[CHAPTER IX.]
TOPICA.
I.
In treating of the Analytica Posteriora I have already adverted, in the way of contrast, to the Topica; and, in now approaching the latter work, I must again bring the same contrast before the mind of the reader.
The treatise called Topica (including that which bears the separate title De Sophisticis Elenchis, but which is properly its Ninth or last Book, winding up with a brief but memorable recapitulation of the Analytica and Topica considered as one scheme) is of considerable length, longer than the Prior and Posterior Analytics taken together. It contains both a theory and precepts of Dialectic; also, an analysis of the process called by Aristotle Sophistical Refutation, with advice how to resist or neutralize it.
All through the works of Aristotle, there is nothing which he so directly and emphatically asserts to be his own original performance, as the design and execution of the Topica: i.e., the deduction of Dialectic and Sophistic from the general theory of Syllogism. He had to begin from the beginning, without any model to copy or any predecessor to build upon: and in every sort of work, he observes justly, the first or initial stages are the hardest.[1] In regard to Rhetoric much had been done before him; there were not only masters who taught it, but writers who theorized well or ill, and laid down precepts about it; so that, in his treatise on that subject, he had only to enlarge and improve upon pre-existing suggestions. But in regard to Dialectic as he conceives it — in its contrast with Demonstration and Science on the one hand, and in its analogy or kinship with Rhetoric on the other — nothing whatever had been done. There were, indeed, teachers of contentious dialogue, as well as of Rhetoric;[2] but these teachers could do nothing better than recommend to their students dialogues or orations ready made, to be learnt by heart. Such a mode of teaching (he says), though speedy, was altogether unsystematic. The student acquired no knowledge of the art, being furnished only with specimens of art-results. It was as if a master, professing to communicate the art of making the feet comfortable, taught nothing about leather-cutting or shoe-making, but furnished his pupils with different varieties of ready-made shoes; thus supplying what they wanted for the protection of the feet, but not imparting to them any power of providing such protection for themselves.[3] “In regard to the process of syllogizing (says Aristotle, including both Analytic and Dialectic) I found positively nothing said before me: I had to work it out for myself by long and laborious research.�[4]
[1] Aristot. Sophist. Elench. xxxiv. p. 183, b. 22: μέγιστον γὰρ ἴσως ἀρχὴ παντός, ὥσπερ λέγεται· διὸ καὶ χαλεπώτατον. ὅσῳ γὰρ κράτιστον τῇ δυνάμει, τοσούτῳ μικρότατον ὂν τῷ μεγέθει χαλεπώτατόν ἐστιν ὀφθῆναι.
[2] Sophist. Elench. xxxiv. p. 183, b. 34: ταύτης δὲ τῆς πραγματείας οὐ τὸ μὲν ἦν τὸ δ’ οὐκ ἦν προεξειργασμένον, ἀλλ’ οὐδὲν παντελῶς ὑπῆρχεν. καὶ γὰρ τῶν περὶ τοὺς ἐριστικοὺς λόγους μισθαρνούντων ὁμοία τις ἦν ἡ παίδευσις τῇ Γοργίου πραγματείᾳ· λόγους γὰρ οἱ μὲν ῥητορικοὺς οἱ δὲ ἐρωτητίκους ἐδίδοσαν ἐκμανθάνειν, εἰς οὓς πλειστάκις ἐμπίπτειν ὠήθησαν ἑκάτεροι τοὺς ἀλλήλων λόγους.
[3] Ibid. xxxiv. p. 184, a. 2.
[4] Ibid. a. 7: καὶ περὶ μὲν τῶν ῥητορικῶν πολλὰ καὶ παλαιὰ τὰ λεγόμενα, περὶ δὲ τοῦ συλλογίζεσθαι παντελῶς οὐδὲν εἴχομεν πρότερον ἄλλο λέγειν, ἀλλ’ ἢ τριβῇ ζητοῦντες πολὺν χρόνον ἐπονοῦμεν.