[26]
Great
ingenuity may be exercised with regard to properties
and differences, as for instance in the question
whether a person assigned to his creditor for debt,1
[p. 99]
who is condemned by the law to remain in a state
of servitude until he has paid his debt, is actually a
slave. One party will advance the following definition, “A slave is one who is legally in a state of
servitude.” The other will produce the definition,
“A slave is one who is in a state of servitude on
the same terms as a slave (or, to use the older
phrase, 'who serves as a slave').” This definition,
though it differs considerably from the other, will be
quite useless unless it is supported by properties
and differences.
1 cp. III. vi. 25.
Quintilian. With An English Translation. Harold Edgeworth Butler. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1922.
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