BOOK A
1
All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even
apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight.
For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing
(one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know
and brings to light many differences between things
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By nature animals are born with the faculty of sensation, and from sensation memory is produced
in some of them, though not in others. And therefore the former are more intelligent and apt at
learning than those which cannot remember; those which are incapable of hearing sounds are
intelligent though they cannot be taught, e.g. the bee, and any other race of animals that may be like
it; and those which besides memory have this sense of hearing can be taught.
The animals other than man live by appearances and memories, and have but little of connected
experience; but the human race lives also by art and reasonings. Now from memory experience is
produced in men; for the several memories of the same thing produce finally the capacity for a
single experience. And experience seems pretty much like science and art, but really science and
art come to men through experience; for ‘experience made art’, as Polus says, ‘but inexperience
luck.’ Now art arises when from many notions gained by experience one universal judgement
about a class of objects is produced. For to have a judgement that when Callias was ill of this
disease this did him good, and similarly in the case of Socrates and in many individual cases, is a
matter of experience; but to judge that it has done good to all persons of a certain constitution,
marked off in one class, when they were ill of this disease, e.g. to phlegmatic or bilious people
when burning with fevers – this is a matter of art.
With a view to action experience seems in no respect inferior to art, and men of experience succeed
even better than those who have theory without experience. (The reason is that experience is
knowledge of individuals, art of universals, and actions and productions are all concerned with the
individual; for the physician does not cure man, except in an incidental way, but Callias or Socrates
or some other called by some such individual name, who h