ἱστορίαι Historiai
D.L. 7.43-46 Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume II (Books VI-X), Diogenes Laertius; served verbatim
too, moods, syllogisms and fallacies whether due to the subject matter or to the language; these including both false and true and negative arguments, sorites and the like, whether defective, insoluble, or conclusive, and the fallacies known as the Veiled, or Horned, No man, and The Mowers. The second main head mentioned above as belonging to Dialectic is that of language, wherein are included written language and the parts of speech, with a discussion of errors in syntax and in single words, poetical diction, verbal ambiguities, euphony and music, and according to some writers chapters on terms, divisions, and style. The study of syllogisms they declare to be of the greatest service, as showing us what is capable of yielding demonstration ; and this contributes much to the formation of correct judgements, and their arrangement and retention in memory give a scientific character to our conception of things. An argument is in itself a whole containing premisses and conclusion, and an inference (or syllogism) is an inferential argument composed of these. Demonstration is an argument inferring by means of what is better apprehended something less clearly apprehended. A presentation (or mental impression) is an imprint on the soul : the name having been appropriately borrowed from the imprint made by the seal upon the wax. There are two species of presentation, the one apprehending a real object, the other not. The former, which they take to be the test of reality, is defined as that which proceeds from a real object, agrees with that object itself, and has been imprinted seal-fashion and stamped upon the mind :

The Greek stands ready in the workroom; the English is served. Both faces will read together.

← D.L. 7.41-43 contents D.L. 7.46-48 →

Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume II (Books VI-X), Diogenes Laertius — translated by R. D. Hicks, 1925
Apparatus shelf — Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, vol. II (R. D. Hicks translation, Loeb L185) · R. D. Hicks, Loeb Classical Library, London: William Heinemann / New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, MCMXXV (1925)
license: public-domain (US: published 1925, pre-1930 — the MCMXXV title page verified from the scan itself; only the English rectos are served, Hicks's translation)