If,
then, even the latter negative is predicable, the negative of
'trireme' will be also predicable; and, if this is predicable, the
affirmative will be so too.
Those, then, who maintain this view are driven to this conclusion,
and to the further conclusion that it is not necessary either to
assert or to deny. For if it is true that a thing is a man and a
not-man, evidently also it will be neither a man nor a not-man. For to
the two assertions there answer two negations, and if the former is
treated as a single proposition compounded out of two, the latter also
is a single proposition opposite to the former.
Again, either the theory is true in all cases, and a thing is both
white and not-white, and existent and non-existent, and all other
assertions and negations are similarly compatible or the theory is
true of some statements and not of others. And if not of all, the
exceptions will be contradictories of which admittedly only one is
true; but if of all, again either the negation will be true wherever
the assertion is, and the assertion true wherever the negation is,
or the negation will be true where the assertion is, but the assertion
not always true where the negation is. And (a) in the latter case
there will be something which fixedly is not, and this will be an
indisputable belief; and if non-being is something indisputable and
knowable, the opposite assertion will be more knowable. But (b) if
it is equally possible also to assert all that it is possible to deny,
one must either be saying what is true when one separates the
predicates (and says, for instance, that a thing is white, and again
that it is not-white), or not.
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