καὶ ὧν αἱ ἐπιστῆμαι κ.τ.λ.] The same rule is now applied to sciences or departments of knowledge, and their objects; τὰ πράγματα, ‘their subjects1’. ἡ ὑποκειμένη ὕλη, τὰ ὑποκείμενα. Top. Γ 1, 116 a 21, ἔστι δὲ ἁπλῶς μὲν βέλτιον καὶ αἱρετώτερον τὸ κατὰ τὴν βελτίω ἐπιστήμην, τινὶ δὲ τὸ κατὰ τὴν οἰκείαν. The higher and nobler sciences deal with higher and nobler materials; and in proportion to the dignity and value of the objects that it treats, so is the dignity and value of the corresponding science: ἀνάλογον, ‘proportionally’; greater to greater, and less to less. ‘For as is the science, so is the (particular kind of) truth at which it aims: and each of them is authoritative (lays down the law, prescribes what is to be done, dictates, κελεύει) in its own special province’. On the order in invention and dignity of arts and sciences, see the instructive chapter, Metaph. A I. ἐπιστῆμαι includes here all arts as well as sciences, the two terms being constantly interchanged. The word ἀληθές, from its strict and proper sense (when the two provinces of philosophy are distinguished, θεωρητικῆς τέλος ἀλήθεια, πρακτικῆς δὲ ἔργον, Metaph. A 1), might seem to confine the application of the topic to science pure, or the ‘theoretical’ department of philosophy, but it is plainly here employed in a wider and more popular sense: truth, theoretical or practical, is the common object of every kind of scientific or artistic pursuit. And the word κελεύειν, to prescribe or dictate, is alike applicable to the necessary principles and necessary conclusions of mathematical demonstration, and to a practical science like Politics, which not only like the other prescribes the method in which its investigations are to be carried on and rules of action, but ‘orders and arranges’ διατάσσει2, determines, and limits at its pleasure the provinces and extent of the operations of the subordinate sciences and arts. Eth. Nic. I 1, 1094 a 26—b 7. On κελεύει, Victorius quotes Eth. Eud. II 3, τοῦτο γάρ ἐστιν ὡς ἡ ἐπιστήμη κελεύει καὶ ὁ λόγος.
1 The terms ‘subject’ and ‘object’ from different points of view may be applied to express the same thing. The object of sense or of thought, material or mental, quod sensibus vel menti objicitur, is when looked at from the logical side the subject of all that is or can be predicated of it.
2 So printed in Bekker's texts.
Commentary on the Rhetoric of Aristotle. Edward Meredith Cope. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. 1877.
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