FALLACIES OF CONFUSION. 069 



Now the " forever," in the condusion, means, for any length of time 

 that can be supposed ; but in the premises, " ever " does not mean any 

 length of time ; it means any numher of subdivisions of time. It means 

 that we may divide a thousand feet by ten, and that quotient again by ten, 

 and so on as often as we please ; that there never needs be an end to the 

 subdivisions of the distance, nor consequently to those of the time in which 

 it is performed. But an unlimited number of subdivisions may be made 

 of that which is itself limited. The argument proves no other infinity of 

 duration than may be embraced within five minutes. As long as the five 

 minutes are not expired, what remains of them may be divided by ten, 

 and again by ten, as often as we like, which is perfectly compatible with 

 their being only five minutes altogether. It proves, in short, that to pass 

 through this finite space requires a time which is infinitely divisible, but 

 not an infinite time; the confounding of which distinction Hobbes had 

 already seen to be the gist of the fallacy. 



The following ambiguities of the word right (in addition to the obvious 

 and familiar one of a right and the adjective right) are extracted from a 

 forgotten paper of my own, in a periodical : 



" Speaking morally, you are said to have a right to do a thing, if all 

 persons are morally bound not to hinder you from doing it. But, in an- 

 other sense, to have a right to do a thing is the opposite of having no 

 right to do it, i. e., of being under a moral obligation to forbear doing it. 

 In this sense, to say that you have a right to do a thing, means that you 

 may do it without any breach of duty on your part; that other persons 

 not only ought not to hinder you, but have no cause to think worse of you 

 for doing it. This is a perfectly distinct proposition from the preceding. 

 The right which you have by virtue of a duty incumbent upon other per- 

 sons, is obviously quite a different thing from a right consisting in the 

 absence of any duty incumbent upon yourself. Yet the two things are 

 perpetually confounded. Thus, a man will say he has a right to publish 

 his opinions ; which may be true in this sense, that it would be a breach 

 of duty in any other person to interfere and prevent the publication : but 

 he assumes thereupon that, in publishing his opinions, he himself violates 

 no duty ; which may either be true or false, depending, as it does, on his 

 having taken due pains to satisfy himself, first, that the opinions are true, 

 and next, that their publication in this manner, and at this particular junc- 

 ture, will probably be beneficial to the interests of truth on the whole. 



" The second ambiguity is that of confounding a right of any kind, with 

 a right to enforce that right by resisting or punishing a violation of it. 

 People will say, for example, that they have a right to good government, 

 which is undeniably true, it being the moral duty of their governors to 

 govern them well. But in granting this, you are supposed to have admit- 

 ted their right or liberty to turn out their governors, and perhaps to pun- 

 ish them, for having failed in the performance of this duty; which, far 

 from being the same thing, is by no means universally true, but depends 

 on an immense number of varying circumstances," requiring to be con- 

 scientiously weighed before adopting or acting on such a resolution. This 

 last example is (like others which have been cited) a case of fallacy within 

 fallacy; it involves not only the second of the two ambiguities pointed 

 out, but the first likewise. 



One not unusual form of the Fallacy of Ambiguous Terms is known 

 technically as the Fallacy of Composition and Division ; when the same 

 term is collective in the premises, distributive in the conclusion, or vic^ 



