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SOURCE AND ESSENCE OF FALLACIES.

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which are compared together, turns out to be different to what was supposed, or stated, or taken for granted, there a fallacy is at once generated. A fallacy may be contained either in the object itself, the idea of which is introduced during the process of reasoning, or in the term made use of to denote that idea. It may, however, occasionally be applied as a test, in order to prove or to disprove the supposed difference between two ideas, but which, upon being closely investigated, turns out to be unsound and false;-to be base instead of genuine metal, to be the shadow rather than the real substance of the object we are seeking. An idea may be fallacious when, although sound and just in itself, it is in its nature different to what we supposed, and is consequently inapplicable for the end for which we designed it. And this is, indeed, the common case with regard to fallacies. A horse may be as valuable an animal as a cow; but if, when we want a cow to milk, a horse is brought to us with saddle and bridle, we are likely to be as ill satisfied as though we were without either animal. Moreover, as bad materials will most likely serve to construct a building equally bad, so fallacious arguments will tend to produce from the whole a conclusion equally fallacious. And this will ensue, either if the arguments themselves be sound and the deduction from them fallacious; or if the arguments be fallacious, and the deduction from them sound.

Occasionally however, fallacies are presented to the mind in such a manner that they completely perplex the reason; either from the uncertain shape in which they appear, or from the mutations which they seem to undergo at different stages of the argument. Thus, some persons justify lying, or other sin, when some good object is to be gained by it, satisfying themselves with the conviction that the end justifies the means; that where a great good is to be accomplished, the sacrifice of a small good may properly he made to insure its attain

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Nevertheless, differently constituted minds adopt very different modes in conducting their reasoning operations. Perhaps, indeed, the main divergence as regards the opposite conclusions arrived at by the members of different sects and parties, both religious and political, may be traced almost entirely to this source. Thus, one set of men argue from, and are guided by, great and leading principles; while another set argue from, and are guided by, points of detail and minute practical considerations. In many cases, egotism and self-love powerfully operate to impede the right exercise of reason. Certain people judge of others mainly from themselves. When they would take a survey of the nature of man in general, instead of looking abroad, they only look within. Hence, on the one hand, those who are the most upright and

pure, are ever the most open to imposition; while, on the other hand, those who are the most uncharitable of their neighbours, are usually themselves the most depraved.

There is, moreover, no doubt that particular mental and moral constitutions incline different men to particular phases of faith; as some to Catholicism, others to Calvinism, others to doctrines which lie between the two. It is seldom however that men are induced to follow to the full their inclinations in this respect, or to exert their reason in the determination of which creed is the most consonant to their minds. Most men prefer to embrace without inquiry the faith in which they were brought up, unless some searching controversy into which they are led induces them to review the conclusion that they have adopted. Hence, in the most momentous of all subjects on which reason was given to guide us, is it least of all called into use. Nevertheless, it may surely be not unreasonable to inquire whether the Almighty, Who in His infinite wisdom has constituted different races of men so differently, both mentally and materially, as also morally, correspondingly with the different countries which they inhabit, may not have expressly intended that they should not all embrace the same religion, or follow it exactly in the same way; provided that they all adopt its grand fundamental principles as regards the worship of God, and the observance of a strict code of morality. The mental inferiority of many races of people, which wholly unfits them for understanding certain of the abstruser doctrines of our religion, is a strong proof that God does not deem it essential for mankind at large to enter into all the subtleties which theologians have invented, and for which they are no more qualified than the natives of Africa are to inhabit the Arctic regions, to assume European habits, or to thrive upon European food. In addition to which, our disagreements in doctrine, and contradictory teaching, form a serious, if not insurmountable obstacle to the conversion of them to our creed, however advantageous in the of civilization our instruction may prove.

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"Men who are perfectly convinced of the accuracy of their opinions, will never take the pains of examining the basis on which they are built. They always look with wonder, and often with horror, on views contrary to those which they inherited from their fathers."-Buckle. History of Civilization, vol. i. c. vii.

Mr. Tagore, in relation to this paragraph, observes as follows:-"The Hindoo cosmogony is the mythical development of the historical realism of the Mosaic, and the absence of the notion of a personal and living God. In all the false religions, the conservation of Hindooism in Judaism, in the first instance, and its further development in Christianity, in the second, forms the most remarkable feature in the religious history of mankind.

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The heathen systems, however philosophical, are at best convulsive and fragmentary. They form in a word the dynasty of confiscation and

THE USE AND ABUSE OF LOGIC.

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We may occasionally observe moreover, that different people will arrive at totally different conclusions, although each drawing their inferences from the same facts, and exercising precisely the same capacity in their operations. But this proves not any actual or essential difference as regards the nature of the reasoning powers with which they are endowed, although in extent of ability for this purpose they may doubtless widely differ;-but it serves to evince the variety and extent of those numerous extraneous influences which act upon them, and which bias the operations of the reason, as well as all their other efforts. Hence also it is that whole peoples and nations, as well as individuals, differ in opinion and mode of thought, according as their reason is variously swayed.

If it is difficult sometimes to determine who are sane and who are insane, and what it is that marks the actual boundary between sanity and insanity; it is probably often no less difficult to determine what is right reason, and what is fallacy, and where reason terminates, and error commences. As drawing accurately is not sufficient of itself to constitute an original imaginative artist; so great skill in logic often fails of itself to form an able reasoner. Indeed, a man may be a very good logician, and yet a very bad reasoner; or a very good reasoner, and yet a very bad logician. But this does not prove, on the one hand, that logic may not be serviceable in the conduct of an argument; or, on the other, that argument may not be successfully conducted without resort to logic. Logic is, in fact, the mere discipline of the reason, which cannot of itself confer skill; although it may contribute to perfect skill already existent. Many able logicians are frequently but indifferent reasoners; and there are excellent reasoners who have never learnt logic.'

The essential use of logic is that it supplies a test, though not the only test, by which may be discovered the difference between great words and great arguments. Rhetoricians deal mainly with the first, reasoners with the second. In fact, logic bears the same relation to reasoning, that certain chemical tests do to certain chemical substances. By chemical application

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annexation; whereas Christianity constitutes that of centralization without the destruction of individual freedom;-of order, peace, and goodwill to mankind—and thus the centre is restored both as regards the past and future history of mankind."

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Upon this passage, Dr. Newman writes as follows: "I quite agree that logic is not reasoning, but an act ministrative to reasoning. Again, that reasoning is a faculty, or again an exercise, or again an excellence of the mind, quite distinct from judgment; and that judgment, and taste, and imagination may be educated, and changed from faculties into excellences of mind as well as reasoning."

"The object of rhetoric is persuasion,-of logic conviction-of grammar significancy. A fourth term is wanting, the rhematic, or logic of sentences."-Coleridge. Table Talk.

alone you can ascertain their real and essential primary qualities; but without such application their ordinary qualities and practical uses may be discovered and dealt with. Many a person is conversant, and has dealings with, substances of various kinds, and in various ways, but who never resorts to chemistry to enable him to carry out his transactions. So, many conduct controversies without directly resorting to logic. This, however, does not prove that logic is not of service to enable them to accomplish such efforts, in the most regular and efficient mode. Thus also, a man may be able to walk properly without the aid of a drill-sergeant; although the drill-sergeant will teach him to direct his steps with the utmost propriety and precision. Logic is, moreover, applied to support error as well as truth; and to conceal as well as to discover the meaning of words.

Another great use of logic is that it not only directs us rightly in the conduct of an argument, but that it enables us to detect a fallacy which may be lurking about, and by exposing which the soundness of the reasoning on the other side may be controverted. And, perhaps, the detective power in cases of this kind, is the most valuable property which logic possesses; although, as in the case of argument, this may be obtained without the aid of logic, but probably not so surely or so completely.

Logic may, moreover, be applied to the conduct and the correction of an argument in which thought alone is employed, and language is not availed of; inasmuch as it is thought, and not language, to which it has ultimate relation. Language is only the vehicle of thought, not the substance itself, about which logic is employed.3

By means of language, a person is enabled to carry on an argument, or to join with another in making comparisons of different ideas, with nearly the same facility and efficiency with which he carries on this process in his own mind; and thus the two minds are, as it were, united or blended together, a direct channel of communication is opened between them, and an extended sphere of operation, by the ideas which each supplies to the other, is afforded to both. Nevertheless, as regards language, all that has been stated with respect to the errors in our knowledge arising from the imperfection of language, applies in an equal, if not greater degree, to language when used in reasoning.

3 But see an opinion to the contrary, by Archbishop Whately, and of Dean Mansel, in opposition to him, quoted in a note to Aristotle's Organon, by Owen, vol. i. p. 267.

COMPARISON THE ESSENCE OF REASONING.

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8. Nature and Process of the Operation of Reasoning.

We have next to inquire into the precise and peculiar mode in which the process of reasoning is conducted, by the faculty and capacities of the mind which are the subject of the present chapter. This operation, when perfectly and correctly carried on, by which two or more ideas are compared together, and a difference of a certain kind is shown to exist between them, is effected as follows. The mind having obtained a knowledge of the subject, and taken a survey of it by the faculty of understanding, proceeds to the examination of it by one of the capacities of the faculty of reason, according to the nature of such subject. Thus, if the matter be one of a common and ordinary nature, such as those relating to the general affairs of life, and of which we obtain ideas principally by the capacity of apprehension, that of sense is the most suitable to exercise in the examination of it. If it be one of a very abstruse nature, the capacity of analysis is that which is best fitted for its investigation. If however the subject be one of a large and comprehensive quality, the capacity of judgment is that which is chiefly adapted for dealing with it. In each case, whichever capacities of the faculty of reason are exerted, the process of reasoning is performed in the same manner. ideas or notions of the topic having been obtained through one Clear and correct of the capacities of understanding, according to the nature of the subject; by the exercise of one of the capacities of the faculty of reason, these different ideas are compared, either one with another, their diversity pointed out, and conclusions are accordingly drawn: or the subject or quality under examination, is compared (or, as it were, weighed), with some standard test, or measure of perfection, of the same kind, by which its relative extent or value is tried and determined. As in the operations of the faculty of understanding, so in those of the reason, although one only of its capacities may be applied about the particular ideas proper to it, and in comparing

As an exposition of the entire mechanism of reasoning, Aristotle's Organon may be referred to, as a very elaborate, complete, and altogether wonderful performance.

"The laws of inquiry, those general principles of the logic of physics, which regulate our search for truth in all things, external and internal, do not vary with the name of a science, or its objects or instruments. They are not laws of one science, but of every science, whether the objects of it be mental or material, clear or obscure, definite or indefinite; and they are thus universal, because in truth, though applicable to many sciences, they are only laws of the one inquiring mind, founded on the weakness of its powers of discernment, in relation to the complicated phenomena on which those powers are exercised."-Dr. Thomas Brown. Philosophy of the Mind, s. 5. Lectures on the

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