FALLACIES OF CONFUSION. 517 



sive, because it frequently amounts to a jiersonal afTiont, in attriliuting 

 to a person opinions, Sec, wliii-U ho prrliaps holds in ahhorniice. 

 Thus, when in a discussion one party vindicates, on the ground of 

 general expediency, a particular instance of resistance to govern- 

 ment in a case of intolerable oppression, the op[)oncnt inay gravely 

 maintain, that ' we ought not to do evil that good may come ;' a 

 proposition which of course had never been denied, the point in dis- 

 pute being, ' wliether resistance iu this paiticular caac were doing evil 

 or not.' " 



The works of controversial writers are seldom free from this fallacy. 

 They join issue on the wrong point, or do not join issue at all. Tho 

 attempts, for instance, to disprove the population doctrines of Malthus, 

 have been mostly cases of igiwratio ehnchi. Malthus has b«'i'u sup- 

 posed to be refuted if it could be shown that in some couutrii-s or ages 

 population has been nearly stationary ; as if he had asserted tliat popu- 

 lation always increases in a given ratio, or had not expressly declared 

 that it increases only in so fju- as it is not restrained by prudence, or 

 kept down by poverty and disease. Or, perhaps, a great collection of 

 facts is produced to prove that in some one country the people aro 

 better oft' with a dense population than they are in another country 

 with a thin 0!ie ; or that the people have become more numerous and 

 better off' at the same time. As if the assertion were that a dense popu- 

 lation could not possibly be well oft': as if it were not part of the very 

 doctrine, and essential to it, that where there is a more abundant cap- 

 ital there may be a greater population without any increase of poverty, 

 or even with a diminution of it. 



The favorite argument against Berkeley's theory of the non-existence 

 of matter, and the most popularly eff'ective, next to a " grin"* — an 

 argument, moreover, which is not confined to " coxcombs," nor to 

 men like Samuel Johnson, of practical understanding, without any 

 particular turn for metaphysical speculation, but is the stock argument 

 of the Scotch school of metaphysicians, is a palpable ignuratio eUnchi. 

 The argument is perhaps as freciuently expressed by gesture as by 

 words, and one of its commonest forms consists in knocking a stick 

 against the ground. This short and easy confutation overlooks the 

 fact, that in denying matter, Berkeley did not deny anything to which 

 our senses bear witness, and therefore cannot be answen.'d by any 

 appeal to them. His skepticism related to the supposed substratum, 

 or hidden cause of the appearances perceived by our senses : tlie evi- 

 dence of which, whatever may bo its conclusiveness, is ceitaiidy not 

 the evidence of sense. And it will always remain a .signal proof of 

 the want of metaphysical profundity <jf Reid, Stewart, and, I am sorry 

 to add, of Brown, that they should have persi.sted iu asserting that 

 Berkeley, if he believed his own doctrine, wa-s bound to walk into the 

 kennel, or run his head against a post. As if men who do not recog- 

 nize an occult cause of their sensations could not j)ossibly believe that 

 a fixed order subsists among the sensations themselves. Such a want 

 of comprehension of the distinction between a thing and its sensible 

 manifestation, or, in transcendental language, between the noumenon 

 and the j)henom(!non, would be impossible to even the dullest disciple 

 of Kant or Coleridge. 



* And coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a grin. — (Pope.) 



