21
Naturally, for you are not accustomed to our terminology, nor have you the perceptive imagination. But the virtuous man, he who has mastered logical theory, knows not only these things, but also the nature of an accident and a secondary accident, and how much difference there is between them.
21
In the name of wisdom, kindly take the trouble to tell me this, too: what accidents and secondary accidents are. I am indescribably impressed by the roll of the words.
21
No trouble at all. If a lame man, stumbling with that lame foot itself against a stone gets unexpectedly hurt, this man's lameness is evidently a primary accident to which he adds a secondary accident in the way of the wound.
22
What else, now, do you claim to know?
22
How clever!
22
The meshes of argument wherewith I trip up my interlocutors and block their passage and reduce them to silence by actually muzzling them. The name of this faculty is the famous syllogism.
22
By Herkules, it is an irresistible, mighty weapon, from your description.
22
I will give you a specimen. Have you a child?
22
Certainly.
22
If a crocodile should manage to snatch it, finding it wandering too near the river, and if, then, he should promise to restore it if you could tell him truly whether he had determined to give it back or not, what would you tell him he had in mind?
22
That is a difficult question, for I do not see which answer would be the more likely to get the child back. But do you, in Heaven's name, answer for me, and save my child before he eats him.
22
Never fear, I will teach you other things still more surprising.
22
What sort of things?
22
The Reaper, the Master, and, above all, the Elektra, and the Veiled.
22
What do you mean by the "Veiled," or the "Elektra?"
