The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

and can continue to retain the sense-impression in
the soul: and when such persistence is frequently repeated a
further distinction at once arises between those which out of the
persistence of such sense-impressions develop a power of
systematizing them and those which do not. So out of
sense-perception comes to be what we call memory, and out of
frequently repeated memories of the same thing develops experience;
for a number of memories constitute a single experience. From
experience again-i.e. from the universal now stabilized in its
entirety within the soul, the one beside the many which is a single
identity within them all-originate the skill of the craftsman and
the knowledge of the man of science, skill in the sphere of coming
to be and science in the sphere of being.
    We conclude that these states of knowledge are neither innate in
a determinate form, nor developed from other higher states of
knowledge, but from sense-perception. It is like a rout in battle
stopped by first one man making a stand and then another, until the
original formation has been restored. The soul is so constituted as
to be capable of this process.
    Let us now restate the account given already, though with
insufficient clearness. When one of a number of logically
indiscriminable particulars has made a stand, the earliest
universal is present in the soul: for though the act of
sense-perception is of the particular, its content is universal-is
man, for example, not the man Callias. A fresh stand is made among
these rudimentary universals, and the process does not cease until
the indivisible concepts, the true universals, are established:
e.g. such and such a species of animal is a step towards the genus
animal, which by the same process is a step towards a further
generalization.
    Thus it is clear that we must get to know the primary premisses
by induction; for the method by which even sense-perception
implants the universal is inductive. Now of the thinking states by
which we grasp truth, some are unfailingly true, others admit of
error-opinion, for instance, and calculation, whereas scientific
knowing and intuition are always true: further, no other kind of
thought except intuition is more accurate than scientific
knowledge, whereas primary premisses are more knowable than
demonstrations, and all scientific knowledge is discursive. From
these considerations it follows that there will be no scientific
knowledge of the primary premisses, and since except intuition
nothing can be truer than scientific knowledge, it will be
intuition that apprehends the primary premisses-a result which also
follows from the fact that demonstration cannot be the originative
source of demonstration, nor, consequently, scientific knowledge of
scientific knowledge.If, therefore, it is the only other kind of
true thinking except scientific knowing, intuition will be the
originative source of scientific knowledge. And the originative
source of science grasps the original basic premiss, while science
as a whole is similarly related as originative source to the whole
body of fact.

Topics, Book I
    Translated by W. A. Pickard-Cambridge
     
     
     
1
    Our treatise proposes to find a line of inquiry whereby we shall
be able to reason from opinions that are generally accepted about
every problem propounded to us, and also shall ourselves, when
standing up to an argument, avoid saying anything that will
obstruct us. First, then, we must say what reasoning is, and what
its varieties are, in order to grasp dialectical reasoning: for
this is the object of our search in the treatise before us.
    Now reasoning is an argument in which, certain things being laid
down, something other than these necessarily comes about through
them. (a) It is a ‘demonstration’, when the premisses from which
the reasoning starts are true and primary, or are such that our
knowledge of them has originally come through premisses which are
primary and true: (b) reasoning, on the other hand, is
‘dialectical’, if it reasons from opinions that are generally
accepted. Things are ‘true’ and ‘primary’ which are believed on the
strength not of anything else but of themselves: for in regard to
the first principles of science it is improper to ask any further
for the why and wherefore of them; each of the first principles
should command belief in and by itself. On the other hand, those
opinions are ‘generally accepted’ which are accepted by every one
or by the majority or by the