u, whether he entangles you owing to your silence or
to your talking? Suppose, for instance, you were to say, without
hesitation, that up to the number nine, is "few," but were to pause at the
tenth; then you would be refusing your assent to what is certain and
evident, and yet you will not allow me to do the same with respect to
subjects which are obscure.

That art, therefore, does not help you against the sorites; inasmuch as it
does not teach a man, who is using either the increasing or diminishing
scale, what is the first point, or the last. May I not say that that same
art, like Penelope undoing her web, at last undoes all the arguments which
have gone before? Is that your fault, or ours? In truth, it is the
foundation of dialectics, that whatever is enunciated (and that is what
they call {~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH PSILI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER XI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}, which answers to our word _effatum_,) is either true or
false. What, then, is the case? Are these true or false? If you say that
you are speaking falsely, and that that is true, you are speaking falsely
and telling the truth at the same time. This, forsooth, you say is
inexplicable; and that is more odious than our language, when we call
things uncomprehended, and not perceived.

XXX. However, I will pass over all this. I ask, if those things cannot be
explained, and if no means of judging of them is discovered, so that you
can answer whether they are true or false, then what has become of that
definition,--"That a proposition (_effatum_) is something which is either
true or false?" After the facts are assumed I will add, that of them some
are to be adopted, others impeached, because they are contrary to the
first. What then do you think of this conclusion,--"If you say that the sun
shines, and if you speak truth, therefore the sun does shine?" At all
events you approve of the kind of argument, and you say that the
conclusion has been most correctly inferred. Therefore, in teaching, you
deliver that as the first mood in which to draw conclusions. Either,
therefore, you will approve of every other conclusion in the same mood, or
that art of yours is good for nothing. Consider, then, whether you are
inclined to approve of this conclusion;--"If you say that you are a liar,
and speak the truth, then you are a liar. But you do say that you are a
liar, and