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CHAPTER II. 

 CLASSIFICATION OF FALLACIES. 



1. IN attempting to establish certain general 

 distinctions which shall mark out from one another 

 the various kinds of Fallacious Evidence, we propose 

 to ourselves an altogether different aim from that of 

 several eminent thinkers, who have given, under the 

 name of Political or other Fallacies, a mere enumera- 

 tion of a certain number of erroneous opinions ; false 

 general propositions which happen to be often met 

 with ; loci communes of bad arguments on some par- 

 ticular subject. Logic is not concerned with the false 

 opinions which men happen to entertain, but with the 

 manner in which they come to entertain them. The 

 question for us is not, what facts men have at anytime 

 erroneously supposed to be proof of certain other 

 facts, but what property in the facts it was which led 

 them to this mistaken supposition. 



When a fact is supposed, although incorrectly, to 

 be evidentiary of, or a mark of, some other fact, there 

 must be a cause of the error ; the supposed eviden- 

 tiary fact must be connected in some particular man- 

 ner with the fact of which it is deemed evidentiary, 

 must stand in some particular relation to it, without 

 which relation it would not be regarded in that light. 

 The relation may either be one resulting from the 

 simple contemplation of the two facts side by side 

 with one another, or it may depend upon some process 

 of our own mind, by which a previous association has 

 been established between them. Some peculiarity of 

 relation, however, there must be ; the fact which can, 



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