_To us_ the particulars of sense stand first, and are the earliest objects of knowledge. _To us_, means to the large variety of individual minds, which grow up imperceptibly from the simple capacities of infancy to the mature accomplishments of adult years; each acquiring its own stock of sensible impressions, remembered, compared, associated; and each learning a language, which both embodies in general terms and propositions the received classification of objects, and communicates the current emotional beliefs. We all begin by being learners; and we ascend by different paths to those universal notions and beliefs which constitute the common fund of the advanced intellect; developed in some minds into _principia_ of philosophy with their consequences. _By nature_, or _absolutely_, these _principia_ are considered as prior, and as forming the point of departure: the advanced position is regarded as gained, and the march taken is not that of the novice, but that of the trained adult, who having already learnt much, is doubly equipped either for learning more or for teaching others; who thus stands on a summit from whence he surveys nature as a classified and coherent whole, manifesting herself in details which he can interpret and sometimes predict. The path of knowledge, seen _relatively to us_, is one through particulars, by way of example to fresh particulars, or by way of induction to universals. The path of knowledge, _by nature_ or _absolutely_, is from universals by way of deduction either to new universals or to new particulars. By the cognitive _nature_ of man, Aristotle means the full equipment, of and for cognition, which our mature age exhibits; _notiora naturâ_ are the acquisitions, points of view, and processes, familiar in greater or less perfection to such mature individuals and societies. _Notiora nobis_ are the facts and processes with which all of us begin, and which belong to the intellect in its highest as well as its lowest stage; though, in the higher stages, they are employed, directed, and modified, by an acquired intellectual capital, and by the permanent machinery of universal significant terms in which that capital is invested.