Therefore men did hasten to set down
some principles about which the variety of their disputatious might
turn.
(3) So, then, this art of judgment is but the reduction of
propositions to principles in a middle term. The principles to be
agreed by all and exempted from argument; the middle term to be
elected at the liberty of every man's invention; the reduction to be
of two kinds, direct and inverted: the one when the proposition is
reduced to the principle, which they term a probation ostensive; the
other, when the contradictory of the proposition is reduced to the
contradictory of the principle, which is that which they call per
incommodum, or pressing an absurdity; the number of middle terms to
be as the proposition standeth degrees more or less removed from the
principle.
(4) But this art hath two several methods of doctrine, the one by
way of direction, the other by way of caution: the former frameth
and setteth down a true form of consequence, by the variations and
deflections from which errors and inconsequences may be exactly
judged.
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