performed contradictions; but those who were blind before, were made to see, and those who were deaf before, were made to hear, &c. So when the Scripture assures us the worst of sinners may be saved, it signifies only, that they who have been the worst of sinners may repent and be saved, not that they shall be saved in their sins Or if any one should argue thus: Two and three are even and odd; five are two and three; therefore five are even and odd. Here that is very falsely inferred concerning two or three in union, which is only true of them divided.

"The sophism of division is when we infer the same thing concerning ideas in a divided sense, which is only true in a compounded sense; as, if we should pretend to prove that every soldier in the Grecian army put an hundred thousand Persians to flight, because the Grecian soldiers did so. Or if a man should argue thus: Five is one number; two and three are five; therefore two and three are one number."-Ibid.

IV. Fallacies connected with the relation of genus and species. (See page 53.)

1. Misapplication of general principles :-'

"A third example is the opposition sometimes made to legitimate interferences of government in the economical affairs of society, grounded upon a misapplication of the maxim, that an individual is a better judge than the government of what is for his own pecuniary interest. This objection was urged to Mr. Wakefield's system of colonization, one of the greatest practical improvements in public affairs which have been made in our time. Mr. Wakefield's principle, as most people are now aware, is the artificial concentration of the settlers, by fixing such a price upon unoccupied land as may preserve the most desirable proportion between the quantity of land in culture, and the labouring population. Against this it was argued, that if individuals found it for their advantage to occupy extensive tracts of land, they, being better judges of their own interest than the legislature (which can only proceed on general rules), ought not to be restrained from doing so. But in this argument it was forgotten that the fact of a man's taking

a large tract of land is evidence only that it is his interest to take as much as other people, but not that it might not be for his interest to content himself with less, if he could be assured that other people would do so too; an assurance which nothing but a government regulation can give. If all other people took much, and he only a little, he would reap none of the advantages derived from the concentration of the population and the consequent possibility of procuring labour for hire, but would have placed himself, without equivalent, in a situation of voluntary inferiority. The proposition, therefore, that the quantity of land which people will take when left to themselves is that which it is most for their interest to take, is true only secundum quid: it is only their interest while they have no guarantee for the conduct of one another. But the argument disregards the limitation, and takes the proposition for true simpliciter."

"Under the same head of fallacy (à dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter) might be placed all the errors which are vulgarly called misapplications of abstract truths: that is, where a principle, true (as the common expression is) in the abstract, that is, all modifying causes being supposed absent, is reasoned upon as if it were true absolutely, and no modifying circumstances could ever by possibility exist."-Mill's Logic.

2. Reasoning from loose definitions:

"Those who are familiar with the writings of Madame de Staël, know how constantly it was the practice of that acute and plausible writer, to have recourse to what may be called the fallacy of definition, which consists in giving an arbitrary meaning to some well-known expression, sufficiently large to include, or sufficiently narrow to exclude, the subject under discussion. Never was this fallacy more adroitly employed than in the very able and ingenious speech of Mr. Roundell Palmer, in Friday night's debate; a speech, the very ability and ingenuity of which render it peculiarly satisfactory to those who, like ourselves, entertain the opposite opinion, because we feel that few are likely to succeed where so adroit an advocate has failed. The familiar term which Mr. Palmer sought unduly to

extend by definition, is 'religious liberty.'"-Times, March 17, 1851.

V.-Fallacies connected with the relation of cause and effect, whether the cause be physical, moral, conditional, or final. See pages 71, 80, 95, 109.

Taking for a cause that which is not a cause :—

"The next kind of sophism is called non causâ pro causă, or the assignation of a false cause. This the peripatetic philosophers were guilty of continually, when they told us that certain beings, which they called substantial forms, were the springs of colour, motion, vegetation, and the various operations of natural beings in the animate and inanimate world; when they inform us that nature was terribly afraid of a vacuum; and that this was the cause why the water would not fall out of a long tube if it was turned upside down: the moderns, as well as the ancients, fall often into this fallacy, when they positively assign the reasons of natural appearances, without sufficient experiments to prove them.

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Astrologers are overrun with this sort of fallacies, and they cheat the people grossly by pretending to tell fortunes, and to deduce the cause of the various occurrences in the lives of men from the various positions of the stars and planets, which they call aspects.

"When comets, and eclipses of the sun and moon, are construed to signify the fate of princes, the revolution of states, famine, wars, and calamities of all kinds, it is a fallacy that belongs to this rank of sophisms.

"There is scarce anything more common in human life than this sort of deceitful argument. If any two accidental events happen to concur, one is presently made the cause of the other. If Titus wronged his neighbour of a guinea, and in six months after he fell down and broke his leg, weak men will impute it to the divine vengeance on Titus for his former injustice. This sophism was found also in the early days of the world; for when holy Job was surrounded with uncommon miseries, his own friends inferred, that he was a most heinous criminal, and charged him with aggravated guilt as the cause of his calamities;

though God himself by a voice from heaven solved this uncharitable sophism, and cleared his servant Job of that charge.

"How frequent is it among men to impute crimes to wrong persons! We too often charge that upon the wicked contrivance and premeditated malice of a neighbour, which arose merely from ignorance, or from an unguarded temper. And on the other hand, when we have a mind to excuse ourselves, we practise the same sophism, and charge that upon our inadvertence or our ignorance, which perhaps was designed wickedness. What is really done by a necessity of circumstances, we sometimes impute to choice. And again, we charge that upon necessity which was really desired and chosen.

"Sometimes a person acts out of judgment in opposition to his inclination; another person perhaps acts the same thing out of inclination, and against his judgment. It is hard for us to determine with assurance what are the inward springs and secret causes of every man's conduct; and therefore we should be cautious and slow in passing a judgment where the case is not exceedingly evident and if we should mistake, let it rather be on the charitable than on the censorious side."-Watts's Logic.

"And when Paul had gathered a bundle of sticks, and laid them on the fire, there came a viper out of the heat, and fastened on his hand. And when the barbarians saw the venomous beast hang on his hand, they said among themselves, No doubt this man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped the sea, yet vengeance suffereth not to live. And he shook off the beast into the fire, and felt no harm. Howbeit they looked when he should have swollen, or fallen down dead suddenly: but after they had looked a great while, and saw no harm come to him, they changed their minds, and said that he was a god.”—Acts xxviii. 3-6. See also Jeremiah xliv. 15-18.

VI. Fallacies connected with reasoning from examples. (See page 127.)

Drawing a general conclusion from a defective induction :

"There is, after all these, another sort of sophism, which is wont to be called an imperfect Enumeration, or a False Induction, when from a few experiments or observations

men infer general theorems and universal propositions.". Watts's Logic.

"Nivio in his youth observed, that on three Christmas days together there fell a good quantity of snow, and now hath writ it down in his almanack, as a part of his wise remarks on the weather, that it will always snow at Christmas.-Euron, a young lad, took notice ten times, that there was a sharp frost when the wind was in the northeast; therefore in the middle of last July he almost expected it should freeze, because the weathercocks showed him a north-east wind; and he was still more disappointed, when he found it a very sultry season. It is the same hasty judgment that hath thrown scandal on a whol nation for the sake of some culpable characters belonging to several particular natives of that country; whereas all the Frenchmen are not gay and airy; all the Italians are not jealous and revengeful; nor all the English overrun with the spleen.”—Watts on the Improvement of the Mind.

"I have already said that the mode of Simple Enumeration is still the common and received method of Induction in whatever relates to man and society. Of this a very few instances, more by way of memento than of instruction, may suffice. What, for example, is to be thought of all the common-sense' maxims for which the following may serve as the universal formula: 'Whatsoever has never been, will never be.' As for example: Negroes have never been as civilized as whites sometimes are, therefore it is impossible they should be so. Women, as a class, have not hitherto equalled men as a class in intellectual energy and comprehensiveness, therefore they are necessarily inferior. Society cannot prosper without this or the other institution; e.g. in Aristotle's time, without slavery; in later times, without an established priesthood, without artificial distinctions of ranks, &c. One working man in a thousand, educated, while the nine hundred and ninety-nine remain uneducated, has usually aimed at raising himself out of his class, therefore education makes people dissatisfied with their condition in life. Bookish men, taken from speculative pursuits, and set to work on something they know nothing about, have generally been found or thought to do it ill; therefore, philosophers are unfit for