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‘Let us now proceed further in another way to take (or find) universal topics about every thing (taken promiscuously, that is, from any of the εἴδη, and applied indifferently to any of the three branches of Rhetoric), and add a supplementary note upon the refutative and demonstrative (subaudi τόπους ἐνθυμημάτων) topics of enthymemes (the contents of c. 23), and those of apparent’ (shams, impostors, not genuine), ‘not real, enthymemes; not real, because this is likewise the case with syllogisms (of which enthymemes though mutilated are a copy, and therefore share with the others the fallacious kind)’.

The literal translation of οὐκ ὄντων δὲ ἐνθυμημάτων, ἐπεί περ οὐδὲ συλλογισμῶν is, “enthymemes not real, because there are also unreal (not-real syllogisms”; οὐδέ, neither, being broken up into two parts, of which the δέ contrasts συλλογισμῶν with ἐνθυμημάτων, and the οὐ negatives the genuineness (und. from the preceding) of the syllogism, not the syllogism itself.

παρασημαινόμενοι] is a very oddly chosen word to express the treatment of chapters 23 and 24, which are just as much connected with the subject of the work, and treated with as much care and detail, as the rest. It means according to Victorius (and Rost and Palm's Lex.) adscribere, adnotare, applied to something of subordinate interest and importance, or not immediately and closely connected with the subject in hand, as a note on the margin of a manuscript; ‘noting beside’ the main subject, a supplementary note. This is certainly the meaning of it in Top. A 14, 105 b 16, where it is applied to the ‘noting down’ of the opinions of individual philosophers, ‘beside’, as supplementary to, those which are generally accepted: and also, as Victorius thinks, of παράσημα in de Soph. El. 20, 177 b 6—this is not quite so certain: [ἐν τοῖς γεγραμμένοις παράσημα ποιοῦνται (signa ponunt ad vocabula distinguenda), Index Aristotelicus]. Alexander Aphrodisiensis in his commentary on the former passage adds παραγράφειν, apparently as a synonym, or interpretation of the other.

‘And after this has been made clear, let us pass on to the determination of solutions and objections, whence they must be brought, from what sources derived, for the refutation of enthymemes’. Of λύσις and its two modes, ἔλεγχος and ἔνστασις, the contents of c. 25, see Introd. 268 seq.

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