 18481-8.5 4782-5.3 i. 1-26.6 46'31-3.