Moreover, as in rhetorical, so also in elenchtic disputation, we must investigate contrarieties in a similar manner, either (such as are contrary) to what is said by him, or to what he acknowledges well said or done, or to those that seem to be such, or to similars, or to most, or to all. And as also respondents frequently, when they are confuted, assert that what they seem to be confuted in has a two-fold meaning; so questionists must use this mode against objectors, so that if it happens in one way, but not in another, (they say) they admit it only thus, as Cleophon does in his Mandrobulus. It is also necessary, by withdrawing from the argument, to cut off the remaining parts of the attacks, and for the respondent, if he foresees, to anticipate in objection and speaking. Sometimes also, we must attack something different to the assertion, assuming that, if a person has it not in his power to attack the position; which Lycophron did, when the thing proposed was an encomium on the lyre. Against those indeed who require arguments to be advanced against a certain thing, (since it seems necessary to assign a cause, but certain things being mentioned, more caution can be used,) it must be said that it universally happens in elenchi, that we assert contradiction, because we deny what the arguer asserted, but what he denied we assert; but (we must not say that we begin to prove one part of the contradiction); for instance, that there is the same
Page:O. F. Owen's Organon of Aristotle Vol. 2 (1853).djvu/226
