The
definer asks 'Is man animal or inanimate?' and then assumes-he has not
inferred-that man is animal. Next, when presented with an exhaustive
division of animal into terrestrial and aquatic, he assumes that man
is terrestrial. Moreover, that man is the complete formula,
terrestrial-animal, does not follow necessarily from the premisses:
this too is an assumption, and equally an assumption whether the
division comprises many differentiae or few. (Indeed as this method of
division is used by those who proceed by it, even truths that can be
inferred actually fail to appear as such.) For why should not the
whole of this formula be true of man, and yet not exhibit his
essential nature or definable form? Again, what guarantee is there
against an unessential addition, or against the omission of the
final or of an intermediate determinant of the substantial being?
The champion of division might here urge that though these lapses do
occur, yet we can solve that difficulty if all the attributes we
assume are constituents of the definable form, and if, postulating the
genus, we produce by division the requisite uninterrupted sequence
of terms, and omit nothing; and that indeed we cannot fail to fulfil
these conditions if what is to be divided falls whole into the
division at each stage, and none of it is omitted; and that this-the
dividendum-must without further question be (ultimately) incapable
of fresh specific division.
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