Other subjects too have properties attaching to them
in the same way as eclipse attaches to the moon.
9
It is clear that if the conclusion is to show an attribute
inhering as such, nothing can be demonstrated except from its
'appropriate' basic truths. Consequently a proof even from true,
indemonstrable, and immediate premisses does not constitute knowledge.
Such proofs are like Bryson's method of squaring the circle; for
they operate by taking as their middle a common character-a character,
therefore, which the subject may share with another-and consequently
they apply equally to subjects different in kind. They therefore
afford knowledge of an attribute only as inhering accidentally, not as
belonging to its subject as such: otherwise they would not have been
applicable to another genus.
Our knowledge of any attribute's connexion with a subject is
accidental unless we know that connexion through the middle term in
virtue of which it inheres, and as an inference from basic premisses
essential and 'appropriate' to the subject-unless we know, e.g. the
property of possessing angles equal to two right angles as belonging
to that subject in which it inheres essentially, and as inferred
from basic premisses essential and 'appropriate' to that subject: so
that if that middle term also belongs essentially to the minor, the
middle must belong to the same kind as the major and minor terms.
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