CHAPTER II. 



CLASSIFICATION OF FALLACIES. 



1. IN attempting to establish certain general distinc- 

 tions which shall mark out from one another the various 

 kinds of Fallacious Evidence, we propose to ourselves an alto- 

 gether different aim from that of several eminent thinkers, 

 who have given, under the name of Political or other Falla- 

 cies, a mere enumeration of a certain number of erroneous 

 opinions ; false general propositions which happen to be 

 often met with; loci communes of bad arguments on some 

 particular subject. Logic is not concerned with the false 

 opinions which people happen to entertain, but with the 

 manner in which they come to entertain them. The ques- 

 tion is not, what facts have at any time been erroneously 

 supposed to be proof of certain other facts, but what pro- 

 perty in the facts it was which led any one to this mistaken 

 supposition. 



When a fact is supposed, though incorrectly, to be evi- 

 dentiary of, or a mark of, some other fact, there must be a 

 cause of the error; the supposed evidentiary fact must be 

 connected in some particular manner with the fact of which it 

 is deemed evidentiary, must stand in some particular rela- 

 tion to it, without which relation it would not be regarded in 

 that light. The relation may either be one resulting from 

 the simple contemplation of the two facts side by side with 

 one another, or it may depend on some process of mind, by 

 which a previous association has been established between 

 them. Some peculiarity of relation, however, there must be; 

 the fact which can, even by the wildest aberration, be supposed 

 to prove another fact, must stand in some special position 

 with regard to it ; and if we could ascertain and define that 

 special position, we should perceive the origin of the error. 



