על עבודת האדמה ל״אOn Husbandry 31
א׳
1[136] See how true this is. Day after day the swarm of sophists to be found everywhere wears out the ears of any audience they happen to have with disquisitions on minutiae, unravelling phrases that are ambiguous and can bear two meanings and distinguishing among circumstances such as it is well to bear in mind—and they are set on bearing in mind a vast number. Do not some of them divide the letters of written speech into consonants and vowels? And do not some of them break up language into its three ultimate parts, noun, verb, conjunction?
ב׳
2[137] Do not musicians divide their own science into rhythm, metre, tune; and the tune or melody into the chromatic, harmonic and diatonic form, and into intervals of a fourth, a fifth or an octave, and into melodies with united or disjoined tetrachords?
ג׳
3[138] Do not geometricians put all lines under two main heads, the straight line and the curve? Do not other experts place everything in the principal categories that their several sciences suggest, categories that start with the elements of the science and go on until they have dealt with their last and highest achievements?
ד׳
4[139] With their company let the whole choir of philosophers chime in, harping on their wonted themes, how that of existences some are bodies, some incorporeal; and of bodies, some lifeless, some having life; some rational, some irrational, some mortal, some divine; and of mortal beings, some male, some female; a distinction which applies to man;
ה׳
5[140] and of things incorporeal again, some complete, some incomplete; and of those that are complete, some questions and inquiries, imprecations and adjurations, not to mention all the other particular differences, all of which are set forth in the elementary handbooks which deal with them. Again, there are what dialecticians are accustomed to call propositions.
ו׳
6[141] Of these, some are simple, some not so; and of the non-simple, some hypothetical, some inferential, some 〈indicating〉 more or less, some moreover disjunctive; and suchlike distinctions. They distinguish further things true, false, and doubtful; possible and impossible; conclusive and inconclusive; soluble and insoluble; and all kindred antitheses. Again, applying to incorporeal things which are incomplete there are the subdivisions into “predicates” and “complements” and still more minute refinements.