FALLACIES OF CONFUSION. 



543 



but, practically, the odiousness of the 

 word, arising in great measure from 

 the association of those very circum- 

 stances which belong to most of the 

 class, but which we have supposed to 

 be absent in this particular instance, 

 excites precisely that feeling of dis- 

 gust which in effect destroys 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 men- 

 tioned by Aristotle as extraneous to 

 the matter in hand (i^u roO irpdyfia- 



TOJ)." 



Again, "instead of proving that 

 'this prisoner has committed an at- 

 rocious fraud,' you prove that the 

 fraud he is accused of is atrocious : 

 instead of proving (as in the well- 

 known tale of Cyrus and the two 

 coats) that the taller boy had a right 

 to force the other boy to exchange 

 coats with him, you prove that the 

 exchange would have b.^en advantage- 

 ous to both : instead of proving that 

 the poor ought to be relieved in this 

 way rather than in that, you prove 

 that the poor ought to be relieved : 

 instead of provin,^ that the irrational 

 agent — whether a brute or a mad- 

 man —can never be deterred from any 

 act by apprehension of punishment, 

 (as, for instance, a dog from sheep- 

 biting by fear of being beaten,) you 

 prove that the beating of one dog 

 does not operate as an example to 

 other dogs, &c. 



" It is evident that ignoratio elenchi 

 may be employed as well for the ap- 

 parent refutation of your opponent's 

 proposition as for the apparent estab- 

 lishment of your own ; for it is sub- 

 stantially 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 offensive, because it frequently 

 amounts to a personal affront, in attri- 

 buting to a person opinions, &c., which 

 he perhaps holds in abhorrence. Thus, 

 when in a discussion one party vin- 

 dicates, on the ground of general ex- 

 pediency, a particular instance of re- 



sistance to government in a case of 

 intolerable oppression, the opponent 

 may gravely maintain * that we ought 

 not to do evil that good may come ' — 

 a proposition which of course had • ever 

 been denied, the point in dispute be- 

 ing, * whether resistance in this parti- 

 cular case were doing evil or not.' Or 

 again, by way of disproving the asser- 

 tion of the right of private judgment 

 in religion, one may hear a grave ar- 

 gument to prove that ' it is impossible 

 every one can be riyht in his judg- 

 ment: " 



The works of controversial writers 

 are seldom free from this fallacy. The 

 attempts, for instance, to disprove the 

 population doctrines of Maltlms have 

 been mostly cases of vjnoratio elenchL 

 Malthus has been supposed to be re- 

 futed if it could be shown that in 

 some countries or ages population ha.s 

 been nearly stationary, as if he had 

 asserted that population always in- 

 creases in a given ratio, or had not 

 expressly declared that it increases 

 only in so far as it is not restrained 

 by prudence or kept down by poverty 

 and disease. Or, perhaps, a collection 

 of facts is produced to prove that in 

 some one country the people are better 

 off with a dense population than they 

 are in another country with a thin 

 one, or that the people have become 

 more numerous and better off at the 

 same time ; as if the assertion were 

 that a dense population could not pos- 

 sibly be well off — as if it were not part 

 of the very doctrine, and essential to 

 it, that where there is a more abun- 

 dant production there may be a greater 

 population without any increase of 

 poverty, or even with a diminution 

 of it. 



The favourite argument against Ber- 

 keley's theory of the non-existence of 

 matter, and the most popularly effec- 

 tive, next to a "grin"* — an argu- 

 ment, moreover, which is not confined 

 to "coxcombs," nor to men like Samuel 

 Johnson, whose greatly overrated abi- 

 lity certainly did not lie in the direc- 



* "And coxcombs vanquish Berkeley 

 with agiiu" 



