g. an
eclipse. On the other hand, if we were on the moon we should not be
inquiring either as to the fact or the reason, but both fact and
reason would be obvious simultaneously. For the act of perception
would have enabled us to know the universal too; since, the present
fact of an eclipse being evident, perception would then at the same
time give us the present fact of the earth's screening the sun's
light, and from this would arise the universal.
Thus, as we maintain, to know a thing's nature is to know the reason
why it is; and this is equally true of things in so far as they are
said without qualification to he as opposed to being possessed of some
attribute, and in so far as they are said to be possessed of some
attribute such as equal to right angles, or greater or less.
3
It is clear, then, that all questions are a search for a 'middle'.
Let us now state how essential nature is revealed and in what way it
can be reduced to demonstration; what definition is, and what things
are definable. And let us first discuss certain difficulties which
these questions raise, beginning what we have to say with a point most
intimately connected with our immediately preceding remarks, namely
the doubt that might be felt as to whether or not it is possible to
know the same thing in the same relation, both by definition and by
demonstration.
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