which account all men, even idiots, use after a certain manner, the dialectic and peirastic, for all up to a certain point endeavour to form a judgment of such as announce any thing. These however are common, for they know these no less, though they appear to speak very foreign from the purpose. All men therefore confute, for without art they partake of this with which dialectic is artistically conversant, and he is a dialectician who is peirastic in the syllogistic art. Nevertheless, since these are many, and are about all things, yet are not of such a kind as to be in a certain nature and genus, but as negations, other things again are not such, but are properties, it is possible from these to make a trial about all, and that there should be a certain art, and that it should not be such as those are which demonstrate. Wherefore, the contentious person is not one who in all respects thus subsists, as the maker of a false description, for the contentious person will not be paralogistic from a certain definite genus of principles, but will be about every genus.
Such then are the modes of sophistical elenchi, but it is not difficult to perceive that it is the province of the dialectician to investigate these, and to be able to effect them, for the method about propositions comprehends the whole of this theory.
Chapter 12
We have treated of the apparent elenchi, but with regard to showing that something is falsely as-
