nconsistencies; and this one is
very different from that drawn from differences. For adjuncts, of
which we were speaking just now, do not always exist, but consequents
do invariably. I call those things consequents which follow an
action of necessity. And the same rule holds as to antecedents and
inconsistencies; for whatever precedes each thing, that of necessity
coheres with that theme; and whatever is inconsistent with it is of
such a nature that it can never cohere with it. As then this topic is
distributed in three divisions, into consequence, antecession, and
inconsistency, there is one single topic to help us find the argument,
but a threefold way of dealing with it. For what difference does it
make, when you have once assumed that the ready money is due to the
woman to whom all the money has been bequeathed, whether you conclude
your argument in this way:--"If coined money is money, it has been
bequeathed to the woman; but coined money is money; therefore it has
been bequeathed to her;"--or in this way: "If ready money has not been
bequeathed to her, then ready money is not money; but ready money is
money; therefore it has been bequeathed to her;"--or in this way: "The
cases of money not having been bequeathed, and of ready money not
having been bequeathed, are identical; but money was bequeathed
to her; therefore ready money was bequeathed to her?" But the
dialecticians call that conclusion of the argument in which, when you
have first made an assumption, that which is connected with it follows
as a consequence of the assumption, the first mood of the conclusion;
and when, because you have denied the consequence, it follows that
that also to which it was a consequence must be denied also, that is
the second mood. But when you deny some things in combination, (and
then another negation is added to them,) and from these things you
assume something, so that what remains is also done away with, that is
called the third mood of the conclusion. From this are derived those
results of the rhetoricians drawn from contraries, which they call
enthymemes. Not that every sentence may not be legitimately called
an enthymeme; but, as Homer on account of his preeminence has
appropriated the general name of poet to himself as his own among all
the Greeks; so, though every sentence is an enthymeme, still, because
that which is made up of contraries appears the most acute argument of
the kind, that alone has possessed itself of th