Eristic Disputation

But if he should attempt to break in upon the examination by interrupting with questions, he plainly does not even wish to listen.

For the younger of the philosophers among the Greeks, out of an empty and unfulfilled love of honour, are carried off, at once refutatively and contentiously, into useless babbling;

But if he does not answer the counter-question, nor wishes to say what after all he means, or to what thing he is applying the name "animal" when he made his proposition, but bids us ourselves draw the distinction, he would be recognized as a wrangler.

Indeed, who can fail to abhor, yes to contemn, those teachers, in the first place, who devote themselves to disputation, since they pretend to search for truth, but straightway at the beginning of their professions attempt to deceive us with lies?

for although the latter expounded such captious theories that were anyone to cleave to them in practice he would at once be in all manner of trouble, they did, at any rate, make professions of virtue and sobriety in their teaching, whereas the former, although exhorting others to study political discourse, neglected all the good things which this study affords, and became nothing more than profess …