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.
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