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伏尔泰说，“如果您想跟我交谈，请使用规范、简洁的语言。” 只要做到这一点，做任何事情都能事半功倍。
Aristotle and Greek Science
III. The Foundation of Logic
"If you wish to converse with me," said Voltaire, "define your terms." How many a debate would have been deflated into a paragraph if the disputants had dared to define their terms! This is the alpha and omega of logic, the heart and soul of it, that every important term in serious discourse shall be subjected to strictest scrutiny and definition. It is difficult, and ruthlessly tests the mind; but once done it is half of any task.
How shall we proceed to define an object or a term? Aristotle answers that every good definition has two parts, stands on two solid feet: first, it assigns the object in question to a class or group whose general characteristics are also its own—so man is, first of all, an animal; and secondly, it indicates wherein the object differs from all the other members in its class—so man, in the Aristotelian system, is a rational animal, his "specific difference" is that unlike all other animals he is rational (here is the origin of a pretty legend). Aristotle drops an object into the ocean of its class, then takes it out all dripping with generic meaning, with the marks of its kind and group; while its individuality and difference shine out all the more clearly for this juxtaposition with other objects that resemble it so much and are so different.
▍语言点
converse: vi. 对话
deflate: vt. 放气；通货紧缩
the alpha and omega of: from A to Z，全体；全部
Nobody is as tempered as I am, and nobody is so brilliant.
Ten Commandments: 摩西十诫
be subjected to: 臣服于
test: vt. 锤炼
Well began, half done.: 好的开始是成功的一半
You shall not kill
assign ... to: 指派给；分配给
wherein: adv. 在哪一点上
resemble: vt. 像
“吾爱吾师，但吾更爱真理”，对于“唯实论”与“唯名论”的第一次交战，亚里士多德带着首次参战的热情全身心投入。
Aristotle and Greek Science
III. The Foundation of Logic
Passing out from this rear line of logic we come into the great battlefield on which Aristotle fought out with Plato the dread question o f "universals"; it was the first conflict in a war which was to last till our own day, and make all medieval Europe ring with the clash of "realists" and "nominalists." A universal, to Aristotle, is any common noun, any name capable of universal application to the members of a class: so animal, man, book, tree, are universals. But these universals are subjective notions, not tangibly objective realities; they are nomina (names), not res (things); all that exists outside us is a world of individual and specific objects, not of generic and universal things; men exist, and trees, and animals; but man-in-general, or the universal man, does not exist, except in thought; he is a handy mental abstraction, not an external presence or reality.
Now Aristotle understands Plato to have held that universals have objective existence; and indeed Plato had said that the universal is incomparably more lasting and important and substantial than the individual, —the latter being but a little wavelet in a ceaseless surf; men come and go, but man goes on forever. Aristotle's is a matter-of-fact mind; as William James would say, a tough, not a tender, mind; he sees the root of endless mysticism and scholarly nonsense in this Platonic "realism"; and he attacks it with all the vigor of a first polemic. As Brutus loved not Cæsar less but Rome more, so Aristotle says, Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas—"Dear is Plato, but dearer still is truth."
▍语言点
rear: n. 尾部
dread: adj. 恐惧的
clash: n. 碰撞声
realist: n. 唯理论者 adj. 唯理论的
nominalist: n. 唯名论者 adj. 唯名论的
tangibly: adv. 可触碰地
objective: adj. 客观的
endless mysticism: 无尽的神秘主义
