516 FALLACIES. 



the premisses are, but in mistaking the conclusion which is to be proved. 

 This is the fallacy of Ignoratio Elcnchi, in the widest sense of the 

 phrase ; also called by Archbishop Whately the fallacy of Irrelevant 

 Conclusion. His examples and remarks are highly worthy of citation. 



" Various kinds of propositions are, according to the occasion, sub- 

 stituted for the one of which proof is required : sometimes the par- 

 ticular for the univei-sal; 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 dra^vn, 

 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 dextrous 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 \%'ishes to extenuate, though he is unable dis- 

 tinctly to prove that it is not such, yet if he can succeed in malcingthe 

 audience lavgh at some casual matter, he has gained practically the 

 same point. So also if any one has pointed out the extenuating cir- 

 cumstances in some particular case of offence, so as to show that it 

 differs widely from the generality of the same class, the sophist, if he 

 find himself unable to disprove these circumstances, may do away the 

 force of them, by simply referring tJie 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 sufficient to counteract the extenuation ; 

 e. g., let it be a case of peculation, and that many mitigating circum- 

 stances 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 hypoth- 

 esis) never the question ; and the mere assertion of what was never 

 denied, ought not, in fairness, to be regarded as decisive : but, prac- 

 tically, 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 particuJar in- 

 stance, excites precisely that feeling of disgust, which in effect desti'oys 

 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 (efw 

 rov Trpdyfiarog). 



" A good iuvStance of the employment and exposure of this fallacy 

 occurs in Thucydides, in the speeches of Cleon and Diodotus con- 

 cerning the Mitylenaeans : the former (over and above his appeal to 

 the angry passions of his audience) urges the justice of putting the re- 

 volters to death ; which, as the latter remarked, was nothing to the 

 purpose, since the Athenians were not sitting in jiidgment, but in de- 

 liberatiov, of which the pr-oper end is expedic7tcy. 



" It is evident that ignoratio elcnchi may be employed as well for 

 the apparent refutation of your opponent's proposition, as for the ap- 

 parent establishment of your own ; for it is substantially the same 

 thing, to prove what was not denied or to disprove what was not 

 asserted : the latter practice is not less common, and it is more ofien- 



