Page:O. F. Owen's Organon of Aristotle Vol. 2 (1853).djvu/207

 the consequent. Still this is not altogether true, as if it should be from accident, for snow, and swan, are the same, so far as each is white. Or again, as in the argument of Melissus, a person assumes that to have been generated, and to have a beginning, are the same; or that to become equals, is identical with to receive the same magnitude; for because what was generated has a beginning, they require it to be granted, that what had a beginning, was generated, as if both these were the same from having a beginning, viz. that which was generated, and what was finite. Likewise, also in things made equal, if those which receive one, and the same magnitude, become equal, those also which become equal, receive one magnitude, so that the consequent is assumed. Since then, an elenchus which is from accident, subsists in the ignorance of the elenchus, it is clear that this also is the case, with that which is from the consequent, and this is also to be considered in another way.

Notwithstanding, those paralogisms which are from making many interrogations, one, consist in our not distinctly unfolding the definition, of the proposition. For the proposition is one thing of one, since there is the same definition of a thing, one only and simply, as of man, and of one man only, and similarly in other cases. If then, one proposition be that which requires one thing of one, an interrogation of this kind will be simply a proposition, but since a syllogism is from propositions, and the elenchus is a syllogism, an elenchus also will consist of propositions, wherefore if a proposition be one thing of one, it is evident that he (who errs) in the definition of syllogism, is in ignorance of an elenchus, as that seems a proposition, which is not one. If then he gives an answer, as if to one interrogation, it will be an elenchus, but if he does not, yet seems to do so, it will be an apparent elenchus, so that all the places fall into ignorance of the elenchus, those from diction, because there is apparent contradiction, which was the characteristic of an elenchus, but the rest from the definition of syllogism.