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GENERAL SURVEY. 9
ledge, and sometimes even the premisses of a conclusion,
ahiag, as, for instance, in
"
his
"
Rhet."
Metaph." iv. 18 ;
ii. 2 ;
" De i.
plantis," p. 816 (ed. Berol.), but more especially
"
Analyt. post." i. 2, where he calls the premisses to a con
>
clusion simply aiTiai TOV o v/u7re/oa<r^aro
(causes of the con
clusion). Now, using the same word to express two closely
connected conceptions, is a sure sign that their difference
has not been recognised, or at any rate not been firmly
grasped ; for a mere accidental hornoiiymous designation
of two widely differing things is quite another matter.
Nowhere, however, does this error appear more conspicuously
than in his definition of the sophism non causce ut causa,
Trapa ro prj airiov utg airiov (reasoning from what is not cause
as if it were cause), in the book "De sophisticis elenchis," c. 5.
By UITLOV he here understands absolutely nothing but the
argument, the premisses, consequently a reason of know
ledge ; for this sophism consists in correctly proving the
impossibility of something, while the proof has no bearing
whatever upon the proposition in dispute, which it is never
theless supposed to refute. Here, therefore, there is no ques
tion at all of physical causes. Still the use of the word airiov
has had so much weight with modern logicians, that they
hold to it exclusively in their accounts of the fallacia extra
dictionem, and explain the fallacia non causce ut causa as
designating a physical cause, which is not the case.
Beimarus, for instance, does so, and G-. E. Schultze and
Fries all indeed of whom I have any knowledge. The
first work in which I find a correct definition of this
sophism, is Twesten s Logic. Moreover, in all other
scientific works and controversies the charge of a fallacia
non causce ut causa usually denotes the interpolation of a
wrong cause.
Sextus Empiricus presents another forcible instance of
the way in which the Ancients were wont universally to con
found the logical law of the reason of knowledge with the