Kitap 7
2.25
But the most effective method of establishing and refuting definitions is derived from the examination of properties and differences, and sometimes even from considerations of etymology, while all these considerations will, like others, find further support in equity and occasionally in conjecture. Conjecture is here used in the ordinary sense, not the technical. Etymology is rarely of assistance, but the following will provide an example of its use. For what else is a 'tumult' but a disturbance of such violence as to give rise to abnormal alarm? And the name itself is derived from this fact. Cic. Phil. VIII. i. 3. Tumultus is here used by Cicero in its special sense, civil war or Gallic invasion. He derives it from timor multus.
2.26
Great ingenuity may be exercised with regard to properties and differences, as for instance in the question whether a person assigned to his creditor for debt, cp. III. vi. 25. who is condemned by the law to remain in a state of servitude until he has paid his debt, is actually a slave. One party will advance the following definition, A slave is one who is legally in a state of servitude. The other will produce the definition, A slave is one who is in a state of servitude on the same terms as a slave (or, to use the older phrase, 'who serves as a slave'). This definition, though it differs considerably from the other, will be quite useless unless it is supported by properties and differences.
