Page:O. F. Owen's Organon of Aristotle Vol. 1 (1853).djvu/185



Chapter 43
regard, however, to arguments against definition, and by which a particular thing in the definition is attacked, that term must be laid down which is attacked, and not the whole definition, for it will result that we shall be less disturbed by prolixity, e.g. if we are to show that water is humid potable, we must place potable and water as terms.

Chapter 44
must not endeavour, moreover, to reduce hypothetical syllogisms, for we cannot reduce them, from the things laid down, since they are not proved syllogistically, but are all of them admitted by consent. Thus if a man supposing that except there is one certain power of contraries, there will neither exist one science of them, it should afterwards be dialectically proved that there is not one power of contraries; for instance, of the wholesome and or the unwholesome, for the same thing will be wholesome and unwholesome at the same time—here it will be shown that there is not one power of all contraries, but that is not a science, has not been shown. We must yet acknowledge that there is, not however by syllogism, but by hypothesis, wherefore we cannot reduce this, but that, we may, viz. that there is not one power, for this perhaps was a syllogism, but that an hypothesis. The same thing happens in the case of syllogisms, which infer a consequence per impossibile, since neither can we analyze these, though we may a