SECTION I.

FALLACIES, BY WHOM TREATED OF
HERETOFORE.

THE earliest author extant, in whose works any mention is made on the subject of fallacies, is Aristotle; by whom, in the course or rather on the occasion of his treatise on logic, not only is this subject started, but a list of the species of argument to which this denomination is applicable, is undertaken to be given. Upon the principle of the exhaustive method at so early a period employed by that astonishing genius, and, in comparison of what it might and ought to have been, so little turned to account since, two is the number of parts into which the whole mass is distributed, -fallacies in the diction, fallacies not in the diction: and thirteen (whereof in the diction six, not in the diction seven) is the number of the articles distributed between those two parts.*

SO

subject of the origination of our ideas (deceptious and undeceptious included,) from Aristotle down to this present day, on the subject of the forms, of which such ideas or combinations of ideas as are employable in the character of instruments of deception, are susceptible,-all is a blank.

To do something in the way of filling up this blank, is the object of the present work. In speaking of Aristotle's collection of fallacies, as a stock to which, from his time to the present, no addition has been made, all that is meant is, that whatsoever arguments may have had deception for their object, none besides those brought to view by Aristotle, have been brought to view in that character and under that name: for between the time of Aristotle and the present, treatises of the art of oratory, or popular argumentation, have not been wanting in various languages and in considerable number; nor can any of these be found in which, by him who may wish to put a deceit upon those to whom he has to address himself, instruction in no small quantity may not be obtained.

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What in these books of instruction is fessed to be taught, comes under this general description :— viz. how,— by means of words aptly employed, to gain your point, to produce upon those with whom you have to deal. those to whom you have to address yourself, the impression, and, by means of the impression, the disposition most favourable to your purpose, whatsoever that purpose may be.

As to the impression and disposition, the

Zopioua, whence our English word sophism, is the word employed by Aristotle. The choice of the appellation is singular enough: roos is the word that was already in use for designating a wise man. It was the same appellation that was commonly employed for the designation of the seven sages. Zoporns, whence our sophist, being an impretative of Zopos, was the word applied, as it were in irony, to designate the tribe of wranglers, whose pretension to the praise of wisdom had no better ground than an abuse of words.

sired whether the impression were correct or deceptious-whether the disposition were, with a view to the individual or community in question, salutary, indifferent, or pernicious- was a question that seemed not in any of these instances to have come across the author's mind. In the view taken by them of the subject, had any such question presented itself, it would have been put aside as foreign to the subject; exactly as, in a treatise on the art of war, a question concerning the justice of the war.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Cicero, and Quintilian, Isaac Voss, and, though last and in bulk least, yet not the least interesting, our own Gerard Hamilton (of whom more will be said,) are of this stamp.

Between those earliest and these latest of the writers who have written on this subject and with this view, others in abundance might be inserted; but these are quite enough.

After so many ages past in teaching with equal complacency and indifference the art of true instruction and the art of deception the art of producing good effects and the art of producing bad effects the art of the honest man and the art of the knave — of promoting the purposes of the benefactor, and the purposes of the enemy of the human race; after so many ages during which, with a view to persuasion, disposition, action, no instructions have been endeavoured to be given but in the same strain of imperturbable impartiality, it seemed not too early, in the nineteenth century, to take up the subject on the ground of morality, and to invite common honesty for the first time to mount the bench, and take her seat as judge.

As to Aristotle's fallacies-unless his petitio principii and his fallacia, non causa pro causâ, be considered as exceptions, upon examination, so little danger would be found in them, that, had the philosopher left them unexposed to do their worst, the omission need not have hung very heavy upon his conscience: scarce in any instance will be discovered any the least danger of final deception -the utmost inconvenience they seem capable of producing seems confined to a slight sensation of embarrassment. And as to the embarrassment, the difficulty will be, not in pronouncing that the proposition in question is incapable of forming a just ground for the conclusion built upon it, but in finding words for the description of the weakness which is the cause of this incapacity not in discovering the proposition to be absurd, but in giving an exact description of the form in which the absurdity presents itself.

SECTION III.

RELATION OF FALLACIES TO VULGAR ERRORS.

ERROR-vulgar error,* is an appellation given to an opinion which, being considered as false, is considered in itself only, and not with a

view to any consequences, of any kind, of which it may be productive.

It is termed vulgar with reference to the persons by whom it is supposed to be entertained and this either in respect of their multitude, simply, or in respect of the lowness of the station occupied by them, or the greater part of them, in the scale of respectability, in the scale of intelligence.

Fallacy is an appellation applied not exclusively to an opinion or to propositions enunciative of supposed opinions, but to discourse in any shape considered as having a tendency, with or without design, to cause any erroneous opinion to be embraced, or even, through the medium of erroneous opinion already entertained, to cause any pernicious course of action to be engaged or persevered in.

Thus, to believe that they who lived in early or old times were, because they lived in those times, wiser or better than those who live in later or modern times, is vulgar error: the employing that vulgar error in the endeavour to cause pernicious practices and institutions to be retained, is fallacy.

By those by whom the term fallacy has been employed at any rate, by those by whom it was originally employed — deception has been considered not merely as a consequence more or less probable, but as a consequence the production of which was aimed at on the part at least of some of the utterers.

Έλεγχοι σοφιστών, arguments employed by the sophists, is the denomination by which Aristotle has designated his devices, thirteen in number, to which his commentators, such of them as write in Latin, give the name of fallacia (from fallere to deceive,) from which our English word fallacies.

That in the use of these instruments, such a thing as deception was the object of the set of men mentioned by Aristotle under the name of sophists, is altogether out of doubt. On every occasion on which they are mentioned by him, this intention of deceiving is either directly asserted or assumed.

SECTION IV.

POLITICAL FALLACIES THE SUBJECT OF THIS WORK.

THE present work confines itself to the examination and exposure of only one class of fallacies, which class is determined by the nature of the occasion in which they are em

The occasion here in question is that of the formation of a decision procuring the adoption or rejection of some measure of government: including under the notion of a measure of government, a measure of legislation as well as of administration-two operations so intimately connected, that the drawing of a

Doundary line between them will in some instances be matter of no small difficulty, but for the distinguishing of which on the present occasion, and for the purpose of the present work, there will not be any need.

Under the name of a Treatise on Political Fallacies, this work will possess the character, and, in so far as the character answers the design of it, have the effect of a treatise on the art of government; - having for its practical object and tendency, in the first place, the facilitating the introduction of such features of good government as remain to be introduced; in the next place giving them perpetuation - perpetuation, not by means of legislative clauses aiming directly at that object (an aim of which the inutility and mischievousness will come to be fully laid open to view in the course of this work,) but by means of that instrument, viz. reason, by which alone the endeavour can be productive of any useful effect.

Employed in this endeavour, there are two Iways in which this instrument may be applied: one, the more direct, by showing, on the occasion of each proposed measure, in what way, by what probable consequences it tends to promote the accomplishment of the end or object which it professes to have particularly in view the other, the less direct, by pointing out the irrelevancy, and thus anticipating and destroying the persuasive force, of such deceptious arguments as have been in use, or appear likely to be employed in the endeavour to oppose it, and to dissuade men from concurring in the establishment of it.

Of these two different but harmonizing modes of applying this same instrument to its several purposes, the more direct is that of which a sample has, ever since the year 1802, been before the public, in that collection of unfinished papers on legislation, published at Paris in the French language, and which had the advantage of passing through the hands of Mr. Dumont, but for whose labours it would scarcely, in the author's lifetime at least, have seen the light. To exhibit the less direct, but in its application the more extensive mode, is the business of the present work.

To give existence to good arguments was the object in that instance: to provide for the exposure of bad ones is the object in the present instance-to provide for the exposure of their real nature, and thence for the destruction of their pernicious force.

Sophistry is a hydra, of which, if all the necks could be exposed, the force would be destroyed. In this work they have been diligently looked out for, and in the course of it the principal and most active of them have been brought to view.

SECTION V.

DIVISION OR CLASSIFICATION OF FALLACIES. So numerous are the instruments of persuasion which in the character of fallacies the present work will bring to view, that, for enabling the mind to obtain any tolerably satisfactory command over it, a set of divisions deduced from some source or other appeared to be altogether indispensable.

To frame these divisions with perfect logical accuracy will be an undertaking of no small difficulty -an undertaking requiring more time than either the author or editor has been able to bestow upon it.

An imperfect classification, however, being preferable to no classification at all, the author had adopted one principle of division from the situation of the utterers of fallacies, especially from the utterers in the British Houses of Parliament: fallacies of the ins fallacies of the outs—either-side fallacies.

A principle of subdivision he found in the quarter to which the fallacy in question applied itself, in the persons on whom it was designed to operate; the affections, the judgment, and the imagination.

To the several clusters of fallacies marked out by this subdivision, a Latin affix, expressive of the faculty or affection aimed at, was given; not surely for ostentation, for of the very humblest sort would such ostentation be, but for prominence, for impressiveness, and thence for clearness:— arguments 1. ad verecundiam; 2. ad superstitionem; 3. ad amicitiam; 4. ad metum; 5. ad odium; 6. ad invidentiam; 7. ad quietem; 8. ad socordiam ; 9. ad superbiam; 10. ad judicium; 11. ad imaginationem.

In the same manner, Locke has employed Latin denominations to distinguish four kinds of argument: - ad verecundiam, ad ignorantiam, ad hominem, ad judicium.

Mr. Dumont, who some few years since published in French a translation, or rather a redaction, of a considerable portion of the present work, divided the fallacies into three classes, according to the particular or special object to which the fallacies of each class appeared more immediately applicable. Some he supposed destined to repress discussion altogether-others to postpone it-others to perplex, when discussion could no longer be avoided. The first class he called fallacies of authority, the second fallacies of delay, and the third fallacies of confusion: he has also added to the name of each fallacy the Latin affix which points out the faculty or affection to which it is chiefly addressed.

The present editor* has preferred this arrangement to that pursued by the author;

* i. e. The Editor of the original edition.

In addition to the supposed immediate object of a given class of fallacies, he has considered the subject-matter of each individual fallacy, with a view to the comprehending in one class all such fallacies as more nearly resemble each other in the nature of their subject-matter: and the classes he has arranged in the order in which the enemies of improvement may be supposed to resort to them according to the emergency of the moment.

First, fallacies of authority (including laudatory personalities;) the subject-matter of which is authority in various shapes and the immediate object, to repress, on the ground of the weight of such authority, all exercise of the reasoning faculty.

Secondly, fallacies of danger (including vituperative personalities;) the subject-matter of which is the suggestion of danger in various shapes and the object, to repress altogether, on the ground of such danger, the discussion proposed to be entered on.

Thirdly, fallacies of delay; the subjectmatter of which is an assigning of reasons for delay in various shapes and the object, to postpone such discussion, with a view of eluding it altogether.

Fourthly, fallacies of confusion; the subject-matter of which consists chiefly of vague and indefinite generalities- while the object is to produce, when discussion can no longer be avoided, such confusion in the minds of the hearers as to incapacitate them for forming a correct judgment on the question proposed for deliberation.

In the arrangement thus made, imperfections will be found, the removal of which, should the removal of them be practicable, and at the same time worth the trouble, must be left to some experter hand. The classes themselves are not in every instance sufficiently distinct from each other; the articles ranged under them respectively not appertaining with a degree of propriety sufficiently exclusive to the heads under which they are placed. Still, imperfect as it is, the arrangement will, it is hoped, be found by the reflecting reader not altogether without its use.

SECTION VI.

NOMENCLATURE OF POLITICAL FALLACIES. BETWEEN the business of classification and that of nomenclature, the connexion is most intimate. To the work of classification no expression can be given but by means of nomenclature: no name other than what in the language of grammarians is called a proper name no name more extensive in its application than is the name of an individual, can be applied; but a class is marked out, and,

:

Still, however, the two operations remain not the less distinguishable for of the class marked out, a description may be given, of any length and degree of complication: the description given may be such as to occupy entire sentences in any number. But a name, properly so called, consists either of no more than one word, and that one a noun-substantive, or at most of no more than a substantive with its adjunct; or, if of words more than one, they must be in such sort linked together as to form in conjunction no more than a sort of compound word, occupying the place of a noun-substantive in the composition of a sentence.

Without prodigious circumlocution and inconvenience, a class of objects, however well marked out by description, cannot be designated, unless we substitute for the words constituting the description, a word, or very small cluster of words, so connected as to constitute a name. In this case, nomenclature is to description what, in algebraical operation, the substitution of a single letter of the alphabet for a line of any length, composed of numerical figures or letters of the alphabet, or both together, is to the continuing and repeating at each step the complicated matter of that same line.

The class being marked out, whether by description or denomination, an operation that will remain to be performed is, if no name be as yet given to it, the finding for it and giving to it a name: if a name has been given to it, the sitting in judgment on such name, for the purpose of determining whether it presents as adequate a conception of the object as can be wished, or whether some other may not be devised by which that conception may be presented in a manner more adequate.

Blessed be he for evermore, in whatsoever robe arrayed, to whose creative genius we are indebted for the first conception of those too-short-lived vehicles, by which, as in a nutshell, intimation is conveyed to us of the essential character of those awful volumes, which, at the touch of the sceptre, become the rules of our conduct, and the arbiters of our destiny: The Alien Act," "The Turnpike Act," "The Middlesex Waterworks Bill," &c. &c.!