[426] Ibid. a. 30: οὐδὲν γὰρ κωλύει τινὶ δοκεῖν τὰ μὴ ὄντα μᾶλλον τῶν ἀληθῶν, ὥστ’ ἐκ τῶν ἐκείνῳ δοκούντων τοῦ λόγου γενομένου μᾶλλον ἔσται πεπεισμένος ἢ ὠφελημένος.
[427] Ibid. a. 33: δεῖ δὲ τὸν καλῶς μεταβιβάζοντα διαλεκτικῶς καὶ μὴ ἐριστικῶς μεταβιβάζειν. About τὸ μεταβιβάζειν, compare Topica, I. ii. p. 101, a. 23.
[428] Ibid. b. 2: ὅ τε γὰρ ἐριστικῶς ἐρωτῶν φαύλως διαλέγεται, ὅ τ’ ἐν τῷ ἀποκρίνεσθαι μὴ διδοὺς τὰ φαινόμενον μηδ’ ἐκδεχόμενος ὅ τί ποτε βούλεται ὁ ἐρωτῶν πυθέσθαι.
[429] Topic. VIII. xi. p. 161, b. 11-18: ἐπεὶ δ’ ἐστὶν ἀδιόριστον πότε τἀναντία καὶ πότε τὰ ἐν ἀρχῇ λαμβάνουσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι (πολλάκις γὰρ καθ’ αὑτοὺς λέγοντες τἀναντία λέγουσι, καὶ ἀνανεύσαντες πρότερον διδόασιν ὕστερον· διόπερ ἐρωτώμενοι τἀναντία καὶ τὸ ἐν ἀρχῇ πολλάκις ὑπακούουσιν) — ἀνάγκη φαύλους γίνεσθαι τοὺς λόγους· αἴτιος δ’ ὁ ἀποκρινόμενος, τὰ μὲν οὐ διδούς, τὰ δὲ τοιαῦτα διδούς.
This passage is not very clear.
Such then are the cases in which the conduct of the dialogue is open to censure, without any fault on your part as questioner. But there are other cases in which the fault is really yours. These are five in number:— (1) When all or most of your questions are so framed as to elicit premisses either false or improbable, so that neither the conclusion which you seek to obtain, nor any other conclusion at all, follows from them; (2) When, from similar defects, the proper conclusion that you seek to obtain cannot be drawn from your premisses; (3) When the proper conclusion would follow, if certain additions were made to your premisses, but such additions are of a character worse than the premisses already obtained, and are even less probable than the conclusion itself; (4) When you have accumulated a superfluous multitude of premisses, so that the proper conclusion does not follow from all of them but from a part of them only (5) When your premisses are more improbable and less trustworthy than the proper conclusion, or when, though true, they are harder and more troublesome to prove than the problem itself.[430]
[430] Ibid. b. 19-33: καθ’ αὑτὸν δὲ τῷ λόγῳ πέντε εἰσὶν ἐπιτιμήσεις.
In regard to the last item, however, the fault may sometimes be in the problem itself rather than in you as questioner. Some problems, being in their own nature hard and not to be settled from probable or plausible data, ought not to be admitted into Dialectic. All that can be required from you as questioner is that you shall know and obtain the most probable premisses that the problem admits: your procedure may be thus in itself blameable, yet it may even deserve praise, having regard to the problem, if this last be very intractable; or it may be in itself praiseworthy, yet blameable in regard to the problem, if the problem admit of being settled by premisses still more probable.[431] You may even be more blameable, if you obtain your conclusion but obtain it from improbable premisses, than if you failed to obtain it; the premisses required to make it complete being true and probable and not of capital importance, but being refused by the respondent.[432] However, you ought not to be blamed if you obtain your true and proper conclusion but obtain it through premisses in themselves false; for this is recognized in analytical theory as possible: if the conclusion is false, the premisses (one or both) must be false, but a true conclusion may be drawn from false premisses.[433]
[431] Ibid. b. 34-p. 162, a. 3.
[432] Ibid. p. 162, a. 3-8.