FALLACIES OF CONFUSION. 469 



sophist, if he find himself unable to disprove these 

 circumstances, may do away the force of them, by 

 simply referring the action to that very class, which 

 no one can deny that it belongs to, and the very 

 name of which will excite a feeling of disgust suf- 

 ficient to counteract the extenuation; e.g., let it 

 be a case of peculation, and that many mitigating cir- 

 cumstances have been brought forward which cannot 

 be denied; the sophistical opponent will reply, ' Well, 

 but after all, the man is a rogue, and there is an end 

 of it ;' now in reality this was (by hypothesis) never 

 the question ; and the mere assertion of what was 

 never denied, ought not, in fairness, to be regarded as 

 decisive : but, practically, the odiousness of the word, 

 arising in great measure from the association of those 

 very circumstances which belong to most of the class, 

 but which we have supposed to be absent in this par- 

 ticular instance, excites precisely that feeling of dis- 

 gust, which in effect destroys the force of the defence. 

 In like manner we may refer to this head all cases 

 of improper appeal to the passions, and everything 

 else which is mentioned by Aristotle as extraneous to 

 the matter in hand (efco rov Trpdy/^arosf) . 



" A good instance of the employment and expo- 

 sure of this fallacy occurs in Thucydides, in the 

 speeches of Cleon and Diodotus concerning the Mity- 

 lenseans : the former (over and above his appeal to 

 the angry passions of his audience) urges the justice 

 of putting the revolters to death ; which, as the latter 

 remarked, was nothing to the purpose, since the 

 Athenians were not sitting in judgment, but in delibe- 

 ration, of which the proper end is expediency. 



11 It is evident that ignoratio elenchi may be em- 

 ployed as well for the apparent refutation of your 

 opponent's proposition, as for the apparent establish- 



