21–22
Chrysippus
With all my heart. A man lame in one foot knocks that foot accidentally against a stone, and gets a cut. Now the man is subject to lameness; which is the predicate. And the cut is a contingency.
Seventh Dealer
Oh, subtle! What else can you tell me?
Chrysippus
I have verbal involutions, for the better hampering, crippling, and muzzling of my antagonists. This is performed by the use of the far-famed syllogism.
Seventh Dealer
Syllogism! I warrant him a tough customer.
Chrysippus
Take a case. You have a child?
Seventh Dealer
Well, and what if I have?
5
Chrysippus
A crocodile catches him as he wanders along the bank of a river, and promises to restore him to you, if you will first guess correctly whether he means to restore him or not. Which are you going to say?
Seventh Dealer
A difficult question. I don’t know which way I should get him back soonest. In Heaven’s hame, answer for me, and save the child before he is eaten up.
Chrysippus
Ha, ha. I will teach you far other things than that.
Seventh Dealer
For instance?
Chrysippus
There is the ‘Reaper.’ There is the ‘Rightful Owner.’ Better still, there is the ‘Electra’ and the ‘Man in the Hood.’
10
Seventh Dealer
Who was he? and who was Electra?
Chrysippus
She was the Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon, to whom the same thing was known and unknown at the same time. She knew that Orestes was her brother: yet when he stood before her she did not know (until he revealed himself) that her brother was Orestes. As to the Man in the Hood, he will surprise you considerably. Answer me now: do you know your own father?
Chrysippus
Well now, if I present to you a man in a hood, shall you know him? eh?
Seventh Dealer
Of course not.
15
