Nevertheless, we reply, division does
not involve inference; if it gives knowledge, it gives it in another
way. Nor is there any absurdity in this: induction, perhaps, is not
demonstration any more than is division, et it does make evident
some truth. Yet to state a definition reached by division is not to
state a conclusion: as, when conclusions are drawn without their
appropriate middles, the alleged necessity by which the inference
follows from the premisses is open to a question as to the reason
for it, so definitions reached by division invite the same question.
Thus to the question 'What is the essential nature of man?' the
divider replies 'Animal, mortal, footed, biped, wingless'; and when at
each step he is asked 'Why?', he will say, and, as he thinks, proves
by division, that all animal is mortal or immortal: but such a formula
taken in its entirety is not definition; so that even if division does
demonstrate its formula, definition at any rate does not turn out to
be a conclusion of inference.
6
Can we nevertheless actually demonstrate what a thing essentially
and substantially is, but hypothetically, i.
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