Having thus in view the dialogue as a partnership for common profit, Aristotle administers counsel to the questioning as well as to the responding partner. You as questioner have to deal with a thesis set up by the respondent. You see at once what the syllogism is that is required to prove the contrary or contradictory of that thesis; and your business is so to shape your questions as to induce the respondent to concede the premisses necessary towards that syllogism. If you ask him at once and directly to concede these premisses, he sees your drift and answers in the negative. You must therefore begin your approaches from a greater distance. You must ask questions bearing only indirectly and remotely upon your ultimate conclusion.[371] These outlying and preparatory questions will fall under four principal heads. Either (1) they will be inductive particulars, multiplied in order that you may obtain assent to an universal comprising them all; or (2) they will be put for the purpose of giving dignity to your discourse; or (3) they will be shaped with a view to conceal or keep out of sight the ultimate conclusion that you aim at; or (4), lastly, they will be introduced to make your whole argument clearer.[372] The third of these four general heads — the head of questions for the purpose of concealment — comes out principally in dialectical contests for victory. In those it is of supreme importance, and the result depends much on the employment of it; but even in other dialectical debates you must employ it to a certain extent.[373]
[371] Topic. VIII. i. p. 155, b. 29: τὰς μὲν οὖν ἀναγκαίας, δι’ ὧν ὁ συλλογισμός, οὐκ εὐθὺς αὐτὰς προτατέον, ἀλλ’ ἀποστατέον ὅτι ἀνωτάτω, &c.
[372] Topic. VIII. i. p. 155, b. 20.
[373] Ibid. b. 26.
Aristotle goes at great length into the means of Concealment. Suppose the proposition which you desire to get conceded is, The science of two contraries is the same. You will find it useful to commence by a question more general: e.g., Is the science of two opposites the same? If the respondent answers in the affirmative, you will deduce from his concession, by syllogism, the conclusion which you desire. If he answers in the negative, you must then try to arrive at your end by a string of questions respecting particular contraries or opposites; which if the respondent grants successively, you will bring in your general question ultimately as the inductive result from those concessions.[374] Your particulars must be selected from obvious matters of sense and notoriety. You are likely to obtain in this way admissions which will serve as premisses for several different prosyllogisms, not indeed sufficient by themselves, yet valuable as conditions and preliminaries to the final syllogism whereby the thesis is refuted. For, when the questions are put in this way, the respondent will not see your drift nor the consequences of his own concessions; so that he will more readily concede what you want.[375] The better to conceal your purpose, you will refrain from drawing out any of these prosyllogisms clearly at once; you will not even put the major and minor premiss of any one of them in immediate sequence; but you will confound the order of them intentionally, stating first a premiss belonging to one, and next a premiss belonging to another.[376] The respondent, thus kept in the dark, answers in the affirmative to each of your questions successively. At length you find that you have obtained a sufficient number of concessions from him, to enable you to prove the syllogism contradictory of his thesis. You inform him of this; and it shows the perfect skill and success of your procedure, when he expresses surprise at the announcement, and asks on what premisses you reckon.[377]
[374] Ibid. b. 34: ἂν δὲ μὴ τιθῇ, δι’ ἐπαγωγῆς ληπτέον, προτείναντα ἐπὶ τῶν κατὰ μέρος ἐναντίων.
[375] Ibid. p. 156, a. 7: κρύπτοντα δὲ προσυλλογίζεσθαι δι’ ὧν ὁ συλλογισμὸς τοῦ ἐξ ἀρχῆς μέλλει γίνεσθαι, καὶ ταῦτα ὡς πλεῖστα.
[376] Ibid. a. 23: χρήσιμον δὲ καὶ τὸ μὴ συνεχῆ τὰ ἀξιώματα λαμβάνειν ἐξ ὧν οἱ συλλογισμοί, ἀλλ’ ἐναλλὰξ τὸ πρὸς ἕτερον καὶ ἕτερον συμπέρασμα.
[377] Topic. VIII. i. p. 156, a. 13: καθόλου δ’ εἰπεῖν, οὕτω δεῖ ἐρωτᾶν τὸν κρυπτικῶς πυνθανόμενον, ὥστ’ ἠρωτημένου τοῦ παντὸς λόγου καὶ εἰπόντος τὸ συμπέρασμα ζητεῖσθαι τὸ διὰ τί.
There are also other manœuvres serving your purpose of concealment, and preventing the respondent from seeing beforehand the full pertinence of your questions. Thus, if you wish to obtain the definition of your major, you will do well to ask the definition, not of the term itself but, of some one among its conjugates. You will put your question, as if the answer were of little importance in itself, and as if you did not care whether it was given in the affirmative or in the negative;[378] you will sometimes even suggest objections to that which you are seeming to aim at. All this will give you the air of a candid disputant; it will throw the respondent off his guard, and make him more ready to answer as he really thinks, without alarm for the consequences.[379] When you wish to get a certain premiss conceded, you will put the question first upon a different premiss analogous to it. In putting your question, you will add that the answer which you desire is a matter of course, familiar and admitted by every one; for respondents are shy of contradicting any received belief, unless they have present to their minds a clear instance adverse to it.[380] You will never manifest apparent earnestness about an answer; which would make the respondent less willing to concede it.[381] You will postpone until the last the premiss which you wish to obtain, and will begin by putting questions the answers to which serve as remote premisses behind it, only in the end conducting to it as consequence. Generally speaking, questioners do the reverse, putting first the questions about which they are most anxious; while most respondents, aware of this habit, are most intractable in regard to the first questions, except some presumptuous and ill-tempered disputants, who concede what is asked at first but afterwards become obstinate in denegation.[382] You will throw in some irrelevant questions with a view to lengthen the procedure, like fallacious geometers who complicate a diagram by drawing unnecessary lines. Amidst a multitude of premisses falsehood is more likely to escape detection; and thus, also, you may perhaps be able to slip in, unperceived and in a corner, some important premiss, which, if put as a separate question by itself, would certainly not have been granted.[383]