422 FALLACIES. 



government is not, and by universal admission ought 

 not to be, controlled by (though it sometimes ought 

 to be controlled for) the children. Paternal govern- 

 ment, in a family, works well; therefore, says the 

 argument, despotic government in a state will work 

 well : implying that the beneficial working of parental 

 government depends, in the family, upon the only 

 point which it has in common with political despotism, 

 namely, irresponsibility. Whereas it does not depend 

 upon that, but upon two other attributes of parental 

 government, the affection of the parent for the children, 

 and the superiority of the parent in wisdom and ex- 

 perience ; neither of which properties can be reckoned 

 upon, or are at all likely to exist, between a political 

 despot and his subjects; and when either of these 

 circumstances fails, even in the family, and the in- 

 fluence of the irresponsibility is allowed to work un- 

 corrected, the result is anything but good government. 

 This, therefore, is a false analogy. 



Another example is the not uncommon dictum, 

 that bodies politic have youth, maturity, old age, and 

 death, like bodies natural: that after a certain dura- 

 tion of prosperity, they tend spontaneously to decay. 

 This also is a false analogy, because the decay of the 

 vital powers in an animated body can be distinctly 

 traced to the natural progress of those very changes 

 of structure which, in their earlier stages, constitute 

 its growth to maturity ; while in the body politic the 

 progress of those changes cannot, generally speaking, 

 have any effect but the still further continuance of 

 growth: it is the stoppage of that progress, and the 

 commencement of retrogression, that alone would con- 

 stitute decay. Bodies politic die, but it is of disease, 

 or violent death: they have no old age. 



The following sentence from Hooker's Ecclesiastical 



