FALLACIES OF CONFUSION. 441 



is taken in one sense in the premisses, and in another 

 sense in the conclusion. 



Some good exemplifications of this fallacy are 

 given by Archbishop Whately. " One case," says he., 

 "which may be regarded as coming under the head of 

 Ambiguous Middle, is what is called Fallacia Figure 

 Dictionis, the fallacy built on the grammatical struc- 

 ture of language, from men's usually taking for granted 

 that paronymous words (i. e. those belonging to each 

 other, as the substantive, adjective, verb, &c.^ of the 

 same root) have a precisely correspondent meaning, 

 which is by no means universally the case. Such a 

 fallacy could not indeed be even exhibited in strict 

 logical form, which would preclude even the attempt 

 at it, since it has two middle terms in sound as well 

 as sense; but nothing is more common in practice 

 than to vary continually the terms employed, with a 

 view to grammatical convenience; nor is there any- 

 thing unfair in such a practice, as long as the meaning 

 is preserved unaltered ; e. g. ' murder should be pu- 

 nished with death; this man is a murderer, therefore 

 he deserves to die/ &c. Here we proceed on the 

 assumption (in this case just) that to commit murder, 

 and to be a murderer, to deserve death, and to be 

 one who ought to die, are, respectively, equivalent 

 expressions ; and it would frequently prove a heavy 

 inconvenience to be debarred this kind of liberty ; but 

 the abuse of it gives rise to the Fallacy in question : 

 e. g. projectors are unfit to be trusted; this man has 

 formed a project, therefore he is unfit to be trusted: 

 here the sophist proceeds on the hypothesis that he 

 who forms a project must be a projector: whereas the 

 bad sense that commonly attaches to the latter word, 

 is not at all implied in the former. This fallacy may 

 often be considered as lying not in the middle, but in 



