156 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and have been for a long time, a real means of subsistence for the 

 people. This enviable fact is no argument against the injuriousness 

 of a continuous and severe fishing of the beds. . . . But as the num- 

 ber of consumers increases in America the price will also surely ad- 

 vance, and then there will arise the desire to fish the beds more severely 

 than hitherto ; and, if they do not accept in time the unfortunate ex- 

 perience of the oyster-culturists of Europe, they will surely find their 

 oyster-beds impoverished for having defied the bioconotic* laws." 



How nearly correct he has been in his prophecy I have attempted 

 to show, and it is with the intention of seconding his advice, and with 

 the hope that it will be heeded, that this article has been written. 



PHYSICAL EDUCATION. 



Br FELIX L. OSWALD, M. D. 

 POPULAR FALLACIES. 



"A national superstition is a national misfortune. No pious fraud has ever 

 advantaged the world, for every popular delusion becomes the mother of a 

 noxious and numerous progeny." Helvetitts. 



LOGICIANS distinguish between inferential and presumptive fal- 

 lacies, the first being founded upon illogical conclusions from 

 correct premises, the second upon logical conclusions from incorrect 

 premises. With few exceptions the most mischievous popular delu- 

 sions of all ages have arisen from the latter the "presumptive" 

 fallacies. Where their own interests are involved, men seem gifted 

 with an instinctive faculty for looking through the tricks by which a 

 word-juggler appears to support his sophisms with axioms known to 

 be true, but, where that knowledge itself has been falsified (by re- 

 peating fictions till they assume the semblance of truisms), all thus 

 biased will accept as sound whatever logical superstructure dupes or 

 impostors may choose to erect upon such sham facts. If a man had 

 been persuaded that cold is a panacea, he would naturally conclude 

 that Siberia must be the healthiest country in the world. In Hindo- 

 stan, where the sanctity of horned cattle is an established dogma, no 

 true believer would hesitate to indict an irreverent bull-driver for 

 blasphemy, or to preserve a beefsteak as a sacred relic. As long as 

 the Bible passed for infallible, it seemed perfectly logical to ascribe 

 diseases to witchcraft and their cure to prayer, to regard a man's nat- 

 ural instincts as his natural foes, to deny the difference between one 

 and three, and treat mathematicians as enemies of the human race. 

 The systematic application of spurious principles has led to strange 



* Derived from bioconosm, a word signifying complete within itself. 



