To this we answer--No: the difference of accidents between Plato and Socrates does not go so deep as to affect the underlying essence. To put the thing more plainly, the fallacy lies in assuming that whatever is different from a given subject must be different from it in all respects, so that it is impossible for them to have a common predicate. Here Socrates and Plato, though different from one another, are not so different but that they have the common predicate 'man.' The attempt to prove that they have not involves an illicit process of the major. § 861. The next fallacy suffers from the want of a convenient name. It is called by Aristotle [Greek: tò áplos tóde ê pê légestai kaì mè kupíos] or, more briefly, [Greek: tò áplôs ê mé], or [Greek: tò pê kaí áplôs], and by the Latin writers 'Fallacia a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter.' It consists in taking what is said in a particular respect as though it held true without any restriction, e.g., that because the nonexistent ([Greek: tò mè ôn]) is a matter of opinion, that therefore the non-existent is, or again that because the existent ([Greek: tò ôn]) is not a man, that therefore the existent is not. Or again, if an Indian, who as a whole is black, has white teeth, we should be committing this species of fallacy in declaring him to be both white and not-white. For he is only white in a certain respect ([Greek: pê]), but not absolutely ([Greek: àplôs]). More difficulty, says Aristotle, may arise when opposite qualities exist in a thing in about an equal degree. When, for instance, a thing is half white and half black, are we to say that it is white or black? This question the philosopher propounds, but does not answer. The force of it lies in the implied attack on the Law of Contradiction. It would seem in such a case that a thing may be both white and not-white at the same time. The fact is--so subtle are the ambiguities of language--that even such a question as 'Is a thing white or not-white?' straightforward, as it seems, is not really a fair one. We are entitled sometimes to take the bull by the horns, and answer with the adventurous interlocutor in one of Plato's dialogues--'Both and neither.' It may be both in a certain respect, and yet neither absolutely.