the "Common Sense" of
the Scottish school. Under this aspect, "Sense is equal to or has the
force of Science."[702] The term "Experience" is also used to denote,
not merely the perception and remembrance of the impressions which
external objects make upon the mind, but as co-extensive with the whole
contents of consciousness--all that the mind _does_ of its own native
energy, as well as all that it _suffers_ from without. It is evidently
used in the Posterior Analytic (bk. ii. ch. xix.) to describe the whole
process by which the knowledge of universals is obtained. "From
experience, or from every universal remaining in the soul, the
principles of art and science arise." The office of experience is "to
furnish the principles of every science"[703]--that is, to evoke them
into energy in the mind. 'Experience thus seems to be a thing almost
similar to science and art.[704] In the most general sense, "sensation"
would thus appear to be the immediate perception or intuition of facts
and principles, and "experience" the operation of the mind upon these
facts and principles, elaborating them into scientific form according to
its own inherent laws. The "experience" of Aristotle is analogous to the
"reflection" of Locke.

[Footnote 700: "De Somn.," bk. i.]

[Footnote 701: "Ethics," bk. vi. ch. xi.; see also ch. vi.]

[Footnote 702: "De Cen. Anim."]

[Footnote 703: "Prior Analytic," bk. i. ch. xix.]

[Footnote 704: "Metaphysics," bk. i. ch. i.]

So much being premised, we proceed to remark that there is a distinction
perpetually recurring in the writings of Aristotle between the elements
or first principles of knowledge which are "clearest in their own
nature" and those which "are clearest to our perception."[705] The
causes or principles of knowledge "are _prior_ and _more known_ to us in
two ways, for what is prior in nature is not the same as that which is
prior to us, nor that which is more known (simply in itself) the same as
that which is more known to us. Now I call things prior and more known
to us, those which are _nearer to sense_; and things prior and more
known simply in themselves, those which are _remote from sense_; and
those things are most remote which are especially _universal_, and those
nearest which are _singular_; and these are mutually opposed."[706] Here
we have a distribution of the first or prior elements of knowledge into
two fundamentally opposite classes.

(i.) _The immediate or intuitive per