Page - 326 - in The Complete Aristotle

Topics, Book VIII Translated by W. A. Pickard-Cambridge < div id=“book8” class=“book” title=“Book VIII”> 1 Next there fall to be discussed the problems of arrangement and method in putting questions. Any one who intends to frame questions must, first of all, select the ground from which he should make his attack; secondly, he must frame them and arrange them one by one to himself; thirdly and lastly, he must proceed actually to put them to the other party. Now so far as the selection of his ground is concerned the problem is one alike for the philosopher and the dialectician; but how to go on to arrange his points and frame his questions concerns the dialectician only: for in every problem of that kind a reference to another party is involved. Not so with the philosopher, and the man who is investigating by himself: the premisses of his reasoning, although true and familiar, may be refused by the answerer because they lie too near the original statement and so he foresees what will follow if he grants them: but for this the philosopher does not care. Nay, he may possibly be even anxious to secure axioms as familiar and as near to the question in hand as possible: for these are the bases on which scientific reasonings are built up. The sources from which one’s commonplace arguments should be drawn have already been described:’ we have now to discuss the arrangement and formation of questions and first to distinguish the premisses, other than the necessary premisses, which have to be adopted. By necessary premisses are meant those through which the actual reasoning is constructed. Those which are secured other than these are of four kinds; they serve either inductively to secure the universal premiss being granted, or to lend weight to the argument, or to conceal the conclusion, or to render the argument more clear. Beside these there is no other premiss which need be secured: these are the ones whereby you should try to multiply and formulate your questions. Those which are used to conceal the conclusion serve a controversial purpose only; but inasmuch as an undertaking of this sort is always conducted against another person, we are obliged to employ them as well. The necessary premisses through which the reasoning is effected, ought not to be propounded directly in so many words. Rather one should soar as far 326