The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

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15
    With a view then to refutation, one resource is length-for it is
difficult to keep several things in view at once; and to secure
length the elementary rules that have been stated before’ should be
employed. One resource, on the other hand, is speed; for when
people are left behind they look ahead less. Moreover, there is
anger and contentiousness, for when agitated everybody is less able
to take care of himself. Elementary rules for producing anger are
to make a show of the wish to play foul, and to be altogether
shameless. Moreover, there is the putting of one’s questions
alternately, whether one has more than one argument leading to the
same conclusion, or whether one has arguments to show both that
something is so, and that it is not so: for the result is that he
has to be on his guard at the same time either against more than
one line, or against contrary lines, of argument. In general, all
the methods described before of producing concealment are useful
also for purposes of contentious argument: for the object of
concealment is to avoid detection, and the object of this is to
deceive.
    To counter those who refuse to grant whatever they suppose to
help one’s argument, one should put the question negatively, as
though desirous of the opposite answer, or at any rate as though
one put the question without prejudice; for when it is obscure what
answer one wants to secure, people are less refractory. Also when,
in dealing with particulars, a man grants the individual case, when
the induction is done you should often not put the universal as a
question, but take it for granted and use it: for sometimes people
themselves suppose that they have granted it, and also appear to
the audience to have done so, for they remember the induction and
assume that the questions could not have been put for nothing. In
cases where there is no term to indicate the universal, still you
should avail yourself of the resemblance of the particulars to suit
your purpose; for resemblance often escapes detection. Also, with a
view to obtaining your premiss, you ought to put it in your
question side by side with its contrary. E.g. if it were necessary
to secure the admission that ‘A man should obey his father in
everything’, ask ‘Should a man obey his parents in everything, or
disobey them in everything?’; and to secure that ‘A number
multiplied by a large number is a large number’, ask ‘Should one
agree that it is a large number or a small one?’ For then, if
compelled to choose, one will be more inclined to think it a large
one: for the placing of their contraries close beside them makes
things look big to men, both relatively and absolutely, and worse
and better.
    A strong appearance of having been refuted is often produced by
the most highly sophistical of all the unfair tricks of
questioners, when without proving anything, instead of putting
their final proposition as a question, they state it as a
conclusion, as though they had proved that ‘Therefore so-and-so is
not true’
    It is also a sophistical trick, when a paradox has been laid
down, first to propose at the start some view that is generally
accepted, and then claim that the answerer shall answer what he
thinks about it, and to put one’s question on matters of that kind
in the form ‘Do you think that… ?’ For then, if the question be
taken as one of the premisses of one’s argument, either a
refutation or a paradox is bound to result; if he grants the view,
a refutation; if he refuses to grant it or even to admit it as the
received opinion, a paradox; if he refuses to grant it, but admits
that it is the received opinion, something very like a refutation,
results.
    Moreover, just as in rhetorical discourses, so also in those
aimed at refutation, you should examine the discrepancies of the
answerer’s position either with his own statements, or with those
of persons whom he admits to say and do aright, moreover with those
of people who are generally supposed to bear that kind of
character, or who are like them, or with those of the majority or
of all men. Also just as answerers, too, often, when they are in
process of being confuted, draw a distinction, if their confutation
is just about to take place, so questioners also should resort to
this from time to time to counter objectors, pointing out,
supposing that against one sense of the words the objection holds,
but not against the other, that