of objective truth, may also be used when a man is objectively in the
wrong; and whether or not this is the case, is hardly ever a matter of
complete certainty.

I am of opinion, therefore, that a sharper distinction should be drawn
between Dialectic and Logic than Aristotle has given us; that to Logic
we should assign objective truth as far as it is merely formal, and
that Dialectic should be confined to the art of gaining one's point,
and contrarily, that Sophistic and Eristic should not be distinguished
from Dialectic in Aristotle's fashion, since the difference which he
draws rests on objective and material truth; and in regard to what
this is, we cannot attain any clear certainty before discussion; but
we are compelled, with Pilate, to ask, _What is truth_? For truth
is in the depths, [Greek: en butho hae halaetheia] (a saying of
Democritus, _Diog. Laert_., ix., 72). Two men often engage in a warm
dispute, and then return to their homes each of the other's opinion,
which he has exchanged for his own. It is easy to say that in every
dispute we should have no other aim than the advancement of truth; but
before dispute no one knows where it is, and through his opponent's
arguments and his own a man is misled.]

We must always keep the subject of one branch of knowledge quite
distinct from that of any other. To form a clear idea of the province
of Dialectic, we must pay no attention to objective truth, which is an
affair of Logic; we must regard it simply as _the art of getting the
best of it in a dispute_, which, as we have seen, is all the easier if
we are actually in the right. In itself Dialectic has nothing to do
but to show how a man may defend himself against attacks of every
kind, and especially against dishonest attacks; and, in the
same fashion, how he may attack another man's statement without