TYPES OF ERRONEOUS REASONING 19 



Our second example shall be a passage which Mr. 

 Kidd has borrowed from a far more educated 

 thinker M. Emile de Lavelaye. Mr. Kidd quotes 

 M. de Lavelaye as saying that the eighteenth 

 century brought the following message to ""man," 

 " Thou skalt cease to be the slave of the nobles and 

 despots who oppress thee, Thou skalt be free and 

 sovereign." But the realisation of the promise thus 

 given has, in the present century, he goes on to 

 say, confronted us with this strange problem, 

 " How is it that the Sovereign often starves ? How 

 is it that those who are held to be the source of 

 power often cannot, even by hard work, provide 

 themselves with the necessaries of life ? " 



Now all these passages, if we consider them who both 

 carefully, will be seen to consist of statements, every L* what is 

 one of which is false to fact. To say that man's 

 wants are less stationary than those of the ox is not 

 even rhetorically true, unless we mean by "man" 

 certain special races of men ; whilst the statements 

 that follow are not true, rhetorically or otherwise, of 

 any race at all, but only of scattered individuals. 

 A really fine and discriminating taste in food is, 

 as every epicure knows, rare even amongst the 

 luxurious classes. Antony and Lucullus are types 

 of what is not the rule, but the exception. So 

 too are the individuals who either desire hanging 

 gardens, or could design them ; and more excep- 

 tional still are the individuals whose personal pride 

 and power either desire or can secure the erection 

 of pyramids for their tombs. 



