540 



FALLACIES. 



{cupiditas) which implies vice. It is 

 shown, however, in the remarks which 

 follow, that Cicero did not intend this 

 as a serious argument, but as a criti- 

 cism on what he deemed an inappro- 

 priate expression. " Rem ipsam pror- 

 sus probe : elegantiam desidero. Ap- 

 pellet hsec desideria naturce; cupidi- 

 tatis nomen servet alio," &c. But 

 many persons, both ancient and mo- 

 dern, have employed this, or some- 

 thing equivalent to it, as a real and 

 conclusive argument. We may re- 

 mark that the passage respecting 

 cupiditas and cupidus is also an ex- 

 ample of another fallacy already no- 

 ticed, that of Paronymous Terms. 



Many more of the arguments of the 

 ancient moralists, and especially of 

 the Stoics, fall within the definition 

 of Petitio Principii. In the De Fini- 

 bus, for example, which I continue to 

 quote as being probably the best ex- 

 tant exemplification at once of the 

 doctrines and the methods of the 

 schools of philosophy existing at that 

 time ; of what value as arguments are 

 such pleas as those of Cato in the 

 third book : That if virtue were not 

 happiness, it could not be a thing to 

 boast of : that if death or pain were 

 evils, it would be impossible not to 

 fear them, and it could not, therefore, 

 be laudable to despise them, &c. In 

 one way of viewing these arguments, 

 they may be regarded as appeals to 

 the authority of the general sentiment 

 of mankind which had stamped its 

 approval upon certain actions and 

 characters by the phrases referred to ; 

 but that such could have been the 

 meaning intended is very unlikely, 

 considering the contempt of the an- 

 cient philosophers for vulgar opinion. 

 In any other sense they are clear 

 cases of Petitio Principii, since the 

 word laudable and the idea of boast- 

 ing imply principles of conduct ; and 

 practical maxims can only be proved 

 by speculative truths, namely, from 

 the properties of the subject-matter, 

 and cannot, therefore, be employed 

 to prove those properties. As well 

 might it be argued that a government 



is good because we ought to support 

 it, or that there is a God because it is 

 our duty to pray to him. 



It is assumed by all the disputants 

 in the De Finibus as the foundation 

 of the inquiry into the siimmum bo- 

 numthsit "sapiens semper beatus est." 

 Not simply that wisdom gives the 

 best chance of happiness, or that wis- 

 don consists in knowing what happi- 

 ness is, and by what things it is pro- 

 moted — these propositions would not 

 have been enough for them — but that 

 the sage always is, and must of neces- 

 sity be, happy. The idea that wisdom 

 could be consistent with unhappiness 

 was always rejected as inadmissible: 

 the reason assigned by one of the in- 

 terlocutors, near the beginning of the 

 third book, being, that if the wise 

 could be unhappy, there was little use 

 in pursuing wisdom. But by un- 

 happiness they did not mean pain or 

 suffering ; to that it was granted that 

 the wisest person was liable in com- 

 mon with others : he was happy, be- 

 cause in possessing wisdom he had the 

 most valuable of all possessions, the 

 most to be sought and prized of all 

 things, and to possess the most valu- 

 able thing was to be the most happy. 

 By laying it down, therefore, at the 

 commencement of the inquiry, that 

 the sage must be happy, the disputed 

 question respecting the summmn bo- 

 num was in fact begged ; with the 

 further assumption that pain and 

 suffering, so far as they can co-exist 

 with wisdom, are not unhappiness, and 

 are no evil. 



The following are additional in- 

 stances of Petitio Principii, under 

 more or less of disguise. 



Plato, in the Sophides, attempts 

 to prove that things may exist which 

 are incorporeal by the argument that 

 justice and wisdom are incorporeal, 

 and justice and wisdom must be 

 something. Here, if by some king be 

 meant, as Plato did in fact mean, a 

 thing capable of existing in and by it- 

 self, and not as a quality of some other 

 thing, he begs the question in assert- 

 ing that justice and wisdom muat be 



