attention to commerce; therefore you are poor.”  This is refuted in this way:—­“When you said, if you are in need of money you have not got money, I understood you to mean, ’If you are in need of money from poverty, then you have not got money;’ and therefore I admitted the argument.  But when you assumed, ‘But you are in need of money,’ I understood you to mean, ‘But you wish to have more money.’  But from these admissions this result, ‘Therefore you are poor,’ does not follow.  But it would follow if I had made this admission to you in the first instance, that any one who wished to have more money, had no money at all.”

XLVIII.  But many often think that you have forgotten what admissions you made, and therefore an inference which does not follow legitimately is introduced into the summing up as if it did follow; in this way:—­“If the inheritance came to him, it is probable that he was murdered by him.”  Then they prove this at considerable length.  Afterwards they assume, But the inheritance did come to him.  Then the inference is deduced; Therefore he did murder him.  But that does not necessarily follow from what they had assumed.  Wherefore it is necessary to take great care to notice both what is assumed, and what necessarily follows from those assumptions.  But the whole description of argumentation will be proved to be faulty on these accounts; if either there is any defect in the argumentation itself, or if it is not adapted to the original intention.  And there will be a defect in the argumentation itself, if the whole of it is entirely false, or common, or ordinary, or trifling, or made up of remote suppositions; if the definition contained in it be faulty, if it be controverted, if it be too evident, if it be one which is not admitted, or discreditable, or objected to, or contrary, or inconstant, or adverse to one’s object.

That is false in which there is evidently a lie; in this manner:—­“That man cannot be wise who neglects money.  But Socrates neglected money; therefore he was not wise.”  That is common which does not make more in favour of our adversaries than of ourselves; in this manner:—­“Therefore, O judges, I have summed up in a few words, because I had truth on my side.”  That is ordinary which, if the admission be now made, can be transferred also to some other case which is not easily proved; in this manner:—­“If he had not truth on his side, O judges, he would never have risked committing himself to your decision.”  That is trifling which is either uttered after the proposition, in this way:—­“If it had occurred to him, he would not have done so;” or if a man wishes to conceal a matter manifestly disgraceful under a trifling defence, in this manner:—­

  “Then when all sought your favour, when your hand
  Wielded a mighty sceptre, I forsook you;
  But now when all fly from you, I prepare
  Alone, despising danger, to restore you.”

XLIX.  That is remote which is sought to a superfluous extent, in this manner:—­“But if Publius Scipio had not given his daughter Cornelia in marriage to Tiberius Gracchus, and if he had not had the two Gracchi by her, such terrible seditions would never have arisen.  So that all this distress appears attributable to Scipio.”  And like this is that celebrated complaint—­