A Clarification of the foregoing stations:
What we have pointed out—namely, their error in denying the possibility of forming a conception except by means of a “definition,” and, indeed, the view of those who go so far as to deny that even definition can produce conception while confining assent to what they call syllogism—is readily discerned, its refutation plain, and the mistake of the logicians evident to anyone who reflects. They merely baffle people with intimidating language and excessive elaboration.
The first and second stations
The most patent of their errors is their assertion that the concepts one seeks cannot be acquired except through the sort of definition they prescribe, and that the mere statement of the definer imparts an awareness of the external realities as soon as he utters it—whether the definition takes the form of a complete declarative sentence, which they call a “proposition” with a partial qualification, or whether the definition is the predicate of a single-word subject, even though it possesses attributes that restrict and distinguish it.
For example, when one asks, “What is man?” and the answer comes, “the rational animal,” or one says, “Man is a rational animal,” some will claim that the definition is the statement, “Man is the rational animal.” Others will say that the definition is simply “the rational animal,” which, functionally, amounts to a single term. Yet this is not a complete utterance on which silence would be appropriate unless a subject is supplied for which it serves as predicate or a subject-predicate pair is assumed to be omitted. Whoever considers this lone phrase to be the definition and maintains that, by itself, it yields a conception of the reality is even farther from the mark.
The third station
Next comes their contention that none of the desired assents can be attained except through the syllogism they describe. Such an all-inclusive negation is impossible to establish, and it rests on no proof whatsoever. We have already hinted at the unsoundness of what they have put forward, and its falsity is evident, for the required assents are in fact secured without recourse to the syllogism they stipulate, just as the desired concepts are obtained without the definitions on which they insist.
As for this fourth station, their claim that a syllogism composed of two premises yields