FALLACIES OF GENERALIZATION. 369 



pertinent in this place, all that could be said in qualification 

 of the alleged excellence of paternal government. However 

 this might he, the argument from the family to the state 

 would not the less proceed on a false analogy ; implying that 

 the beneficial working of parental government depends, in the 

 family, on the only point which it has in common with poli 

 tical despotism, namely, irresponsibility. Whereas it depends, 

 when real, not on that but on two other circumstances of the 

 case, the affection of the parent for the children, and the supe 

 riority of the parent in wisdom and experience ; neither of 

 which properties can be reckoned on, or are at all likely to 

 exist, between a political despot and his subjects ; and when 

 either of these circumstances fails even in the family, and the 

 influence of the irresponsibility is allowed to work uncorrected, 

 the result is anything but good government. This, therefore, 

 is a false analogy. 



Another example is the not uncommon dictum, that bodies 

 politic have youth, maturity, old age, and death, like bodies 

 natural : that after a certain duration of prosperity, they tend 

 spontaneously to decay. This also is a false analogy, because 

 the decay of the vital powers in an animated body can be dis 

 tinctly traced to the natural progress of those very changes of 

 structure which, in their earlier stages, constitute its growth 

 to maturity : while in the body politic the progress of those 

 changes cannot, generally speaking, have any effect but the 

 still further continuance of growth : it is the stoppage of that 

 progress, and the commencement of retrogression, that alone 

 would constitute decay. Bodies politic die, but it is of disease, 

 or violent death : they have no old age. 



The following sentence from Hooker s Ecclesiastical Polity 

 is an instance of a false analogy from physical bodies to what 

 are called bodies politic. &quot;As there could be in natural bodies 

 no motion of anything unless there were some which moveth 

 all things, and continueth immovable : even so in politic 

 societies there must be some unpunishable, or else no man 

 shall suffer punishment.&quot; There is a double fallacy here, for 

 not only the analogy, but the premise from which it is drawn, 

 is untenable. The notion that there must be something im- 

 VOL. ii. 24 



