“But the reasoning does not know this to be actually universal except after it has”

—  Robert Grosseteste

Commentarius in Posteriorum Analyticorum Libros (c. 1217-1220)
Context: Because the purity of the eye of the soul is obscured and weighed down by the corrupt body, all the powers of this rational soul born in man are laid hold of by the mass of the body and cannot act and so in a way are asleep. Accordingly, when in the process of time the senses act through many interactions of sense with sensible things, the reasoning is awakened mixed with these very sensible things and is borne along in the senses to the sensible things as in a ship. But the functioning reason begins to divide and separately consider what in sense were confused.... But the reasoning does not know this to be actually universal except after it has made this abstraction from many singulars, and has reached one and the same universal by its judgement taken from many singulars.

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Robert Grosseteste 22
English bishop and philosopher 1175–1253

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