When you have elicited all your premisses, and your opponent has
admitted them, you must refrain from asking him for the conclusion,
but draw it at once for yourself; nay, even though one or other of the
premisses should be lacking, you may take it as though it too had been
admitted, and draw the conclusion. This trick is an application of the
fallacy _non causae ut causae_.

XXI.

When your opponent uses a merely superficial or sophistical argument
and you see through it, you can, it is true, refute it by setting
forth its captious and superficial character; but it is better to
meet him with a counter-argument which is just as superficial and
sophistical, and so dispose of him; for it is with victory that you
are concerned, and not with truth. If, for example, he adopts an
_argumentum ad hominem_, it is sufficient to take the force out of it
by a counter _argumentum ad hominem_ or _argumentum ex concessis_;
and, in general, instead of setting forth the true state of the case
at equal length, it is shorter to take this course if it lies open to
you.

XXII.

If your opponent requires you to admit something from which the
point in dispute will immediately follow, you must refuse to do so,
declaring that it is a _petitio principii_ For he and the audience
will regard a proposition which is near akin to the point in dispute
as identical with it, and in this way you deprive him of his best
argument.

XXIII.

Contradiction and contention irritate a man into exaggerating his
statement. By contradicting your opponent you may drive him into
extending beyond its proper limits a statement which, at all events
within those limits and in itself, is true; and when you refute this
exaggerated form of it, you look as though you had also refuted his
original statement. Contrarily, you must take care not to allow
yourself to be misled by contradictions into exaggerating or extending
a statement of your own. It will often happen that your opponent will
himself directly try to extend your statement further than you meant
it; here you must at once stop him, and bring him back to the limits
which you set up; "That's what I said, and no more."

XXIV.

This trick consists in stating a false syllogism. Your opponent makes
a proposition, and by false inference and distortion of his ideas you
force from it other propositions which it does not contain and he does
not in the least mean; nay, which are absurd or dangerous. It