The transferred terms could only fit in as middle terms or
as major or minor terms, or else have some of the other terms
between them, others outside them.
Nor can any of the common axioms-such, I mean, as the law of
excluded middle-serve as premisses for the proof of all conclusions.
For the kinds of being are different, and some attributes attach to
quanta and some to qualia only; and proof is achieved by means of
the common axioms taken in conjunction with these several kinds and
their attributes.
Again, it is not true that the basic truths are much fewer than
the conclusions, for the basic truths are the premisses, and the
premisses are formed by the apposition of a fresh extreme term or
the interposition of a fresh middle. Moreover, the number of
conclusions is indefinite, though the number of middle terms is
finite; and lastly some of the basic truths are necessary, others
variable.
Looking at it in this way we see that, since the number of
conclusions is indefinite, the basic truths cannot be identical or
limited in number. If, on the other hand, identity is used in
another sense, and it is said, e.g. 'these and no other are the
fundamental truths of geometry, these the fundamentals of calculation,
these again of medicine'; would the statement mean anything except
that the sciences have basic truths? To call them identical because
they are self-identical is absurd, since everything can be
identified with everything in that sense of identity.
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