[413] Ibid. p. 160, a. 6-11.
In this way of proceeding, the march of the dialogue on both sides will be creditable. The respondent, signifying plainly that he understands the full consequences of his own concessions, will not appear to be worsted through any short-comings of his own, but only through what is inherent in his thesis; while you the questioner, having asked for such premisses as are really more probable than the conclusion to be established, and having had them granted, will have made out your point. It must be understood that you ought not to try to prove your conclusion from premisses less probable than itself; and that, if you put questions of this sort, you transgress the rules of dialectical procedure.[414]
[414] Topic. VIII. vi. p. 160, a. 11-16. οὕτω γὰρ ὅ τ’ ἀποκρινόμενος οὐδὲν δόξει δι’ αὑτὸν πάσχειν, ἐὰν προορῶν ἕκαστα τιθῇ, ὅ τ’ ἐρωτῶν τεύξεται συλλογισμοῦ τιθεμένων αὐτῷ πάντων ἐνδοξοτέρων τοῦ συμπεράσματος. ὅσοι δ’ ἐξ ἀδοξοτέρων τοῦ συμπεράσματος ἐπιχειροῦσι συλλογίζεσθαι, δῆλον ὡς οὐ καλῶς συλλογίζονται· διὸ τοῖς ἐρωτῶσιν οὐ θετέον.
If you ask a dialectical question in plain and univocal language, the respondent is bound to answer Yes or No. But if you ask it in terms obscure or equivocal, he is not obliged to answer thus directly. He is at liberty to tell you that he does not understand the question; he ought to have no scruple in telling you so, if such is really the fact. Suppose the terms of your question to be familiar, but equivocal; the answer to it may perhaps be either true or false, alike in all the different senses of the terms. In that case, the respondent ought to answer Yes or No directly. But, if the answer would be an affirmation in one sense of the terms and a negation in another, he must take care to signify that he is aware of the equivocation, and to distinguish at once the two-fold meaning; for, if the distinction is not noticed till afterwards, he cannot clearly show that he was aware of it from the first. If he really was not at first aware of the equivocation, and gave an affirmative answer looking only to one among the several distinct meanings, you will try to convict him of error by pushing him on the other meaning. The best thing that he can then do will be to confess his oversight, and to excuse himself by saying that misconception is easy where the same term or the same proposition may mean several different things.[415]
[415] Ibid. vii. p. 160, a. 17-34.
Suppose you put several particular questions (or several analogous questions) with the view of arriving ultimately by induction at the concession of an universal, comprising them all. If they are all both true and probable, the respondent must concede them all severally; yet he may still intend to answer No, when the universal is tendered to him after them. He has no right to answer thus, however, unless he can produce some contradictory particular instance, real or apparent, to justify him; and, if he does so without such justification, he is a perverse dialectician.[416] Perhaps he may try to sustain his denegation of the universal, after having conceded many particulars, by a counter-attack founded on some chain of paradoxical reasoning such as that of Zeno against motion; there being many such paradoxes contradictory of probabilities, yet hard to refute. But this is no sufficient justification for refusing to admit the universal, when, after having admitted many particulars, he can produce no particular adverse to them. The case will be still worse, if he refuses to admit the universal, having neither any adverse instance, nor any counter-ratiocinative attack. It is then the extreme of perverse Dialectic.[417]
[416] Topic. VIII. viii. p. 160, b. 2-5: τὸ γὰρ ἄνευ ἐνστάσεως, ἢ οὔσης ἢ δοκούσης, κωλύειν τὸν λόγον δυσκολαίνειν ἐστίν. εἰ οὖν ἐπὶ πολλῶν φαινομένου μὴ δίδωσι τὸ καθόλου μὴ ἔχων ἔνστασιν, φανερὸν ὅτι δυσκολαίνει.
[417] Ibid. b. 5, seq. ἔτι εἰ μηδ’ ἀντεπιχειρεῖν ἔχει ὅτι οὐκ ἀληθές, πολλῷ μᾶλλον ἂν δόξειε δυσκολαίνειν. καίτοι οὐδὲ τοῦθ’ ἱκανόν· πολλοὺς γὰρ λόγους ἔχομεν ἐναντίους ταῖς δόξαις, οὓς χαλεπὸν λύειν, καθάπερ τὸν Ζήνωνος ὅτι οὐκ ἐνδέχεται κινεῖσθαι οὐδὲ τὸ στάδιον διελθεῖν· ἀλλ’ οὐ διὰ τοῦτο τἀντικείμενα τούτοις οὐ θετέον.
Before the respondent undertakes to defend any thesis or definition, he ought to have previously studied the various modes attacking it, and to have prepared himself for meeting them.[418] He must also be cautious of taking up improbable theses, in either of the senses of improbable. For a thesis is so called when it involves strange and paradoxical developments, as if a man lays down either that every thing is in motion or that nothing is in motion; and also, when it implies a discreditable character and is contrary to that which men wish to be thought to hold, as, for example, the doctrine that pleasure is the good, or that it is better to do wrong than to suffer wrong. If a man defends such theses as these, people hate him because they presume that he is not merely propounding them as matter for dialectical argument, but advocating them as convictions of his own.[419]
[418] Ibid. ix. p. 160, b. 14.