676 ~ FALLACIES. 



namely, to yield a general obedience to the laws therein established ; and 

 so necessaiy is the promise deemed, that if none has actually been made, 

 some additional safety is supposed to be given to the foundations of so- 

 ciety by feigning one. 



§ 3. Two principal subdivisions of the class of Fallacies of Confusion 

 having been disposed of ; there remains a third, in which the confusion is 

 not, as in the Fallacy of Ambiguity, in misconceiving the import of the 

 premises, nor, as in Petitio Principii, in forgetting what the premises are, 

 but in mistaking the conclusion which is to be proved. This is the fallacy 

 of Ignoratio Elenchi, in the widest sense of the phrase ; also called by 

 Archbishop Whately the Fallacy of Irrelevant Conclusion. His examples 

 and remarks are highly worthy of citation. 



"Various kinds of propositions are, according to the occasion, substi- 

 tuted for the one of which proof is required ; sometimes the particular for 

 the universal ; sometimes a proposition with different terms ; and various 

 are the contrivances employed to effect and to conceal this substitution, 

 and to make the conclusion which the sophist has drawn, answer practical- 

 ly the same purpose as the one he ought to have established. We say, 

 ' practically the same purpose,' because it will very often happen that some 

 emotion will be excited, some sentiment impressed on the mind (by a dex- 

 terous employment of this fallacy), such as shall bring men into the dispo- 

 sition requisite for your purpose ; though they may not have assented to, 

 or even stated distinctly in their own minds, the proposition which it was 

 your business to establish. Thus if a sophist has to defend one who has 

 been guilty of some serious offense, whicli he wishes to extenuate, though 

 he is unable distinctly to prove that it is not such, yet if he can succeed in 

 making the audience laugh at some casual matter, he has gained practical- 

 ly the same point. So also if any one has pointed out the extenuating cir- 

 cumstances in some particular case of offense, so as to show that it differs 

 widely from the generality of the same class, the sophist, if he finds him- 

 self unable to disprove these circumstances, may do away the force of 

 them, by simply referring the action to that very class, which no one can 

 deny that it belongs to, and the very name of which will excite a feeling 

 of disgust sufficient to counteract the extenuation ; e. g., let it be a case of 

 peculation, and that many mitigating circumstances have been brought 

 forward which can not be denied; the sophistical opponent will reply, 

 * Well, but after all, the man is a rogue, and there is an end of it ;' now in 

 reality this was (by hypothesis) never the question; and the mere asser- 

 tion of what was never denied ought not, in fairness, to be regarded as 

 decisive ; but, practically, the odiousness of the word, arising in great 

 measure from the association of those very circumstances which belong to 

 most of the class, but which we have supposed to be absent in this par- 

 ticular instance, excites precisely that feeling of disgust which, in effect, 

 destroys the force of the defense. In like manner we may refer to this 

 head all cases of improper appeal to the passions, and every thing else 

 which is mentioned by Aristotle as extraneous to the matter in hand (t'^w 

 ToT) Trpay jiaroo). 



Again, "instead of proving that 'this prisoner has committed an atro- 

 cious fraud,' you prove that the fraud he is accused of is atrocious ; instead 

 of proving (as in the well-known tale of Cyrus and the two coats) that the 

 taller boy had a right to force the other boy to exchange coats with him, 

 you prove that the exchange would have been advantageous to both ; in- 



