350 FALLACIES. 



moment, it was triumphantly proclaimed that death never 

 took place after the mercury had evinced its effect upon the 

 system : all this was very true, but it furnished no proof of 

 the efficacy of that metal, since the disease in its aggravated 

 form was so rapid in its career, that it swept away its victims 

 long before the system could be brought under mercurial 

 influence, while in its milder shape it passed off equally well 

 without any assistance from art."* 



In these examples the circumstance 'overlooked was cogni- 

 zable by the senses. In other cases, it is one the knowledge 

 of which could only be arrived at by reasoning ; but the fallacy 

 may still be classed under the head to which, for want of a 

 more appropriate name, we have given the appellation Fallacies 

 of Non-observation. It is not the nature of the faculties 

 which ought to have been employed, but the non-employment 

 of them, which constitutes this Natural Order of Fallacies. 

 Wherever the error is negative, not positive ; wherever it con- 

 sists especially in overlooking, in being ignorant or unmindful 

 of some fact which, if known and attended to, would have 

 made a difference in the conclusion arrived at ; the error is 

 properly placed in the Class which we are considering. In 

 this Class, there is not, as in all other fallacies there is, a posi- 

 tive mis-estimate of evidence actually had. The conclusion 

 would be just, if the portion which is seen of the case were 

 the whole of it ; but there is another portion overlooked, which 

 vitiates the result. 



For instance, there is a remarkable doctrine which has 

 occasionally found a vent in the public speeches of unwise 

 legislators, but which only in one instance that I am aware 

 of has received the sanction of a philosophical writer, namely 

 M. Cousin, who, in his preface to the Gorgias of Plato, con- 

 tending that punishment must have some other and higher 

 justification than the prevention of crime, makes use of this 

 argument that if punishment were only for the sake of 

 example, it would be indifferent whether we punished the 

 innocent or the guilty, since the punishment, considered as an 



* Pharmacologia, pp. 61-2. 



