223 



facts, or, in other words, from experience ; and, as all men are more or 

 less observers, and as the facts from which our notions in political and 

 moral subjects are, to a certain extent, obvious, there results necessarily 

 a more or less agreement among men with reference to these matters, and 

 the conclusions thus reached are embodied in familiar speech, and thus 

 become established as part of the mental furniture of mankind. Hence, 

 in deductive reasoning generally, it is not required of us to go back to the 

 ultimate principles of all knowledge, but we legitimately commence with 

 propositions which are regarded as established. But, in doing this, it is 

 essential for us to examine such propositions with care, in order to satisfy 

 ourselves there is no objection to them, and to state them in such clear 

 and unequivocal terms as to challenge the attention of our hearers or 

 readers to their exact significance. When this is done, the assumption of 

 the premises is not illegitimate ; or, in other words, there is no petitio 

 principii. But where our premises are so expressed as to entrap our 

 hearers, and jjerhaps ourselves, into admissions that we would not delib- 

 erately make, the fallacy takes place. Hence the first step in reasoning 

 is the careful consideration of our first principles, with a view of deter- 

 mining whether we arc prepared deliberately to assert, and others, to 

 admit them. And in this process, as in the case of agreements generally, 

 there is in fact no agreement unless each party understands what is in the 

 mind of the other, and both fully appreciate the significance of the matter 

 agreed upon. 



The most usual and formidable form of this fallacy is thatof using ques- 

 tion-begging terms ; which consists, either in including in the formal defi- 

 nition of a term some unproved assumption as being of the essence of the 

 conception denoted, or — without including such assumption in the formal 

 definition — by using the term as though such assumption were implied. 

 By this method the propositions from which our conclusions are to be 

 deduced, instead of being proved as they ought to be, are unconsciously 

 imbibed by the mind with the definition, or with our conception of the 

 term, and the conclusions thus in effect assumed. In this way, in fact, 

 nearly all modern writers proceed, and, either consciously or uncon- 

 sciously, seek to inculcate their opinions about the State by including 

 them in their definitions of the term — thus assuming, without any attempt 

 at proof, their own fortuitous conceptions as part of its essential nature. 

 And thus the idea or concept of the State, in itself extremely definite and 

 simple, has become to be so obscured by the extraneous notions thus 

 attached to it, as to render it almost impossible to perceive its simple 

 essential features. 



The power of this method of persuasion is well understood by many, 

 and unscrupulously used ; (o) but, with the mass of writers, tlie fallacious 

 process, though none the less effective, is entirely unconscious. Hence, 

 if we would avoid error, the necessity of a scrupulous attention to the 

 definition of terms ; which is the essential condition of correct reasoning. 

 For to the lack of this nearly all the errors in political and moral science 



