The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

the
sham. For physically some people are in a vigorous condition, while
others merely seem to be so by blowing and rigging themselves out
as the tribesmen do their victims for sacrifice; and some people
are beautiful thanks to their beauty, while others seem to be so,
by dint of embellishing themselves. So it is, too, with inanimate
things; for of these, too, some are really silver and others gold,
while others are not and merely seem to be such to our sense; e.g.
things made of litharge and tin seem to be of silver, while those
made of yellow metal look golden. In the same way both reasoning
and refutation are sometimes genuine, sometimes not, though
inexperience may make them appear so: for inexperienced people
obtain only, as it were, a distant view of these things. For
reasoning rests on certain statements such that they involve
necessarily the assertion of something other than what has been
stated, through what has been stated: refutation is reasoning
involving the contradictory of the given conclusion. Now some of
them do not really achieve this, though they seem to do so for a
number of reasons; and of these the most prolific and usual domain
is the argument that turns upon names only. It is impossible in a
discussion to bring in the actual things discussed: we use their
names as symbols instead of them; and therefore we suppose that
what follows in the names, follows in the things as well, just as
people who calculate suppose in regard to their counters. But the
two cases (names and things) are not alike. For names are finite
and so is the sum-total of formulae, while things are infinite in
number. Inevitably, then, the same formulae, and a single name,
have a number of meanings. Accordingly just as, in counting, those
who are not clever in manipulating their counters are taken in by
the experts, in the same way in arguments too those who are not
well acquainted with the force of names misreason both in their own
discussions and when they listen to others. For this reason, then,
and for others to be mentioned later, there exists both reasoning
and refutation that is apparent but not real. Now for some people
it is better worth while to seem to be wise, than to be wise
without seeming to be (for the art of the sophist is the semblance
of wisdom without the reality, and the sophist is one who makes
money from an apparent but unreal wisdom); for them, then, it is
clearly essential also to seem to accomplish the task of a wise man
rather than to accomplish it without seeming to do so. To reduce it
to a single point of contrast it is the business of one who knows a
thing, himself to avoid fallacies in the subjects which he knows
and to be able to show up the man who makes them; and of these
accomplishments the one depends on the faculty to render an answer,
and the other upon the securing of one. Those, then, who would be
sophists are bound to study the class of arguments aforesaid: for
it is worth their while: for a faculty of this kind will make a man
seem to be wise, and this is the purpose they happen to have in
view.
    Clearly, then, there exists a class of arguments of this kind,
and it is at this kind of ability that those aim whom we call
sophists. Let us now go on to discuss how many kinds there are of
sophistical arguments, and how many in number are the elements of
which this faculty is composed, and how many branches there happen
to be of this inquiry, and the other factors that contribute to
this art.
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2
    Of arguments in dialogue form there are four classes:
    Didactic, Dialectical, Examination-arguments, and Contentious
arguments. Didactic arguments are those that reason from the
principles appropriate to each subject and not from the opinions
held by the answerer (for the learner should take things on trust):
dialectical arguments are those that reason from premisses
generally accepted, to the contradictory of a given thesis:
examination-arguments are those that reason from premisses which
are accepted by the answerer and which any one who pretends to
possess knowledge of the subject is bound to know-in what manner,
has been defined in another treatise: contentious arguments are
those that reason or appear to reason to a conclusion from
premisses that appear to be generally accepted but are not so. The
subject, then, of demonstrative arguments has been discussed in the
Analytics, while that of dialectic arguments and
examination-arguments has been