There cannot be more than one definition of the same thing: the definition ought to declare the essence of the thing, which can only be done by means of priora and notiora. 16) the various lines of argument which may be followed out, when you are testing in dialectical debate a definition given or admitted by the opponent. On the same page, he remarks:- “In saying (to use the words of Aristotle) simply and without qualification, that this or that is a known truth, we do not mean that it is in fact recognized by all, but only by such as are of a sound understanding just as, in saying absolutely that a thing is wholesome, we must be held to mean, to such as are of a hale constitution.” The passage of Aristotle’s Topica here noticed will be found to have a different bearing from that which Hamilton gives it.Īristotle is laying down (Topica, VI. The analogy goes farther than Hamilton wishes. In each country, a supreme tribunal is appointed to decide between these versions and to declare the law. Even in the same country, it is differently construed and set forth by different witnesses, advocates, and judges. The Common Law of one country is different from that of another. To make it so we must couple with it the same supplement that Common Law requires that is, we must agree on some one philosopher as authoritative exponent of Common Sense. This comparison, however, sets aside unassisted Common Sense as an available authority. On page 752, a., he compares Common Sense to Common Law, and regards it as consisting in certain elementary feelings and beliefs, which, though in possession of all, can only be elicited and declared by philosophers, who declare it very differently. that “philosophers have rarely scrupled, on the one hand, quietly to supersede the data of consciousness, so often as these did not fall in with their pre-adopted opinions and on the other clamorously to appeal to them as irrecusable truths, so often as they could allege them in corroboration of their own, or in refutation of a hostile, doctrine” - is illustrated by his own practice. It seems to me that he unsays in one passage what he says in another and that what he tells us (p. 742, seq.), I find it difficult to seize accurately what he means by the term. ![]() In reading attentively Hamilton’s “Dissertation on the Philosophy of Common Sense” (Note A, annexed to ed. Sir William Hamilton on Aristotle’s Doctrine.
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