566 TALLACIES. 



est, omne honestum est. Bonum igitiir quod est, honestum est." Here 

 the ambiguous word is laudabile, which in the minor premise means any 

 thing which mankind are accustomed, on good grounds, to admire or 

 vahie; as beauty, for instance, or good fortune: but in the major, it de- 

 notes exchisively moral qualities. In much the same manner the Stoics 

 endeavored logically to justify as philosophical truths, their figurative and 

 rhetorical expressions of ethical sentiment: as that the virtuous man is 

 alone free, alone beautiful, alone a king, etc. Whoever has virtue has 

 Good (because it has been previously determined not to call any thing else 

 good) ; but, again, Good necessarily includes freedom, beauty, and even 

 kingship, all these being good things ; therefore whoever has virtue has 

 all these. 



The following is an argument of Descartes to prove, in his a priori 

 manner, the being of a God. The conception, says he, of an infinite Being 

 proves the real existence of such a being. For if there is not really any 

 such being, Tmust have made the conception ; but if I could make it, I can 

 also unmake it ; which evidently is not true ; therefore there must be, exter- 

 nally to myself, an archetype, from which the conception was derived. In 

 this argument (which, it may be observed, would equally prove the real 

 existence of ghosts and of witches) the ambiguity is in the pronoun /, by 

 which, in one place, is to be understood my will, in another the laios of 

 my nature. If the conception, existing as it does in my mind, had no 

 original without, the conclusion would unquestionably follow that I made 

 it; that is, the laws of my nature must have somehow evolved it: but that 

 my loill made it, would not follow. Now when Descartes afterward adds 

 that I can not unmake the conception, he means that I can not get rid of 

 it by an act of my will : which is true, but is not the proposition required. 

 I can as much unmake this conception as I can any other: no conception 

 which I have once had, can I ever dismiss by mere volition ; but what 

 some of the laws of my nature have produced, other laws, or those same 

 laws in other circumstances, may, and often do, subsequently efface. 



Analogous to this are some of the ambiguities in the free-will controversy ; 

 which, as they will come under special consideration in the concluding Book, 

 I only mention memories causa. In that discussion, too, the word Z is often 

 shifted from one meaning to another, at one time standing for my volitions, 

 at another time for the actions which are the consequences of thein, or the 

 mental dispositions from which they proceed. The latter ambiguity is ex- 

 emplified in an argument of Coleridge (in his Aids to liejlection), in sup- 

 port of the freedom of the will. It is not true, he says, that a man is gov- 

 erned by motives ; " the man makes the motive, not the motive the man ;" 

 the proof being that " what is a strong motive to one man is no motive at 

 all to another." The premise is true, but only amounts to this, that differ- 

 ent persons have different degrees of susceptibiUty to the same motive ; as 

 they have also to the same intoxicating liquid, which, however, does not 

 prove that they are free to be drunk or not drunk, whatever quantity of the 

 fluid they may drink. What is proved is, that certain mental conditions in 

 the person himself must co-operate, in the production of the act, with the 

 external inducement; but those mental conditions also are the effect of 

 causes; and there is nothing in the argument to prove that they can arise 

 without a cause — that a spontaneous determination of the will, without any 

 cause at all, ever takes place, as the free-will doctrine supposes. 



The double use, in the free-will controversy, of the word Necessity, which 

 sometimes stands only for Certainty, at other times for Compulsion; some- 



