Page:O. F. Owen's Organon of Aristotle Vol. 2 (1853).djvu/180

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be laid down. If, then, a person does not admit when he has neither an objection nor a contrary argument, he is evidently perverse, for perversity in argument is a responsion contrary to the stated modes, destructive of syllogism.

Chapter 9

We ought so to maintain both the thesis and the definition, that he (the respondent) may previously argue against himself; for from what the questionists subvert the position, it is clear that to these, opposition must be made.

Still we must beware of maintaining an improbable hypothesis, and it may be improbable in two ways, for both (that is improbable) from which absurdities happen to be enunciated; as if some one should say that all things are moved, or that nothing is; and also whatever things are chosen by the more depraved disposition, and which are contrary to the will; as that pleasure is the good, and that to injure, is better than to be injured. For men hate a person who makes these assertions, not as maintaining them for the sake of argument, but as what approve themselves (to him).

Chapter 10

Whatever arguments collect the false, must be solved, by subverting that, from which the falsity