FALLACIES OF CONFUSION. 385 



Dictionis, ) the fallacy built on the grammatical structure of 

 language, from men s usually taking for granted that parony- 

 mous (or conjugate) words, i.e. those belonging to each other, 

 as the substantive, adjective, verb, &c. of the same root, have 

 a precisely corresponding meaning ; which is by no means 

 universally the case. Such a fallacy could not indeed be even 

 exhibited in strict logical form, which would preclude even 

 the attempt at it, since it has two middleterms in sound as well 

 as sense. But nothing is more common in practice than to vary 

 continually the terms employed, with a view to grammatical 

 convenience ; nor is there anything unfair in such a practice, 

 as long as the meaning is preserved unaltered ; e. g. murder 

 should be punished with death ; this man is a murderer, there 

 fore he deserves to die, &c. Here we proceed on the assump 

 tion (in this case just) that to commit murder, and to be a 

 murderer, to deserve death, and to be one who ought to die, 

 are, respectively, equivalent expressions ; and it would fre 

 quently prove a heavy inconvenience to be debarred this kind 

 of liberty; but the abuse of it gives rise to the Fallacy in 

 question : e. g. projectors are unfit to be trusted ; this man has 

 formed a project, therefore he is unfit to be trusted : here the 

 sophist proceeds on the hypothesis that he who forms a project 

 must be a projector : whereas the bad sense that commonly 

 attaches to the latter word, is not at all implied in the former. 

 This fallacy may often be considered as lying not in the 

 Middle, but in one of the terms of the Conclusion ; so that 

 the conclusion drawn shall not be, in reality, at all warranted 

 by the premises, though it will appear to be so, by means of 

 the grammatical affinity of the words: e.g. to be acquainted 

 with the guilty is a presumption of guilt; this man is so ac 

 quainted, therefore we may presume that he is guilty : this 

 argument proceeds on the supposition of an exact correspon 

 dence between presume and presumption, which, however, does 

 : not really exist ; for presumption is commonly used to 

 express a kind of slight suspicion; whereas, to presume 

 amounts to actual belief. There are innumerable instances of 

 a non-correspondence in paronymous words, similar to that 

 above instanced ; as between art and artful, design and design- 

 VOL. n. 25 



