CLASSIFICATION OF FALLACIES. 451 



tellect coukl be Tendered impossible, that of the feelings, having no 

 instiannent to work with, would be jiowerless. A' comprehensive 

 classification of all those things which, not being evidence, ai-e liable 

 to appear such to the understanding, will, therefore, include all enors 

 of juilgnient arising Irom moral causes, to the exclusion only of errors 

 of practice committed against better knowledge. 



To examine, then, the various kinds of apparent evidence which are 

 not evidence at all, and of apparently conclusive evidence which do not 

 really amount to conclusiveness, is the object of that part of our inquiry 

 into which we are about to enter. 



The subject is not beyond the compass of classification and compre- 

 hensive surVey. The things, indeed, which are not evidence of any 

 given conclusion, are manifestly endless, and this negative property, 

 having no dependence upon any positive ones, cannot be made the 

 gi'oundwork of a real classification. But the things which, not being 

 evidence, are susceptible of being mistaken for it, are capable of a 

 classification having reference to the positive property which they 

 possess, of appearing to be evidence. We may arrange them, at our 

 choice, on either of two prljiciples ; according to the cause which mak^s 

 them appear evidence, not being so ; or according to the particular 

 kind of evidence which they simulate. The Classification of Fallacies 

 which will be uttemped in the ensuing chapter, is founded upon these 

 considerations jointly. 



CHAPTER II. 



CLASSIFICATION OF FALLACIES. 



§ 1. In attempting to establish certain general distinctions which shall 

 mark out from one another the various kinds of Fallacious Evidence, 

 we propose to ourselves an altogether different aim from that of sev- 

 eral eminent thinkers, who have .given, under the name of Political or 

 other Fallacies, a mere enumeration of a certain number of erroneous 

 opinions; false general propositions which happen to be often met w^th; 

 loci conwuine.i of l)ad arguments on some {)articular subject. Logic is 

 not concerned with the false opinions which men happen to entertain, 

 but with the manner in which they come to entertain them. The ques- 

 tion fin- us is not, what facts men have at any time en-oneously supj)oseJ 

 to be proof of certain other facts, but what property in the facts it was 

 which led them to this mistaken suppctsition. 



When a fact is supposed, altJiough incorrectly, to be evidentiary of, 

 or a maik of, sf)me other fact, there must be a cause of the error ; the 

 supposed evidentiary fact must be connected in some particular manner 

 vnth the fact of which it is deemed evidentiary, must stand in some 

 particular relation to it, without which relation it would not be regarded 

 m that light. The relation may either be one resulting from the simple 

 contemplati(jn of the two facts side l)y side with one another, or it may 

 dopend upon some process «f our own mhid, by which a previous a.s30- 

 ciation has been established between them. Some peculiarity of i-ela- 

 tionj however, there must be; the fact which can, even by the wildest 



