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ARISTOTLE’S ‘TOPICS.’
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make a large collection of propositions—i.e., authoritative sayings, whether of great men or of the many; 2d, To study the different senses in which terms are used; 3d, To detect differences; 4th, To note resemblances. The last three out of these four suggestions are expanded at great length, and Aristotle tells us how to use various logical distinctions, here brought forward for the first time, in pulling to pieces the arguments of an opponent—for instance, how to use the heads of predicables (genus, differentia, proprium, and accidens), or the categories, or the several kinds of logical opposition, for this purpose. The first seven books of the ‘Topics’ scarcely touch at all upon dialectical method, they are quite taken up with a wearisome and seemingly endless list of heads of argumentation. The eighth book, written later, adds some counsel upon the arrangement and marshalling of your arguments, whether you be the respondent defending a thesis, or the interrogator who attacks it. Some of these pieces of advice might be characterised as “dodges;” for instance, when we are told how to conceal from our adversary what we want to prove, till we have got him to admit something which would really imply the point we are aiming at. In Dialectic, as in love and war, almost everything was fair. And yet Aristotle concludes his treatise by saying, “You must, however, take care not to carry on this exercise with every one, especially with a vulgar-minded man. With some persons the dispute cannot fail to take a discreditable turn. When the respondent tries to make a show of escaping by unworthy manœuvres, the questioner on