This also shows that one cannot opine and know the same thing
simultaneously; for then one would apprehend the same thing as both
capable and incapable of being otherwise-an impossibility. Knowledge
and opinion of the same thing can co-exist in two different people
in the sense we have explained, but not simultaneously in the same
person. That would involve a man's simultaneously apprehending, e.g.
(1) that man is essentially animal-i.e. cannot be other than
animal-and (2) that man is not essentially animal, that is, we may
assume, may be other than animal.
Further consideration of modes of thinking and their distribution
under the heads of discursive thought, intuition, science, art,
practical wisdom, and metaphysical thinking, belongs rather partly
to natural science, partly to moral philosophy.
34
Quick wit is a faculty of hitting upon the middle term
instantaneously. It would be exemplified by a man who saw that the
moon has her bright side always turned towards the sun, and quickly
grasped the cause of this, namely that she borrows her light from him;
or observed somebody in conversation with a man of wealth and
divined that he was borrowing money, or that the friendship of these
people sprang from a common enmity.
Pages:
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109