point in dispute will immediately follow, you must refuse to do so,
declaring that it is a _petitio principii_ For he and the audience
will regard a proposition which is near akin to the point in dispute
as identical with it, and in this way you deprive him of his best
argument.


XXIII.

Contradiction and contention irritate a man into exaggerating his
statement. By contradicting your opponent you may drive him into
extending beyond its proper limits a statement which, at all events
within those limits and in itself, is true; and when you refute this
exaggerated form of it, you look as though you had also refuted his
original statement. Contrarily, you must take care not to allow
yourself to be misled by contradictions into exaggerating or extending
a statement of your own. It will often happen that your opponent will
himself directly try to extend your statement further than you meant
it; here you must at once stop him, and bring him back to the limits
which you set up; "That's what I said, and no more."


XXIV.

This trick consists in stating a false syllogism. Your opponent makes
a proposition, and by false inference and distortion of his ideas you
force from it other propositions which it does not contain and he does
not in the least mean; nay, which are absurd or dangerous. It then
looks as if his proposition gave rise to others which are inconsistent
either with themselves or with some acknowledged truth, and so it