And finally the Platonic theory
neglects the different kinds of democracies and of tyrannies.
Now nothing can be more important than this passage in Aristotle's
POLITICS (v. 12.), which may he said to mark an era in the
evolution of historical criticism. For there is nothing on which
Aristotle insists so strongly as that the generalisations from
facts ought to be added to the data of the A PRIORI method - a
principle which we know to be true not merely of deductive
speculative politics but of physics also: for are not the residual
phenomena of chemists a valuable source of improvement in theory?
His own method is essentially historical though by no means
empirical. On the contrary, this far-seeing thinker, rightly
styled IL MAESTRO DI COLOR CHE SANNO, may be said to have
apprehended clearly that the true method is neither exclusively
empirical nor exclusively speculative, but rather a union of both
in the process called Analysis or the Interpretation of Facts,
which has been defined as the application to facts of such general
conceptions as may fix the important characteristics of the
phenomena, and present them permanently in their true relations.
Pages:
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67