Now the difficulty is enhanced still further by the fact that the reflections preceding the statement we just quoted are in harmony with what we had been saying. πέφυκε δὲ ἐκ τῶν γνωριμωτέρων ἡμῖν ἡ ὁδὸς καὶ σαφεστέρων ἐπὶ τὰ σαφέστερα τῇ φύσει καὶ γνωριμώτερα (a16f.). For us, according to our φύσις, our Dasein, the way is such that it is determined by αἴσθησις: it proceeds ἐκ τῶν γνωριμωτέρων ἡμῖν, "from what is more familiar to us," ἐπὶ τὰ τῇ φύσει γνωριμώτερα, "to what is, according to its own nature, more knowable." This formulation intensifies the opposition to the Topics: οὐ γὰρ ταὐτὰ ἡμῖν τε γνώριμα καὶ ἁπλῶς (a18). "For what is familiar to us is not the same as what is knowable in itself." After this reflection, a closer description of the προιέναι begins. ἔστι δ' ἡμῖν τὸ πρῶτον δῆλα καὶ σαφῆ τὰ συγκεχυμένα μᾶλλον (a21f.). "For us what is δῆλον is initially what is still rather mingled together," what is unseparated. To take the example in the Topics, a body primarily presents itself as something mingled together: surface, line, and point are given only as unseparated out. We handle physical things, and in doing so we perceive first of all only the physical body as a whole. ὕστερον δ' ἐκ τούτων γίγνεται γνώριμα τὰ στοιχεῖα καὶ αἱ ἀρχαὶ διαιροῦσι ταῦτα (a22ff.). Out of this συγκεχυμένως δῆλον, "the στοιχεῖα, the elements, become known later," i.e., the surface, line, and point, "as well as the ἀρχαί, the starting places," whence the physical body, according to the constitution of its Being, comes into being: the point. What is intermingled is separated out "by our taking it apart." Such διαιρεῖν is the basic function of λόγος; in discourse, λόγος takes things apart. The συγκεχυμένα, the inter-mingled, the inter-flowing, is characterized by Aristotle in the same first chapter of the Physics as ἀδιορίστως (184b2), "what is not yet delimited." The ἀρχαί are still hidden; only the whole is seen. Hence the συγκεχυμένα have to be taken apart in λόγος, and from being indistinct they thereby become delimited, such that the limit of the individual determinations is fixed and what is given first as συγκεχυμένως can be grasped in a ὁρισμός (b12). Hence upon closer inspection it is manifest that with the συγκεχυμένα the constitutive pieces of the being are meant from the outset, i.e., the ἀρχαί, and they will be made prominent by the appropriate consideration. When Aristotle claims that a being is given συγκεχυμένως, he means that it has already been interrogated in view of an ἀρχή · When we presentify a physical body in immediate perception, its ἀρχαί are not explicitly given; but they are indeed there, undisclosed, in αἴσθησις. This agrees with what we have seen in Metaphysics VII, 3:3 beings, as far as they are given in αἴσθησις, i.e., as immediately known to us, contain little or nothing of these beings.
3. Cf. p. 58.