458 FALLACIES. 



them by sufficient evidence, but having forgotten 

 what the evidence was, they may easily be betrayed 

 into deducing from them the very propositions which 

 are alone capable of serving as premisses for their 

 establishment. An example is given by Archbishop 

 Whately: "As if one should attempt to prove the 

 being of a God from the authority of Holy Writ;" 

 which might easily happen to one with whom both 

 propositions, as fundamental tenets of his religion, 

 stand upon the same ground of familiar and traditional 

 belief. 



Arguing in a circle, however, is a stronger case of 

 the fallacy, and implies more than the mere passive 

 reception of a premiss by one who does not remember 

 how it is to be proved. It implies an actual attempt 

 to prove two propositions reciprocally from one ano- 

 ther ; and is seldom resorted to, at least in express 

 terms, by any person in his own speculations, but is 

 committed by those who, being hard pressed by an 

 adversary, are forced into giving reasons for an 

 opinion of which, when they began to argue, they 

 had not sufficiently considered the grounds. As in 

 the following example from Archbishop Whately : 

 11 Some mechanicians attempt to prove (what they 

 ought to lay down as a probable but doubtful hypo- 

 thesis*) that every particle of matter gravitates 

 equally : ' why ?' ' because those bodies which contain 



* No longer even a probable hypothesis, but (since the esta- 

 blishment of the atomic theory) opposed to all probability; it 

 being now certain that the integrant particles of different substances 

 gravitate unequally. It is true that these particles, though real 

 minima for the purposes of chemical combination, may not be the 

 ultimate particles of the substance ; and this doubt alone renders the 

 hypothesis admissible, even as an hypothesis. 



