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[6]
（2） Again, reasoning on matters of conduct employs premises of two
forms.1 Now
it is quite possible for a man to act against knowledge when he knows both premises but is
only exercising his knowledge of the universal premise and not of the particular; for
action has to do with particular things. Moreover, there is a distinction as regards the
universal term: one universal is predicated of the man himself, the other of the thing;
for example, he may know and be conscious of the knowledge that dry food is good for every
man and that he himself is a man, or even that food of a certain kind is dry, but either
not possess or not be actualizing the knowledge whether the particular food before him is
food of that kind. Now clearly the distinction between these two ways of knowing will make
all the difference in the world. It will not seem at all strange that the unrestrained man
should ‘know’ in one way, but it would be astonishing if he knew in
another way.
1 The major premise of a practical syllogism is universal, a general rule; the minor is particular, the application of the rule to the case in hand. The next sentence points out that this application really requires two syllogisms; in the first, the personal term of the major premise is predicated in the minor of the particular person concerned （Dry food is good for all men: I am a man: therefore dry food is good for me） ; in the second, the other universal term is predicated in the minor of a particular thing about which the person is deliberating （Dry food is good for me: this stale loaf is dry food: therefore this stale loaf is good for me）. It is the minor premise of the second syllogism, viz. the application of the general rule not to himself but to the thing in question, that the unrestrained man seems not to know, or not to think of, at the time. This illustration is confused in the text by the insertion of another minor premise ἢ ὅτι ξηρὸν τὸ τοιόνδε, ‘or that food of a certain kind [e.g. stale bread] is dry.’ It would have been enough to write ἀλλ᾽ εἰ τόδε ξηρόν, ‘but whether this [stale loaf] is dry.’
Aristotle in 23 Volumes, Vol. 19, translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1934.
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