Page - 2257 - in The Complete Aristotle

For what is improbable does happen, and therefore it is probable that improbable things will happen. Granted this, one might argue that ‘what is improbable is probable’. But this is not true absolutely. As, in eristic, the imposture comes from not adding any clause specifying relationship or reference or manner; so here it arises because the probability in question is not general but specific. It is of this line of argument that Corax’s Art of Rhetoric is composed. If the accused is not open to the charge-for instance if a weakling be tried for violent assault-the defence is that he was not likely to do such a thing. But if he is open to the charge-i.e. if he is a strong man-the defence is still that he was not likely to do such a thing, since he could be sure that people would think he was likely to do it. And so with any other charge: the accused must be either open or not open to it: there is in either case an appearance of probable innocence, but whereas in the latter case the probability is genuine, in the former it can only be asserted in the special sense mentioned. This sort of argument illustrates what is meant by making the worse argument seem the better. Hence people were right in objecting to the training Protagoras undertook to give them. It was a fraud; the probability it handled was not genuine but spurious, and has a place in no art except Rhetoric and Eristic. 25 Enthymemes, genuine and apparent, have now been described; the next subject is their Refutation. An argument may be refuted either by a counter-syllogism or by bringing an objection. It is clear that counter-syllogisms can be built up from the same lines of arguments as the original syllogisms: for the materials of syllogisms are the ordinary opinions of men, and such opinions often contradict each other. Objections, as appears in the Topics, may be raised in four ways-either by directly attacking your opponent’s own statement, or by putting forward another statement like it, or by putting forward a statement contrary to it, or by quoting previous decisions. 1. By ‘attacking your opponent’s own statement’ I mean, for instance, this: if his enthymeme should assert that love is always good, the objection can be brought in two ways, either by making the general statement that ‘all want is an evil’, or by making the particular one that there would be no talk of ‘Caunian love’ if there were not evil loves as well as good ones. 2. An objection ‘from a contrary statement’ is raised when, for instance, the opponent’s enthymeme having concluded that a good man does good to all his friends, you object, ‘That proves nothing, for a bad man does not do evil to all 2257