BOOK I. VII. 30-VIII. 2
sluggish, seeking excuses whereby we may avoid toiling or even late hours, as we try to perfect our own reason?—If, then, I err in these matters, I have not murdered my own father, have I?—Slave, pray where was there in this case a father for you to murder? What, then, have you done, you ask? You have committed what was the only possible error in the matter. Indeed this is the very remark I made to Rufus when he censured me for not discovering the one omission in a certain syllogism. "Well," said I, "it isn't as bad as if I had burned down the Capitol." But he answered, "Slave, the omission here is the Capitol." Or are there no other errors than setting fire to the Capitol and murdering one's father? But to make a reckless and foolish and haphazard use of the external impressions that come to one, to fail to follow an argument, or demonstration, or sophism—in a word, to fail to see in question and answer what is consistent with one's position or inconsistent—is none of these things an error?
CHAPTER VIII
That the reasoning faculties, in the case of the uneducated, are not free from error
In as many ways as it is possible to vary the meaning of equivalent terms, in so many ways may a man also vary the forms of his controversial arguments and of his enthymemes[1] in reasoning. Take this
- ↑ An enthymeme is defined by Aristotle (Rhet. 1. i. 11) as "a rhetorical demonstration," that is, an argument expressed in ordinary literary style, not in the formal fashion of a syllogism. It is thus called an "incomplete syllogism" (§ 3 below), as falling short of the "definite proof" accorded by the syllogism.
