If I argue the general utility of some proposed measure, and my opponent offers, in confutation, proof that we are not specially interested in it, he ignores the true elenchus, and his conclusion is irrelevant. If, in support of my thesis, I show that it is the proper consequence of previous legislation, I ignore the true conclusion, and my conclusion is irrelevant. If it be affirmed that a man has a right to dispose of his property as he thinks best, and you attempt to refute by showing that the way he has adopted is not the best; if one party vindicates, on the ground of general expediency, a particular instance of resistance to government, and you oppose that we ought not to do evil that good may come, you are guilty in each case of ignoratio elenchi. Again, if, instead of proving that the prisoner has committed an atrocious crime, you prove that the crime of which he is accused is atrocious; if, instead of proving that the poor ought to be relieved in this way rather than that, you prove that the poor ought certainly to be relieved, you are guilty in each case of ignoratio conclusionis. The special pleadings, technically so called, in our courts of law previous to trial are intended to produce, out of the varieties of statement made by the parties, the real points at issue, so that the case may not be ignoratio conclusionis, nor the defence ignoratio elenchi. "A demurrer" is about equivalent to the remark "Well, what of that?" That is, granting the statement in question, it may, perhaps, be no ground of action, and, if so, is irrelevant.

Nothing can be more important in the construction and prosecution of an argument than a clear and adequate conception of the precise point to be proved or disproved. In the speech of Diodotus" in answer to Cleon, who had argued that it would be just to put the Mitylenians to death, he reminds him that the question was not that, but whether it would be expedient for the Athenians to execute them. So Canning, in a speech in the House of Commons in reply to Mr. Perceval, says, "The question is not, as assumed by my opponent, whether we shall continue the war in the Peninsula, but whether it is essential to our success in the war that our present system of currency remain unchanged." Thus it is not unusual, after a protracted debate, for the cooler thinkers to preface their remarks with reminding the audience of the real nature of the point on which issue is joined; and the longer and more heated the discussion, the greater the need for these monitory exordiums. For, especially when the field of debate is large, the

combatants often join issue on the wrong points, or do not join issue at all. One goes to the east, another to the west; one loses the proposition in question, and wanders amidst a crowd of irrelevant details; another mistakes contraries for contradictories, or universals for particulars; and, after some hours of storm, they know not what they have been discussing. One has made out a case which his adversary admits, the more readily as it has not the least bearing on the question; another, having overthrown a similar collateral proposition, makes his pretended triumph resound over the field; yet another, having been rather shattered by reasons, appeals to the prejudices of his auditory, and, overwhelming his more rational antagonist with ridicule and abuse, comes off the apparent and acknowledged victor in the contest."*

14

And this reminds us that the ignoratio or mutatio often takes the form of personalities. We dispute with warmth, and without understanding one another. Passion or bad faith leads us to attribute to our adversary what is far from his meaning, in order to carry on the contest to greater advantage.. It is a sign both of weakness and depravity that in almost every dispute the debaters ignore the question, and aim their tongues or their pens at their antagonists. In all the controversies that have shaken the opinions of mankind, this tendency is visible. In politics, the epithets radical and rebel, tyrants and trai tors, have for ages been watchwords and weapons. In philosophy, the terms materialist, sensualist, idealist, transcendentalist, are, in different mouths, terms of admiration or contempt. In religion, the names Quaker and Methodist are memorials of scorn in the past; and "heretics," "bigots," "fanatics" are plentiful in the present. We rush at the throat of our antagonist, and the world, delighting in a display of pugnacity, crowns the fiercer and more vituperative combatant. But argument, not abuse; reason, not ridicule, is the touchstone of truth. What if Luther did and wrote many absurd things? This does not prove the authority of the Roman Church. What if Calvin did burn Servetus? This does not prove Calvinism to be fanaticism. The success of Pascal's vituperative Provincial Letters is very little to the honor of their author, for it indicates at once the weakness of those he attacked and of those whom he thus aroused to join in his hostility. The satirists of all ages have done as little for truth as Juvenal did for the morality of Rome.

"Sydney Smith's well-known jeu d'esprit, "The Noodle's Oration," furnishes some amusing examples of the Irrelevant Conclusion.

SOPHISMS IN MATTER.

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Again, the ignoratio is often a mere dodge. Instead of even a pretended confutation, something is offered which answers practically. A sophist defending one who has been guilty of peculation, which he wishes to extenuate, but cannot disprove, may succeed by making the jury laugh. On the other hand, the prosecutor, if extenuating circumstances have been proved, may dodge the question, and practically attain his end by exciting the disgust of the jury, saying, "Well, but, after all, the fellow is a thief, and that is the end of the matter," which, however, not being denied, is not the question. Here the fallacy appears as an abuse of the argumentum ad populum. Emotion succeeds where reason fails. Likewise the argumentum ad hominem, an appeal to personal opinion, and the argumentum ad verecundiam, an appeal to respected authority, and other modes of arguing, in themselves legitimate, may be abused to establish irrelevant conclusions.

Another form is to prove or disprove a part of what is required, and to dwell on that, suppressing the rest. This is the dodge of prejudiced book-reviewers. Its frequent success shows the danger of bringing in bad arguments to support a good cause. Many a guilty prisoner has been acquitted, because some one witness against him has been caught lying. Vulnerable points should not be exposed. Achilles would have been alive now had he never shown a clean pair of heels.

Yet another form consists in showing that there are objections to the proposition, and thence inferring that it should be rejected, when it ought to be proved that the objections against receiving it are weightier than the reasons for it. Objections can be raised against any reform, and even against Christianity itself. "There are objections," said Dr. Johnson, "against a plenum, and also against a vacuum; but one or the other must be true." To suspend judgment until all objections are removed is practically to decide in favor of the existing state of things. "Not to resolve is to resolve," says Bacon.

Let us remark, in closing, that the fallacy of irrelevant conclusion is greatly aided by the adroit practice of suppressing the statement of the conclusion, and leaving it to be supplied by the hearer, who then is less likely to perceive whether it be the proper one or not.1

15 See Whately's Logic, pp. 240-249. De Morgan classifies under I. elenchi any attempt to transfer the onus probandi to the wrong side. The burden of proof always lies properly on the party making an assertion, whether positive or negative. If he shifts this burden onto his disputant, demanding a disproof of his bare assertion, there is a mutatio which may fairly be referred to this sophism.

§ 4. The fourth class, Fallacia consequentis (rò πapà rò étóμevov), gives rise to fallacy, says Aristotle, "because the consecution of antecedent and consequent seems reciprocal. If B follows from A, we imagine that A must follow from B. Because whatever is generated has a beginning, it need not be that whatever has a beginning is generated. Because every man in a fever is hot, it does not follow that every man who is hot is in a fever."" These examples, at first glance, seem to be merely the fallacy of converting simply a universal affirmative. This cannot be Aristotle's meaning. Let us examine further. Subsequently he says," "In another mode of this falsely inferred consequence, the relation of the contradictories of the antecedent and consequent is supposed to correspond directly to the relation of the antecedent and consequent. If B follows from A, it is falsely assumed that non-B follows from non-A. So in Melissus's argument, if the generated is limited, the ungenerated is unlimited; so that if the heavens are uncreated, they are boundless." This makes it sufficiently plain that Aristotle's F. consequentis is to infer the truth of the antecedent from the truth of a consequent, and to infer the falsity of the consequent from the falsity of an antecedent. When it is admitted, If A is, then B is, we cannot say, But B is, and therefore A is; nor can we say, But A is not, and therefore B is not.18

16 De Soph. ch. v.

17 Id. ch. xxviii.

18 De Morgan states the F. consequentis to be simply the affirmation of a conclusion which does not logically follow from the premises, a mere non sequitur. His example is :

Episcopacy is of Scripture origin;

The Church of England is the only episcopal church in England; .. The church established is the church that should be supported.

The maintenance of the logic of this, he says, as "consecutive and without flaw," was recently imputed by an English newspaper to the clergy; which, he adds, was hard on the clergy. Truly, for, being sexipedalian, it is merely a logical insect. But De Morgan's definition will apply equally well to any and every fallacy; is, in fact, a proper definition of logical fallacy in general. This, then, could not have been the meaning of Aristotle, nor of the schoolmen, his studiously passive followers, who surely meant to be specific. Neither De Morgan nor Hamilton, who omits all mention of this sophism in his Lecture xxiii, seems to have looked into the treatise De Sophistici Elenchi. The former apparently draws from Aldrich, who misses the point entirely. Nor is Aldrich corrected by Mansel in his notes. Bain views the examples as merely erroneous conversions (p. 675). No recent writer seems properly to apprehend the scope of this species; and the false reasoning duly included by it, if treated at all, is treated entirely out of place.

This inconsequence has already been noticed under Paralogisms, where the formal fault is pointed out. But the fallacy is often concealed by the matter, and beclouded by feeling. People continually think and express themselves as if they believed that the premises cannot be false if the conclusion is true. The truth, or supposed truth, of the inferences which follow from a doctrine often enables it to find acceptance in spite of its gross absurdity. How many philosophical systems which had scarcely any intrinsic recommendation have been received by thoughtful men because they were supposed to lend additional support to religion, morality, some favorite view in politics, or some other cherished persuasion; not merely because their wishes were thereby enlisted on its side, but because its leading to what they deemed sound conclusions appeared to them a strong presumption in favor of its truth!"

And, on the other hand, a good cause supported by false premises or a bad argument falls into disrepute. A notable instance is the cause of Temperance. Its warm and extreme advocates adduce in its favor an appalling amount of misstatement and of distorted and disproportioned facts; and, again, from unquestionable facts they sometimes reach their conclusions by a startling logic unknown to Aristotle and his slow-gaited followers. Now the argument for this good cause is very simple and impregnable; but, unfortunately, it does not furnish material enough for the popular oratory of the day, which, therefore, soars untethered by fact or logic. The revulsions the cause has suffered ought to teach its advocates that a bad argument is worse than no argument. For when people discover the fallacy, they instantly commit the counter-fallacy, and conclude that because a premise is false, or the argument illogical, therefore the conclusion is false; and so the last state of that cause is worse than the first. Whoever would think truly should hold steadily to the principle that in such case the conclusion is not disproved, but merely unproven. An indictment fails, and the prisoner is declared "Not guilty," which, I take it, is an abbreviation for "not proved guilty." But the people conclude he has been "found innocent." True, he is to be presumed innocent until found guilty; but presumption is not proof. The more deliberate and skilful the criminal, the more likely is he to win this verdict. The vast remove between unproved guilt and innocence ought to be clearly marked.

10 Mill's Logic, p. 560.