Sale of Creeds (21)

Seventh D. Regard me as your purchaser, good fellow, and tell me all about yourself. I dare say you think it rather hard to be sold for a slave?

Chrysippus Not at all. These things are beyond our control. And what is beyond our control is indifferent.

Seventh Dealer I don’t see how you make that out.

Chrysippus What! Have you yet to learn that of indifferentia some are praepostta and others rejecta?

Seventh Dealer Still I don’t quite see.

Chrysippus No; how should you? You are not familiar with our terms. You lack the comprebensio vist. The earnest student of logic knows this and more than this. He understands the nature of subject, predicate, and contingent, and the distinctions between them.

Seventh Dealer Now in Wisdom’s name, tell me, pray, what is a predicate? what is a contingent? ‘There is a ring about those words that takes my fancy.

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.