 In the Prior and Posterior Analytics, Aristotle had set out a method of attaining reliable knowledge; and in the Topics he had dealt with all those instances where it was not possible to attain such knowledge. This latter part of logic was dominant in the tradition of inventio associated with Agricola (see  §3.2  above), where the standard practice, attributed to Aristotle by Ramus in the passage quoted above, was to discuss both sides of a question (in utramque partem disserere). This describes a confrontational situation where one side argues against another, resulting in the victory of one or the other position. In such circumstances, however, you can never say that the side which triumphs is the absolute winner, though you can come fairly close to a definitive resolution. In dialectical argumentation, therefore, we must be satisfied with probabilities. But if the very best we can attain is probability, the knowledge we reach is not as certain as that which results from a scientific demonstration. Consequently, it is more difficult to be fanatically devoted to a particular opinion. In the wake of humanism, ancient skepticism had its own renaissance. Ramus, however, in line with the majority of humanists, was more of an eclectic than a skeptic. He regarded Galen as his ideal since he had borrowed from earlier thinkers what he considered to be good and useful for his own theories (Ramus, Dialectica 1569: 11 and 27).