FALLACIES OF CONFUSION. 677 



Stead of proving that the poor ought to be relieved in this way rather than 

 in that, you prove that the poor ought to be relieved ; instead of proving 

 that the irrational agent — whether a brute or a madman — can never be de- 

 terred from any act by apprehension of punishment (as, for instance, a dog 

 from sheep-biting, by fear of being beaten), you prove that the beating of 

 one dog does not operate as an example to other dogs, etc. 



" It is evident that Ignoratio Elenchi may be employed as well for the 

 apparent refutation of your opponent's proposition, as for the apparent es- 

 tablishment of your own ; for it is substantially the same thing, to prove 

 what was not denied or to disprove what was not asserted. The latter 

 practice is not less common, and it is more offensive, because it frequent- 

 ly amounts to a personal affront, in attributing to a person opinions, etc., 

 which he perhaps holds in abhorrence. Thus, when in a discussion one 

 party vindicates, on the ground of general expediency, a particular in- 

 stance of resistance to government in a case of intolerable oppression, the 

 opponent may gravely maintain, ' that we ought not to do evil that good 

 may come ;' a proposition which of course had never been denied, the point 

 in dispute being, ' whether resistance in this particular case were doing evil 

 or not.' Or again, by way of disproving the assertion of the right of pri- 

 vate judgment in religion, one may hear a grave argument to prove that 'it 

 is impossible every one can be right in his judgment.'' " 



The works of controversial writers are seldom free from this fallacy. The 

 attempts, for instance, to disprove the population doctrines of Malthus, have 

 been mostly cases of ignoratio elenchi. Malthus has been supposed to be 

 refuted if it could be shown that in some countries or ages population has 

 been nearly stationary ; as if he had asserted that population^ always in- 

 creases in a given ratio, or had not expressly declared that it increases only 

 in so far as it is not restrained by prudence, or kept down by poverty and 

 disease. Or, perhaps, a collection of facts is produced to prove that in some 

 one country the people are better off with a dense population than they 

 are in another country with a thin one ; or that the people have become 

 more numerous and better off at the same time. As if the assertion were 

 that a dense population could not possibly be well off; as if it were not 

 part of the very doctrine, and essential to it, that where tliere is a more 

 abundant production there may be a greater population without any increase 

 of poverty, or even with a diminution of it. 



The favorite argument against Berkeley's theory of the non-existence of 

 matter, and the most popularly effective, next to a " grin "* — an argument, 

 moreover, which is not confined to " coxcombs," nor to men like Samuel 

 Johnson, whose greatly overrated ability certainly did not lie in the direc- 

 tion of metaphysical speculation, but is the stock argument of the Scotch 

 school of metaphysicians — is a palpable Ignoratio Elenchi. The argument 

 is perhaps as frequently expressed by gesture as by words, and one of its 

 commonest forms consists in knocking a stick against the ground. This 

 short and easy confutation overlooks the fact, that in denying matter, Berke- 

 ley did not deny any thing to which our senses bear witness, and therefore 

 can not be answered by any appeal to them. His skepticism related to the 

 supposed substratum, or hidden cause of the appearances perceived by our 

 senses ; the evidence of which, whatever may be thought of its conclusive- 

 ness, is certainly not the evidence of sense. And it will always remain a 

 signal proof of the want of metaphysical profundity of Reid, Stewart, and, 



* "And coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a grin." 

 37 



