g. if
Alcibiades was proud, or Achilles and Ajax were proud, we should
find on inquiring what they all had in common, that it was intolerance
of insult; it was this which drove Alcibiades to war, Achilles
wrath, and Ajax to suicide. We should next examine other cases,
Lysander, for example, or Socrates, and then if these have in common
indifference alike to good and ill fortune, I take these two results
and inquire what common element have equanimity amid the
vicissitudes of life and impatience of dishonour. If they have none,
there will be two genera of pride. Besides, every definition is always
universal and commensurate: the physician does not prescribe what is
healthy for a single eye, but for all eyes or for a determinate
species of eye. It is also easier by this method to define the
single species than the universal, and that is why our procedure
should be from the several species to the universal genera-this for
the further reason too that equivocation is less readily detected in
genera than in infimae species. Indeed, perspicuity is essential in
definitions, just as inferential movement is the minimum required in
demonstrations; and we shall attain perspicuity if we can collect
separately the definition of each species through the group of
singulars which we have established e.
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