300 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



or Phantoms of the Tribe: tendencies inherent in human nature itself, ex 

 posing men to the danger of interpreting falsely the impressions made upon 

 their senses; (2) &quot; Idola Species&quot; or Phantoms of the Cave: sources of 

 error peculiar to the individual, owing to his personal idiosyncrasies and 

 mental habits ; (3) &quot;Idola Fort,&quot; or Phantoms of the Market Place : decep 

 tions due to the limitations of language, which is the medium of intercourse 

 and exchange of ideas among men; (4) Idola Theatri,&quot; or Phantoms of 

 the Theatre : false theories and teachings that have gained currency and are 

 accepted unquestioningly because they happen to be the fashion of the time. 



(c) Of far greater importance than the classifications of Mill 

 or Bacon is Aristotle s enumeration : not, perhaps, because of any 

 exceptional intrinsic merit, but because it has furnished logic with 

 a universally recognized nomenclature of the more important fal 

 lacies, and has never been entirely superseded. Aristotle dealt 

 with fallacies in the last book of his Organon, under the title 

 of Sophistical Refutations, Sophistici Elenchi, Trepl a-ofaariKfov 

 \eyxwv. He wrote at a time when public oral discussions and 

 disputations were of the highest educational, social, and political 

 importance, when great issues were decided by the masses on 

 hearing conflicting views championed by special pleaders, when 

 skill in rhetoric, or the art of persuading by plausible reasons, 

 was eagerly ambitioned by public men, and profitably taught by 

 those influential educators of the Athenian youth, the sophists. 

 It was with a view to exposing the various dialectical deceits and 

 devices for misleading, which were currently used in those public 

 debates, that Aristotle wrote the Trepl ao$i&amp;lt;rruc&v eXej^wv. Those 

 &quot; sophistical arguments,&quot; or &quot; sophisms,&quot; as he called them, were 

 connected in his mind with the intention to deceive or mislead : * 

 it was indeed the sophists own avowed exclusive concern for 

 dialectical victory, irrespective of truth and right, that eventu 

 ally brought their name and methods and arguments into disre 

 pute. Aristotle s &quot; sophisms,&quot; therefore, all regard inference, and 

 inference conducted by way of oral disputation. Hence his list 

 is not exhaustive ; and, such as it is, it contains many fallacies, 

 arising from the use of language, which are nowadays likely to be 

 regarded as trifling ; though they must have given some trouble 

 at a time when so much depended upon the general impression 

 produced by public dialectical encounters, for which we have, per- 



1 Kant applies the term Sophism to a fallacy used for the purpose of deceiving 

 another, and Paralogism to a fallacy which deceives the person who uses it. This 

 ground of distinction is psychological, not logical. The logical nature of a fallacy 

 is independent of the intention of the party using it. 



