4fiS FALLACIES. 



Fallacies of Confusion having been disposed of; 

 there remains a third, in which the confusion is not, 

 as in the Fallacy of Ambiguity, in misconceiving the 

 import of the premisses, nor, as in Petitio Principii, 

 in forgetting what the premisses are, but in mistaking 

 the conclusion which is to be proved. This is the 

 fallacy of Ignoratio Elenchi, in the widest sense of the 

 phrase ; also called by Archbishop Whately the fal- 

 lacy of Irrelevant Conclusion. His examples and 

 remarks are highly worthy of citation. 



" Various kinds of propositions are, according to 

 the occasion, substituted for the one of which proof 

 is required: sometimes the particular for the uni- 

 versal; sometimes a proposition with different terms; 

 and various are the contrivances employed to effect 

 and to conceal this substitution, and to make the 

 conclusion which the sophist has drawn, answer 

 practically the same purpose as the one he ought to 

 have established. We say, "practically the same 

 purpose,' because it will very often happen that some 

 emotion will be excited, some sentiment impressed on 

 the mind (by a dexterous employment of this fallacy,) 

 such as shall bring men into .the disposition requisite 

 for your purpose ; though they may not have assented 

 to, or even stated distinctly in their own minds, the 

 proposition which it was your business to establish. 

 Thus if a sophist has to defend one who has been 

 guilty of some serious offence, which he wishes to 

 extenuate, though he is unable distinctly to prove that 

 it is not such, yet if he can succeed in making the 

 audience laugh at some casual matter, he has gained 

 practically the same point. So also if any one has 

 pointed out the extenuating circumstances in some 

 particular case of offence, so as to show that it differs 

 widely from the generality of the same class, the 



