442 FALLACIES. 



one of the terms of the conclusion ; so that the con- 

 clusion drawn shall not be, in reality, at all warranted 

 by the premisses, though it will appear to be so, by 

 means of the grammatical affinity of the words ; e.g. to 

 be acquainted with the guilty is a presumption of 

 guilt; this man is so acquainted, therefore we may 

 presume that he is guilty: this argument proceeds 

 on the supposition of an exact correspondence between 

 presume and presumption, which, however, does not 

 really exist; for ' presumption' is commonly used 

 to express a kind of slight suspicion; whereas to 

 presume' amounts to absolute belief. There are 

 innumerable instances of a non-correspondence in 

 paronymous words, similar to that above instanced; 

 as between art and artful, design and designing, faith 

 and faithful, &c., and the more slight the variation of 

 meaning, the more likely is the fallacy to be suc- 

 cessful; for when the words have become so widely 

 removed in sense as ' pity' and c pitiful,' every one 

 would perceive such a fallacy, nor could it be employed 

 but in jest*. 



" The present Fallacy," continues the Archbishop, 

 " is nearly allied to, or rather, perhaps, may be re- 

 garded as a branch of, that founded on etymology; viz. 

 when a term is used, at one time in its customary, and 

 at another in its etymological sense. Perhaps no 



* An example of this fallacy is the popular error that strong 

 drink must be a cause of strength. There is here fallacy within 

 fallacy; for granting that the words "strong" and "strength" were 

 not (as they are) applied in a totally different sense to fermented 

 liquors and to the human body, there would still be involved the 

 error of supposing that an effect must be like its cause; that the 

 conditions of a phenomenon are likely to resemble the phenomenon 

 itself; which we have already treated of as an a priori fallacy of the 

 first rank. 



