380 FALLACIES. 



to be mistaken for it. Instances of this fallacy will be found 

 in almost all the argumentative discourses of unprecise 

 thinkers ; and we need only here advert to one of the obscurer 

 forms of it, recognised by the schoolmen as the fallacy a dicto 

 secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter. This is committed when, 

 in the premises, a proposition is asserted with a qualification, 

 and the qualification lost sight of in the conclusion ; or 

 oftener, when a limitation or condition, though not asserted, 

 is necessary to the truth of the proposition, but is forgotten 

 when that proposition comes to be employed as a premise. 

 Many of the bad arguments in vogue belong to this class of 

 error. The premise is some admitted truth, some common 

 maxim, the reasons or evidence for which have been forgotten, 

 or are not thought of at the time, but if they had been 

 thought of would have shown the necessity of so limiting the 

 premise that it would no longer have supported the conclusion 

 drawn from it. 



Of this nature is the fallacy in what is called, by Adam 

 Smith and others, the Mercantile Theory in Political Economy. 

 That theory sets out from the common maxim, that what 

 ever brings in money enriches ; or that every one is rich in 

 proportion to the quantity of money he obtains. From this 

 it is concluded that the value of any branch of trade, or of 

 the trade of the country altogether, consists in the balance 

 of money it brings in; that any trade which carries more 

 money out of the country than it draws into it is a losing 

 trade ; that therefore money should be attracted into the 

 country and kept there, by prohibitions and bounties : and a 

 train of similar corollaries. All for want of reflecting that 

 if the riches of an individual are in proportion to the quantity 

 of money he can command, it is because that is the measure 

 of his power of purchasing money s worth ; and is therefore 

 subject to the proviso that he is not debarred from employing 

 his money in such purchases. The premise, therefore, is only 

 true secundum quid ; but the theory assumes it to be true 

 absolutely, and infers that increase of money is increase of 

 riches, even when produced by means subversive of the con 

 dition under which alone money can be riches. 



