It often happens, moreover, that the error of observation is not in regard to instances but to circumstances and conditions that vitally affect the argument. Here again the error may arise from careless inattention or from preconceived theories that blind the eyes of the observer. Moreover, when the circumstances are commonplace, they are especially likely to be disregarded while the attention is fixed on what is striking and picturesque. The following examples from Mill illustrate the dangerousness and the prevalence of this form of the fallacy:

Cures really produced by rest, regimen, and amusement have been ascribed to the medicinal, or occasionally to the supernatural, means which were put in requisition. "The celebrated John Wesley, while he commemorates the triumph of sulphur and supplication over his bodily infirmity, forgets to appreciate the resuscitating influence of four months repose from his apostolic labors; and such is the disposition of the human mind to place confidence in the operation of mysterious agents, that we find him more disposed to attribute his cure to a brown paper plaster of egg and brimstone, than to Dr. Fothergill's salutary prescription of country air, rest, asses' milk, and horse exercise."

Take, for instance, the vulgar notion, so plausible at the first glance, of the encouragement given to industry by lavish expenditure. A, who spends his whole income, and even his capital, in expensive living, is supposed to give great employment to labor. B, who lives upon a small portion, and invests the remainder in the funds, is thought to give little or no employment. For everybody sees the gains which are made by A's tradesmen, servants, and others, while his money is spending. B's savings, on the contrary, pass into the hands of the person whose stock he purchased, who with it pays a debt he owed to his banker, who lends it again to some merchant or manufacturer; and the capital, being laid out in hiring spinners and weavers, or carriers and the crews of merchant vessels, not only gives immediate employment to as much industry at once as A employs during the whole of his career, but coming back with increase by the sales of the goods which have been manufactured or imported, forms a fund for the employment of the same and perhaps a

greater quantity of labor in perpetuity. But the careless observer does not see, and therefore does not consider, what becomes of B's money; he does see what is done with A's: he observes not the far greater quantity which it prevents from being fed: and thence the prejudices, universal to the time of Adam Smith, and even yet only exploded among persons more than commonly instructed, that prodigality encourages industry, and parsimony is a discouragement to it.

As inattention and preconceived opinion are responsible for the first two fallacies of observation, ignorance and weak analytical power are the causes of the third. At first sight it may seem easy to distinguish between what we see, hear, or feel and the impressions that these things produce; but reflection will show that it is a danger to which we all are liable. For instance, how often a train moving in the opposite direction has convinced us that our train has started, or a trailing bit of white mist in low ground has made a credulous person declare that he has seen a ghost. Obviously here the error lies not "in the fact that something is unseen but that something seen is seen wrong."

One of the most celebrated examples of a universal error produced by mistaking an inference for the direct evidence of the senses, was the resistance made, on the ground of common sense, to the Copernican system. People fancied they saw the sun rise and set, the stars revolve in circles round the pole. We now know they saw no such thing: what they really saw were a set of appearances, equally reconcilable with the theory they held and with a totally different one.

Nor is the sense of sight the only sense that will play us false; errors in hearing are very common; and many a person, on stepping on an ant hill, has distinctly felt imaginary ants crawling all over him.

In proportion to any person's deficiency of knowledge and mental cultivation, is generally his inability to discriminate between his inferences and the perceptions on which they were grounded. Many a marvelous tale, many a scandalous anecdote,

owes its origin to this incapacity. The narrator relates, not what he saw or heard, but the impression which he derived from what he saw or heard, and of which perhaps the greater part consisted of inference, though the whole is related not as inference, but as matter-of-fact. The difficulty of inducing witnesses to restrain within any moderate limits the intermixture of their inferences with the narrative of their perceptions, is well known to experienced cross-examiners; and still more is this the case when ignorant persons attempt to describe any natural phenomenon.1

III. FALLACIES DUE TO ERRORS IN REASONING

The third class of fallacies arise not simply from ambiguity or from errors of observation but from an actual error in the reasoning process, an error which a trained critic could detect without any previous knowledge of the subject, and on account of which he would be justified in saying not that the conclusion is false but that the conclusion is unsound because the method of reasoning is fallacious. Here as elsewhere, however, it often happens that the fallacy might have been classified in one of the earlier divisions, for ambiguity or erroneous observation is often at the root of the difficulty. Of these fallacies of reasoning there are three chief forms: hasty generalization, begging the question, and ignoring the question.

1. Hasty generalization. In considering generalizations as a kind of evidence we noted how careful an arguer must be to make sure that the instances he has observed are of sufficient value to warrant a generalization. Indeed, in the fallacies to which reasoning is liable none is more common than that of hasty generalization from insufficient or improperly selected data. Such generalizations, moreover, have a dangerous tendency to create prejudices and superstitions and thus to contribute to the fallacies which we have already studied as those of inattention and careless observation. As soon as a person jumps to the conclusion that a general law

1 J. S. Mill, A System of Logic, p. 483. Harper & Brothers, 1846.

does exist (as, for instance, that it is bad luck to break a mirror), his powers of observation are likely to become seriously warped. Such errors are especially likely to occur in generalizations as to human beings and their actions. Most of us can recall instances in which travelers in a foreign country have generalized as to the character of the natives their honesty, for instance on patently insufficient evidence. A hasty generalization subjected the Populist orator of the following anecdote to embarrassing questions. 'A Populist orator in western Kansas was painting in lurid colors the down-trodden condition of the people when a lanky young man obtained permission to ask this question: 'You say we are all poor out here in Kansas. Well, I have just sold my wheat and made enough to pay off the three thousand dollar mortgage on my farm and to get my woman a new dress besides. Am I suffering?'"'1

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2. Begging the question. A second form of the fallacies due to errors in reasoning is begging the question, technically called petitio principii. This fallacy, by no means uncommon in the work of beginners in argumentation, occurs whenever a student, consciously or unconsciously, either (a) makes an assumption which is the same as or results from the conclusion he is to prove true, or (b) asserts unqualifiedly the truth of a premise which itself needs support.

a. Arguing in a circle. The crudest form of begging the question is that in which the reasoner assumes the truth of an assumption which is equivalent to the conclusion or results from it, commonly called arguing in a circle. A student trying to prove that Mr. Kipling was not a great poet wished to establish the point that many of Mr. Kipling's poems were in grossly bad taste. His attempt was as follows: "Many of these poems are in grossly bad taste, for they are so condemned by critics of refinement, inasmuch as if they do not condemn them they cannot be called men of refinement."

1 Other instances of this fallacy are given on page 98.

In similar way, a writer on the question, Are the enjoyment and the cultivation of the Fine Arts essential to the highest type of civilization? begs the question in a premise which defines his use of "civilization,” — “The sum of the material and moral acquisitions of a race, these qualities being embodied in the Fine Arts." Grant this definition, and you grant the conclusion sought, for if there can be no civilization without Fine Art, it is clear that in the highest type of civilization the enjoyment and cultivation of the Fine Arts must be present.

A reader of a book which purports to be the "Memoirs" of the Princess Lamballe argues that it is genuine because it records such and such facts, the occurrence of these facts resting only on the evidence of the " Memoirs" in question. In this sort of argument there is clearly a circle, since if the "Memoirs" are spurious there is not the slightest reason to accept the so-called facts.

b. Fallacies of assertion. The commonest forms of begging the question, however, are those in which a reasoner unqualifiedly asserts the truth of a premise which itself needs proof, either because it is false or merely because the reader has no reason to accept it as true and therefore has a perfect right to reject it as a reason why he should change his belief. If an assumption is actually false, this falsity should usually be determined by application of the tests for witnesses or by discovering the ambiguity or the error of observation which has occasioned the false statement. In order, however, that the student may realize the many forms that bad evidence may take, it seems well to consider here the chief varieties of assertiveness to which his work is liable. These important varieties are four in number: (1) arguing from a false assumption; (2) arguing from ambiguous evidence; (3) stating without support what should be proved true; (4) unwarranted assumption of a causal relationship. In each of these the assertion is valueless as proof because it lacks evidence to substantiate it.