LUSTRATIONS
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS,
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC
BY
PAUL T. LAFLEUR, M.A.
Lecturer in Logic and English, McGill University
BOSTON, U.S.A.
GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
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1899
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PREFATORY NOTE.
In the following collection, illustrating fundamental
processes of Deductive Logic, with examples taken from
general literature, the compiler has had in view, prima-
rily, the needs of teachers of the subject. Many of the
manuals in common use present those processes (partic-
ularly the syllogism) in the form of what Dr. Venn
aptly terms " prepared material"; and the instructor
consequently finds difficulty in convincing his hearers
that the logic of the class-room bears any relation to
thought as met with in ordinary discussion and in books.
Thus, without attempting a comprehensive treatment of
" rhetorical logic" such as Jevons had in view, but
unfortunately did not live to carry out, it yet seems
possible to offer a little volume that may serve some
purpose as an adjunct to any well-known handbook —
not in any sense as a substitute. Should a timorous
objection be urged that several of the specimens selected
involve questions quae in sermone et opinione positae
stmt, as Bacon puts it, the reply is that the student also
has been kept in mind. In the present writer's experi-
ence the timely introduction of a syllogism of contro-
versial, or even of polemical interest has often proved
the only means of relieving the undeniable tedium of
IV PREFATORY NOTE.
rigorously conventional Formal Logic ; it rests with the
lecturer himself not to use his subject as a vehicle for
slyly conveying or enforcing his private convictions.
Some explanation is needed of the fact that this collec-
tion begins at once with the syllogism. It is true that,
in discussing Terms and Propositions, some of the proc-
esses admit of tolerably easy literary illustration. For
example, to take but one instance, the common fallacy
of applying simple conversion to the universal affirma-
tive proposition generally assumes a livelier aspect for
the learner when it is shown to have been recognized
by Prior in the following epigram : —
Yes, every poet is a fool :
By demonstration Ned can show it :
Happy, could Ned's inverted rule
Prove every fool to be a poet.
But as in most text-books ample attention is given
to these somewhat formal methods, of which the prac-
tical disciplinary value lies in their very formality, it has
seemed better to present in this volume only examples
of "mediate inference," of miscellaneous fallacies of
common occurrence, together with a few arguments
occupying the terrain vague where logic and rhetoric so
often elude precise delimitation. Nor has it been thought
advisable to arrange these in such classified series as
immediately to suggest either their soundness or their
unsoundness. The desire to assist one's fellow- workers
in enlivening a lecture — or an examination paper — is
perhaps not altogether misplaced. Moreover, if the
student can thus be made to feel that the intellectual
PREFATORY NOTE. V
training of logic comes, in part at least, from its mode
of dealing with ideas expressed in language, and not
exclusively from the manipulation of symbols, he is less
likely to invent for himself any equivalent of the saying
that " Logic is neither a Science nor an Art — but a
dodge."
McGill College, Montreal,
June, 1899.
Mockmode. Form the Proposition by Mode and Figure, Sir.
Roebuck. . . .Blow your nose, Child; and have a care of dirting
your Philosophical Slabbering-bib. . . . Your starch'd
Band, set by Mode and Figure, Sir. . . . Now you have
left the University, learn, learn.
Farquhar. Love and a Bottle, Act III.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
1. All human things are subject to decay,
And, when fate summons, monarchs must obey.
Dryden : Mac Flecknoe.
2. I never held it my forte to be a severe reasoner,
but I can see that if whatever is best is A, and B hap-
pens to be best, B must be A, however little you might
have expected it beforehand.
George Eliot: Daniel Deronda, ch. 52.
3. I deem it impossible for any of the great mon-
archies of Europe to last much longer ; all of them have
flourished, and every state that is flourishing is already
in a Condition of decline. Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
4. I would have no dealings with my brother, and I
put my conduct upon a syllogism. I said, " St. Paul
bids me avoid those who cause divisions ; you cause
divisions ; therefore I must avoid you."
Newman : Apologia, p. 47.
5. England and Ireland should have one executive
power. But the legislature has a most important share
2 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
of the executive power. Therefore, Great Britain and
Ireland should have one legislature.
Macaulay : On the Repeal of the Union.
6. It appears as if all our concrete manifestations of
selfishness might be the conclusions of as many syllo-
gisms, each with this principle as the subject of its
major premise, thus : Whatever is me is precious ; this
is me ; therefore this is precious. Whatever is mine
must not fail ; this is mine ; therefore, this must not
fail. James : Psychology, Vol. I, p. 318.
7. A Liberal believes in liberty, and Liberty signifies
the non-intervention of the State. renan.
8. ... Nature craves
All dues be rendered to their owners ; now
What nearer debt in all humanity
Than wife is to the husband ?
Troilns and Cressida, II, 2.
9. Principles recognized by all persons of common
sense are innate ; we and our party are persons of com-
mon sense ; and consequently the principles we profess
must be innate.
10. That which causes a balance of good is right,
according to utilitarians ; and therefore persecution may
Sometimes be right. Leslie Stephen.
11. No man should fear death, for it is according to
nature ; and nothing is evil which is according to nature.
Marcus Aurelius.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 3
12. Power pleases the violent and proud ; wealth
delights the placid and timorous. Youth, therefore,
flies at power ; and age grovels after riches.
13. Discontent is an essential condition of progress.
But discontent means sorrow. Continued progress re-
quires chronic discontent, and therefore chronic sorrow.
J. W. Barlow : The Ultimatum of Pessimism, p. 37.
14. Raising the wages of day-labourers is wrong ; for
it does not make them live better, but only makes them
idler, and idleness is a very bad thing for human nature.
Johnson : in Boswell.
15. All concluded that happiness was the chief Good,
and ought to be the Ultimate End of Man ; that as this
was the End of Wisdom, so Wisdom was the Way to
rlappmeSS. Sir William Temple : Of Gardening.
16. I am walking with a friend in the garden, and
we see a moth alight upon a flower. He exclaims :
" What a beautiful butterfly ! " Whereupon I remark :
" That is not a butterfly ; it is a moth." If he asks me
how I know that, the answer is : " Because butterflies,
when they alight, close their wings vertically ; moths
expand them horizontally." g. h. Lewes.
17. All parents are not wise. They cannot all endure
to hear of any . . . opinions but their own.
John Morley : 0?i Compro?nise, p. 134.
18. I take it to be certain that whatever can, by just
reasoning, be inferred from a principle that is necessary,
4 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
must be a necessary truth. Thus, as the axioms in
mathematics are all necessary truths, so are all the con-
clusions drawn from them ; that is, the whole body of
that Science. Reid: Essays.
19. Here are two syllogisms, having equivalent prac-
tical conclusions, yet not only different, but even con-
tradistinguished : —
I. It is my duty to love all men : but I am myself a
man : ergo, it is my duty to love myself equally with
others.
II. It is my nature to love myself : but I cannot
realise this impulse of nature, without acting to others
as if I loved them equally with myself : . ergo, it is my
duty to love myself by acting towards others as if I
loved them equally with myself.
Coleridge: The Friend, December, 1820.
20. No ; the Dean (Swift) was no Irishman ; no Irish-
man ever gave but with a kind word and a kind heart.
Thackeray : Lectures on the English Humourists.
21. Every religion, every society that has not as its
principle the immortality of the soul can be upheld only
by extraordinary providence ; the Jewish religion did
not hold the immortality of the soul as a principle ;
hence it was maintained by an extraordinary providence.
Warburton : Quoted by Voltaire {Diet. Phil., Art. " Ame ").
22. But every man cannot distinguish between ped-
antry and poetry ; every man therefore is not fit to
innovate. Dryden.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 5
23. We have a very clear idea, and a very distinct
notion of the liberty we are speaking about ; whence it
follows that this notion is very true, and that conse-
quently the thing it represents is very certain.
Bossuet : Trait e du libre arbitre.
24. The more a bad man has to do with a bad man,
and the more nearly he is brought into contact with
him, the more he will be likely to hate him, for he
injures him, and injurer and injured cannot be friends.
Plato : Lysis, 214.
25. Xo nation admits of an abstract definition ; all
nations are beings of many qualities and many sides.
Bagehot : Physics and Politics, p. 61.
26. Every idea that we have is conditioned by being
an idea of what exists, either as a whole or in parts ;
and therefore our idea of the existence of God proves
that existence. Joseph de Maistre.
27. Our ideas reach no farther than our experience :
we have no experience of divine attributes and opera-
tions : I need not conclude my syllogism ; you can draw
the inference yourself.
Hume: Dialogues on Natural Religion, Part II.
28. The impossibility I am in of proving the non- L*
existence of God discloses that existence to me.
La Bruvere : Des Es frits Forts.
6 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
29. Some modern theologians assert that an extrava-
gant or contradictory doctrine must be divine ; since no
man alive could have thought of inventing it.
Gibbon : Decline and Fall, Vol. IV, p. 70, note.
30. Hence we sue for pardon ; and so we acknowl-
edge ourselves to be offenders ; for the unguilty needeth
no pardon. Latimer : The Sixth Sermon on the Lord's Prayer.
31. No secret trial is expedient ; for it invariably
casts a suspicion on the integrity of the judges.
32. The soundest of ethical philosophers always
account virtue to be an end in itself ; and as the vota-
ries and advocates of a purely hedonistic type deny that
virtue is its own reward, they cannot be ranked among
the soundest of ethical philosophers.
33. Correction in itself is not cruel. Children, being
not reasonable, can be governed only by fear.
Johnson.
34. All men are born under government, and there-
fore they cannot be at liberty to begin a new one.
Every one is born a subject to his father or his prince,
and is therefore under the perpetual tie of subjection
and allegiance.
Locke's Interpretation of Filmer's Theory of Patriarchal Government.
35. Of every empire all the subordinate communi-
ties are liable to taxation ; because they all share the
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 7
benefits of government, and therefore ought to furnish
their proportion of the expense.
Samuel Johnson : Taxation no Tyranny.
36. No two languages furnish equipollent words, —
their phrases differ, their syntax and their idioms
still more widely. But a translation, strictly so called,
requires an exact conformity in all these particulars, and
also in numbers ; therefore it is impossible.
Thurlow to Cowper.
37. "Very few/' said the poet, "live by choice.
Every man is placed in the present condition by causes
which acted without his foresight, and with which he
did not always willingly co-operate ; and therefore you
will rarely meet one who does not think the lot of his
neighbour better than his own." Johnson: Rasseias, ch. 16.
38. There is no style in which some man may not,
under some circumstances, express himself. There is
therefore no style which the drama rejects, none which
it does not occasionally require, macaulay : Mackiavdiu
39. Our voluntary service he requires,
Not our necessitated. Such with him
Finds no acceptance, nor can find ; for how-
Can hearts not free be tried whether they serve
Willing or no, who will but what they must
By destiny, and can no other choose ?
Milton : Paradise Lost, V, 529-34.
8 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
40. There is no merit in the relief of distress by a
charitable man, for the one who gives to the needy is
merely gratifying his own feelings of pity, and no one
holds that such gratification is deserving of special
commendation.
41. Recent legislation has in one respect proved both
onerous and unjustifiable ; for by placing restrictive
duties on the importation of books, pictures, and music
it has laid a heavy burden on many who are ill able to
bear it, and it taxes some of the aids to higher culture.
Now, higher culture is not a mere luxury ; the country
cannot do without it.
42. It being granted, by definition, that all connota-
tive terms convey to the mind the notion of a definite
attribute, or of definite attributes, in the concepts they
serve to denote ; it must follow that no proper (singu-
lar) term, not given for connotative purposes, can in se
be connotative, for beyond the fact of its denoting, no
proper name has any meaning.
Extracted from an article on " TermsT
43. A tax is a payment exacted by authority from
part of the community for the benefit of the whole.
All taxes then are acts of government ; and since every
act of government aims at public good, there should be
a necessary connection between taxation and the public
weal.
44. There is a Spanish proverb which declares that
Heaven always looks favorably on kindly desires and
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 9
good intentions ; now, since Heaven, as you say, has paid
no heed to your desires, these cannot have been good.
45. The best of us being unfit to die, what an inex-
pressible absurdity to put the worst to death.
Hawthorne.
46. Swift is praised as the friend to liberty. He was
not that : he was the enemy of injustice. He resisted
certain flagrant acts of oppression, and tried to redress
his country's wrongs, but he never thought of the liber-
ties of his Country. H. Crabb Robinson : Diary.
47. A prince without letters is a pilot without eyes.
All his government is groping. In sovereignty it is a
most happy thing not to be compelled ; but so it is the
most miserable not to be counselled. And how can he
be counselled that cannot see to read the best counsel-
lors (which are books) ; for they neither flatter us nor
hide from US ? Ben Jonson : Discoveries.
48. We are not persecutors of belief. We respect
the inner life of conscience, and wish it to be free.
A. Aulard : Revue Bleue, April 22, 1899.
49. He is free who lives as he wishes to live. . . .
Not one of the bad lives as he wrishes. Nor is he then
free. Epictetus: Discourses, IV. 1.
50. Without grace no one can pray, and yet grace is
to be imparted to those only who duly ask for it. That
is, grace is granted only to those who have it already.
H. Crabb Robinson : On a sermon of Arnold's.
Diary. Vol. II, p. 220.
10 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
51. I say then that sovereignty, being but the exer-
cise of the general will, can never be alienated, and
that the sovereign, who is a collective being, can be
represented by nobody but himself : power can indeed
be transmitted, but not will.
Rousseau : Social Contract, II, 1.
52. Pascal. God is good, and good is God : defini-
tion, O my friend, can go no farther than this. All
things therefore which are not God, are of themselves
CVll. H. D. Traill: The New Lucian, p. 119.
53. " No man that lives is altogether happy,"
or
" There is no man that is or can be free,"
is a maxim ; but it becomes an enthymeme by the addi-
tion of the next line :
" For money is his master or else Fortune."
Aristotle : Rhetoric, Bk. II, ch. 21 (transl. by Weldon).
54. Society is a necessary institution. Hence the
Christian religion is of divine origin, for it is the only
means of bringing society to a state of perfection.
Lacordaire.
55. Cromwell, Mr. Froude tells us, held Romanism
to be ' morally poisonous ' ; therefore Cromwell did not
tolerate. We have decided that it is no longer poison-
ous ; therefore we do tolerate.
Leslie Stephen : Poisono?es Opinions.
56. Veuillot, in a striking sentence, expressed with
great candor the policy of his party. ' When you are
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. II
the masters,' he said to the Liberals and Protestants,
'we claim perfect liberty for ourselves, as your princi-
ples require it ; when we are the masters we refuse it
to you, as it is contrary to our principles.'
W. E. H. Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, Vol. II, p. 20.
57. The evils of life all pass away in time ; no tran-
sitory things demand a moment's serious thought ; and
therefore, nothing upon which we should rightly dwell is
to be placed among the evils of life.
58. It is indisputable that some persons deserving of
attention are fools ; for some fools are capable of telling
the truth, and any one capable of telling the truth is
deserving of attention.
59. Who has many wishes has but little will ; who
has but little will is infirm of purpose. Infirmity of
purpose is therefore commonly attendant upon excessive
distribution of desires.
60. A bad man without conscience you cannot call a
fool for not acting as if he had one. He neglects no
elements of happiness about which he cares ; and a
career which would make better men miserable brings
him no distress.
James Martineau : Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II, p. 76.
61. Persons given to constant interruption deserve
not to be trusted, for Lavater declares that " Who
interrupts often is inconstant and insincere."
12 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
62. A French philosopher wrote, "All becomes
legitimate and even virtuous on behalf of the public
safety." Construct two arguments on this basis, show-
ing the extreme limits to which the principle assumed
may be applied.
63. According to the law of the land, no one is eli-
gible to the presidency who was not born on American
soil ; consequently, as none of the newly arrived emi-
grants was born on American soil, it is useless for any
one of them to aspire to that high office.
64. It is precisely because we believe that opinion, and
nothing but opinion, can effect great permanent changes,
that we ought to be careful to keep this most potent
force honest, wholesome, fearless, and independent.
John Morley : On Compromise, p. 78.
65. All finitude, all determination, according to the
well-known Spinozistic aphorism, is negation, and nega-
tion cannot constitute reality. To know the reality of-
things, therefore, we have to abstract from their limits :
therefore the only reality is the infinite.
Edward Caird : Cartesianism ; Essays, Vol. II, p. 291.
66. Good and Evil, in will and character, cannot be
reduced to the True and False ; because the latter are
unsusceptible of degrees, which attach to the very
essence of the former.
James Martineau : Types of Ethical Theory, Vol. II, p. 470.
67. Theological truth, sometimes at least, professes
to rest to some extent on experience, and to be a fair
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. I 3
inference from observable facts. Consequently, if, as
must clearly be the only correct way, we interpret
experience as including facts and all legitimate infer-
ences from these, it may be urged that we are bound
to include theological ideas in our investigation.
James Sully: Pessimism, p. 159.
68. Capital punishment is a violation of natural jus-
tice. No society has a right to deprive the individual
of that which he has not obtained from society.
Argument of a Portuguese in defence of the abolition of
capital punishment in his country.
69. Unmarried men are . . . not always best sub-
jects, for they are light to run away, and almost all
fugitives are of that condition.
Bacon : Of Marriage and Single Life.
70. We do not hold you responsible for your opin-
ions, but for the expression of them. Belief is inde-
pendent of the will ; not so, expression of belief : the
latter is a voluntary act.
71. Those are the best Governments, where the best
men govern ; and the difference is not so great in the
Forms of Magistracy as in the Persons of Magistrates ;
which may be the sense of what was said of old (taking
wise and good men to be meant by Philosophers), that
the best Governments were those, where Kings were
Philosophers, or Philosophers Kings.
Sir William Temple: Essay on Government.
72. It must be understood above all things that the
principle of hatred is contrariety and repugnance ; and
14 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
in this respect, it is not comprehensible that one should
hate truth in itself and in a general sense, "for," as the
great St. Thomas very well declares, " what is in this
manner vague and universal is never repugnant to any
one, and consequently cannot be an object of hatred/'
Bossuet : Second Sermon for Passion Sunday.
73. Fortitude is very wrell defined by the Stoic philos-
ophers when they call it a virtue contending for jus-
tice and honesty. No man therefore, by baseness and
treachery, has ever got the name and reputation for
true courage ; for nothing can ever be virtuous or cred-
itable that is not just.
Cicero : De Officiis, I, 19 (Cockman's transl.).
74. That which was profitable, therefore, prevailed,
because it was honest withal ; which had it not been, it
could never have been profitable.
Cicero : De Officiis, III, 10 (Cockman's transl.).
75. Since the beginning of the century, the con-
sumption of meat has more than doubled ; that of wine
has doubled ; coffee has increased threefold, and sugar
tenfold ; while beer has risen seventy per cent, in con-
sumption. Now as a rich man consumes no more meat,
coffee, sugar, etc., in 1894 than in 1800, it is the work-
ing classes who have increased their sum of pleasures.
Alfred Rambaud : Hist, de la Civil. Co7ite?nJ>. en France.
76. He who confines himself to the imitation of an
individual, as he never proposes to surpass, so he is not
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. I 5
likely to equal, the object of his imitation. He pro-
fesses only to follow ; and he that follows must neces-
sarily be behind. Sir Joshua Reynolds: The Sixth Discourse.
77. There can be no absolute perfection in any
creature ; because every creature is derived from some-
thing of a superior existence, and dependent on that
source for its own existence. No created being can be
all-wise, all-good, and all-powerful, because his powers
and capacities are finite and limited ; consequently
whatever is created must, in its own nature, be subject
to error, irregularity, excess and imperfectness.
Benjamin Franklin : Dialogue between Philocles and
Horatio, Works, Vol. II, p. 50.
78. Honorable is whatsoever possession, action, or
quality, is an argument and sign of power. . . . Timely
resolution, or determination of what a man is to do, is
honorable ; as being the contempt of small difficulties
and dangers. And irresolution, dishonorable ; as a sign
of too much valuing of little impediments, and little
advantages : for when a man has weighed things as
long as the time permits, and resolves not, the differ-
ence of weight is but little ; and therefore if he resolve
not, he overvalues little things, which is pusillanimity.
Hobbes : Leviathan, Part II, 10.
79. My opinion, says each man, is true : moreover
the truth will prevail ; and hence it follows that my
opinion, whatever it may be, represents the future faith
of the world. -
1 6 . ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
80. Now we can imitate only what interests us
strongly ; he, therefore, who can imitate many things,
is he who is interested in many things.
J. R. Seeley : Lectures and Essays, p. 177.
81. Perfection is synonymous with goodness in the
highest degree ; and hence to define good conduct in
terms of perfection, is indirectly to define good conduct
in terms of itself. Naturally, therefore, it happens that
the notion of perfection, like the notion of goodness,
1
can be framed only in relation to ends.
Herbert Spencer : The Data of Ethics, ch. 3.
82. Whatever is included in this finite world is finite,
limited both in virtue and substance, bounded with a
superficies, inclosed and circumscribed in a place, which
are the true and natural conditions of a body ; for there
is nothing but a body which hath a superficial part, and
is barred and fastened in a place, charron : On wisdom.
83. Slavery in the Jewish times was not the slavery
of negroes ; and therefore if you confine slavery to
negroes, you lose your sheet anchor, which is the Bible
argument in favour of slavery.
Quoted in John Bright* s IVth Speech on America, 1866.
84. The following pairs of propositions being respec-
tively taken as premises, state clearly whether or no any
syllogistic conclusion is inferrible ; and complete the
possible syllogism.
A. No labor is hired outside of the community.
All labor is rewarded alike.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. I 7
B. All functionaries arc, by reason of their office,
exempt from parental control.
No one exempt from parental control is less
than twenty-one years of age.
C. All reasoning, says Hobbes in Leviathan, is
computation.
All computation ultimately resolves itself into
addition and subtraction.
D. All these philosophies represent fundamental
tendencies in human nature.
All these philosophies have run long and dis-
tinguished careers.
E. Holiness, declares a philosopher, is a conscious-
ness of sin with a consciousness of the vic-
tory over sin.
No holiness, says another, is innate in man.
85. No savage is free. All over the world his daily
life is regulated by a complicated and apparently most
inconvenient set of customs as forcible as laws.
Sir John Lubbock: Origin of Civilization,^. 301.
86. Reason is an entirely personal faculty. When
therefore we assert anything in the name of reason, we
do so in the name of our reason ; certainty has no other
basis, no other criterion than our individual feeling, —
which is absurd. Hence reason can give us no absolute
certainty, and is thus convicted of impotence. We
must therefore seek some other authority.
Cousin : Philosophic Contcmporainc.
1 8 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
87. Since every man is born with equal natural rights,
he is entitled to an equal protection of them with all
other men ; and since government is that protection,
right reason and experience alike demand that every
person shall have a voice in the government upon per-
fectly equal and practicable terms.
George William Curtis: The Right of Suffrage, 1867.
88. The mystical or Quietist argument of the Neo-
platonists was that all perturbation is a pollution of the
soul ; that the act of suicide is accompanied by, and
springs from perturbation, and that therefore the perpe-
trator ends his days by a crime.
W. E. H. Lecky : History of European Morals,
Vol. II, p. 44.
89. That which is good must be something useful,
and the perfectly good man should pay heed to it. But
no such man would ever repent of having refused any
pleasure. Pleasure then is neither good nor useful.
90. Pleasure is that which is so in itself : good is
that which approves itself as such on reflection, or the
idea of which is a source of satisfaction. All pleasure
is not, therefore (morally speaking), equally good ; for
all pleasure does not equally bear reflecting on.
Hazlitt : The Spirit of the Age.
91. It has been argued, on the ground of the follow-
ing propositions from Shelley's Defence of Poetry, that
poets are true utilitarians : " The production and assur-
ance of pleasure in the highest sense is true utility.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 1 9
Those who produce and preserve this pleasure are poets
or poetical philosophers."
92. Shelley himself, in the same essay, assents to
the declaration that Poetry is not Logic, because " it is
not subject to the control of the active powers of the
mind."
93. Nature is infallible ; for the Law of an infallible
Lawgiver must needs be infallible ; and Nature is the
aw as well as the Art of God.
James Harrington : The Mechanics of Nature.
94. That which is not just is not law ; and that
which is not law ought not to be obeyed.
Algernon Sidney : Discourses on Government, III, 11.
95. It is logically, whether practically so or not, quite
conceivable that if the end be not the production, but
the distribution of wealth in a particular country, its
circumstances may be such as to justify protection as
a means to this end.
R. B. Haldane : Life of Adam Smith, p. 153.
96. We are told that a beginning of life is incon-
/ceivable. Living organisms cannot have been devel-
/ oped, as it is not shown that they have been developed,
( from inanimate matter. Every living thing, then, is a
continuation of some previously living thing ; and the
soul should therefore be continuous with a previous
Ul» Leslie Stephen: What is Materialism!
20 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
97. In proportion as opinions are open and divulged,
they are harmless. Opinions become dangerous to a
state only when persecution makes it necessary for men
to communicate their ideas under the bond of secrecy.
Do you believe it possible that the calamity which now
rages in Ireland would have come to its present height,
if the people had been allowed to meet and divulge
their grievances ? Charles James Fox: Repeal of the Treason
and Sedition Bills, 1797.
98. All hereditary government is in its nature tyranny.
An heritable crown, or an heritable throne, or by what
other fanciful names such things may be called, have
no other significant explanation than that mankind
are heritable property. To inherit a government is to
inherit the people, as if they were flocks and herds.
Paine: Rights of Man.
99. Men who endeavor to imitate us we like much
better than those who endeavor to equal us. Imitation
is a sign of esteem, but competition of envy.
100. God and truth are one and the same thing ;
whence we must conclude that every truth which the
human intellect is capable of receiving comes to it from
God ; that without Him it would know no truth, and
that He has granted to men, according to times and
circumstances, all truths that were necessary to them.
Joseph de Maistre : Les Soirees de Samt Petersbonrg.
101. It is the intention which gives to our acts their
real human meaning, their moral worth. Apart from
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 21
its intention an act is merely the production of an
intellectual machine. We cannot say that an action is
really good, although it may be good in its outward
form and drift, until we know something of the purpose
with which the agent went to work ; and thus many
actions, in themselves excellent, are corrupted by a bad
motive. Liddon : Sermon on " The Premature Judgments of Man."
102. Forty years ago I was not, and there was in me
no power of ever becoming, just as it does not depend
on me, who now am, to cease from being ; I have there-
fore had a beginning, and I continue to be through
something outside of myself, lasting after me, and better
and more powerful than myself.
La Bruyere : Des Esprits Forts.
103. Those who will come after us will perhaps know
more than we do, and will think very much better of
themselves on that account ; but will they really be hap-
pier or wiser ? Are we, who know much, better than
our fathers who knew so little ?
Vauvenargues : Reflexions, 537.
104. There is certainly no reason why any individual
should sacrifice others for himself alone ; neither is there
any why society should purchase peace by the ruin of
one of its own members. Society never has the right
to punish, but only to correct. Every punishment
which has not for its object the happiness of the indi-
vidual at whom it is directed, is an injustice.
FORTIA.
22 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
105. One cannot have a great soul, or an acute mind,
without some passion for letters. The arts are devoted
to depicting the characteristics of beautiful nature ; the
sciences, to truth. The arts and sciences comprise every-
thing that is noble and useful in thought ; so that those
who reject them have nothing left but what is unworthy
of being depicted or taught.
Vauvenargues : De V Esprit Humain, XXVIII.
106. God can only have made us for himself — in
order that we should know Him, for instance. Now,
our minds are finite and God is infinite. We must there-
fore exist eternally in order to know Him ; for a finite
mind requires infinite time to see an infinite being.
Malebranche.
107. My grandmother would say, for example : " What-
ever sin is committed against an infinite being is an
infinite evil. Every infinite evil deserves infinite pun-
ishment ; therefore every sin of man deserves an infinite
punishment." My Uncle Bill, on the other side, would
say : " No act of a finite being can be infinite. Man is
a finite being ; therefore no sin of man can be infinite.
No finite evil deserves infinite punishment. Man's sins
are finite evils ; therefore man's sins do not deserve
infinite punishment." When the combatants had got
thus far, they generally looked at each other in silence.
H. B. Stowe : Old Town Folks.
108. When the eyelids wink at a flash of light, or a
threatened blow, a reflex action takes place, in which
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 23
the afferent nerves are the optic, the efferent, the facial.
When a bad smell causes a grimace, there is a reflex
action through the same motor nerve, while the olfac-
tory nerves constitute the afferent channels. In these
cases, therefore, reflex action must be effected through
the brain, all the nerves involved being cerebral.
Huxley : Elementary Physiology.
109. We have been saying in thousands of treatises
on Logic, All men are mortal : Socrates is a man, there-
fore Socrates is mortal. The elephant reasons : All
boys are bun-giving animals ; that biped is a boy ; there-
fore I will hold out my trunk to him. A philosopher
says, The barometer is rising, and therefore we shall
have fine weather ; his dog says, My master is putting
on his hat, and therefore I am going to have a walk.
A dog equals a detective in the sharpness with which
he infers general objectionableness from ragged clothes.
A clever dog draws more refined inferences. If he is
not up to enough simple arithmetic to count seven, he
can at least say, Everybody is looking so gloomy, that
it must be Sunday morning.
Leslie Stephen : Essays on Freethinking and
Plain-s_peaking, p. 80.
no. I heard a philosopher say one day : — "I have
the idea of a free will. Now round about me nothing
is free. Hence it is within myself that I must have
obtained this idea. Otherwise, it would come from
nowhere, it would have no raison d'etre ; and thus by
the mere idea which I have of my free will, I am certain
that 1 am tree. Georges Renard : L Homme, est-il libre? p. 53.
24 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
in. Men will be punished, and God is the one who
will inflict the punishment ; hence the punishment is
just, and consequently he who is punished is guilty.
He might therefore have acted otherwise, and possesses
freedom within himself. He is consequently capable of
determining his own actions.
Leibnitz : Nouveaux Essais, Bk. IV, ch. 17, sec. 4.
112. Let us take Locke's own instance, from his
4th Book, sec. 10, where, disdainfully discarding the
syllogism, he asserts that the enthymeme is the sufficient
account of our reasonings. " A just God will punish men
for their evil works: Therefore men have free choice."
Why does this conclusion : that men have free choice,
flow from the fact, that a just God will punish their sins ?
Only because it is assumed that we are, of course, agreed
upon another judgment ; namely : that freedom is essen-
tial to responsibility. Unless that is virtually in the
mind, the conclusion is not seen as certainly true. So
that after all the full statement of the citation must take
this form.
Freedom in the agent is necessary to a just responsi-
bility.
God (who is just) will hold men responsible ;
Therefore men are free agents.
R. L. Dabney : The Sensualistic Philosophy, p. 267.
113. He (Rousseau) believes — and I with him — that
one is born without vice, because without ideas ; but for
the same reason one is also born without virtue. If vice
is foreign to human nature, virtue must be so likewise.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 2$
Both can only be acquired. This is why one is not
deemed capable of sin before the age of seven years,
because up to that time one can have no exact idea of
justice and injustice, nor any knowledge of duties towards
One's fellow-men. Helvbtius : De D Homme, Sect. V, ch. i.
114. As every Prince should govern, as he would
desire to be governed if he were a Subject, so every
Subject should obey, as he would desire to be obeyed if
he were a Prince ; since this Moral Principle of doing as
you would be done by, is certainly the most undisputed
and universally allowed of any other in the world, how
ill so ever it may be practised by particular men.
Sir William Temple: Of Popular Discontents.
115. Having proved that the Right of a Father pro-
ceeds from the generation and education of his Children :
That no man can have that Right over those whom he
hath not begotten and educated : That every man hath
it over those who owe their Birth and Education to him
... it plainly appears, that no Father can have a Right
over others, unless it be by them granted to him, and
that he receive his Right from those who granted it.
Algernon Sidney : Discourses Concerning Government, I, 20.
116. " In vaine," said then old Melibee, " doe men
The heavens of their fortunes fault accuse ;
Sith they know best what is the best for them :
For they to each such fortune doe diffuse,
As they do know each can most aptly use.
For not that, which men covet most, is best ;
26 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
Nor that thing worst, which men do most refuse ;
But fittest is, that all contented rest
With that they hold ; each hath his fortune in his brest."
Spenser : The Faerie Queene, VI, 9, 29.
117. Such orders as were commanded by God may
not be changed in any case, only because God com-
manded them ; for, as God is everlasting, so is his word
and commandment everlasting. Of the other side, such
orders as have been devised by men may be broken,
upon some good consideration, only because they were
men that devised them ; for as men themselves be
mortal, so all their wisdoms and inventions be but
mortal. Bishop Jewel: Reply to Dr. Cole.
118. Sufficiency, power, etc., are all desired, because
they are esteemed a good. Good is the cause why all
things are desired. For that which contains no good,
either in reality or appearance, can never be desired.
On the contrary, things not essentially good are desired
because they appear to be real goods. Hence, good is
esteemed as the cause and end of all things we desire.
Boethius: Consolations.
119. Since it is certain that all right flows from the
fountain of justice, so that nothing can possibly be any
man's right that is not just, it is a most wicked thing in
you to affirm, that for a king to be unjust, rapacious,
tyrannical, and as ill as the worst of them ever was, is
according to the right of kings.
Milton : A Defence of the People of England.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 2 J
120. Religion has its proper end in contemplation
and in conduct. Art aims at presenting sensuous em-
bodiment of thoughts and feelings with a view to intel-
lectual enjoyment. Now man}- thoughts are incapable
of sensuous embodiment ; they appear as abstractions to
the philosophical intellect or as dogmas to the theological
understanding. To effect an alliance between art and
philosophy or art and theology in the specific region of
either religion or speculation is, therefore, an impossi-
bility.
J. A. Symonds : Renaissance in Italy — The Fine Arts — pp. 29, 30.
121. Having proved that the Latin commentary
would not have been an intelligent servant, I will show
why it would not have been an obedient one. He is
obedient who has that good disposition which we call
obedience. True obedience should have three things,
without which it is none : it must be sweet, and not
bitter ; entirely under command and not spontaneous ;
and it must be limited and not unbounded. These three
things it was impossible for the Latin commentary to
possess ; and therefore it was impossible for it to be
Obedient. Dante : // Convito, Bk. I. ch. 7 (transL by K. Hillard).
122. The Venus of Milo has the left side of the head
more developed than the other. . . . Henke, resting on
this fact, holds that the Venus is not a faultless master-
piece, for, says he, the ideal or rather the normal counte-
nance is perfectly symmetrical. This conclusion was
rejected by Hasse, who undertook to demonstrate that
28 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
the normal countenance is clearly unsymmetrical and
that the perfectly symmetrical countenance, if it exists,
IS an anomaly. Biervliet: Revue Philosophique, February, 1899.
123. I hold that a long poem does not exist. I main-
tain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat
contradiction in terms. I need scarcely observe that a
ppem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by
elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the
ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements
are, through a psychal necessity, transient. That degree
of excitement which would entitle a poem to be called so
at all, cannot be sustained throughout a composition of
any great length. After the lapse of half-an-hour at the
very utmost, it flags — fails — a revulsion ensues — and
then the poem is in effect, and in fact, no longer such.
Edgar Allan Poe : The Poetic Principle.
124. The deductive inquirer . . . will argue thus :
poetry appeals to the imagination, mathematics to the
understanding. To work the imagination is more excit-
ing than to work the understanding, and what is habit-
ually exciting is usually unhealthy. But what is usually
unhealthy will tend to shorten life ; therefore poetry
tends more than mathematics to shorten life ; therefore
on the whole poets will die sooner than mathematicians.
Henry Thomas Buckle: Miscellaneous and Posthumous
Wo?'ks, Vol. I, p. 7.
125. That Alexander exerted his supreme authority
over all his subjects is quite certain. And yet in this he
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 29
differed absolutely from a tyrant, such as the Greeks
knew, that he called together his peers and asked them
to pass legal sentence upon a subject charged with grave
offences against the king. No Greek tyrant ever could
do this, for he had around him no halo of legitimacy, and
moreover he permitted no order of nobility among his
Subjects. jt pt Mahaffy : Greek Life and Thought, ch. 2.
126. By the manifest and plain words of the scrip-
tures, and the consent of the most ancient authors before
written, it is evident that neither the visions of angels,
apparitions of the dead, nor miracles, nor all these joined
together in one, are able or sufficient to make any one
new article of our faith, or stablish anything in religion,
without the express words of God ; because all such
things (as is before proved) may be, yes, and have been,
through God's permission, for our sins' and unbelief's
sake, done by the power of the devil himself, or feigned
and counterfeited of his lively members, monks and friars,
with other such hypocrites.
Cranmer: A Confutation of Unwritten Verities, ch. 11, 74.
127. We notice an important distinction between
suffering for another and being punished for another. . . .
Punishment implies guilt, and the notion of an innocent
man being punished for the guilty is a moral contradic-
tion. The innocent man may and does suffer for the
guilty ; that he should be punished for the guilty is
inconceivable, for guilt and with it moral condemnation
are intransferable. To speak, therefore, of Vicarious
30 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
Suffering has nothing in it to shock morality : Vicarious
Punishment (if the full meaning of the idea is realised)
is immoral.
S. H. Butcher : Some Aspects of the Greek Genius, p. 120.
128. When a manufactured object is so made as to
be perfectly fitted for the purpose for which it is designed,
when, as in the case of simple objects of universal use,
the form has been so modified by continual and gradual
improvements (without ulterior intention of making it
more beautiful) as to have all that is requisite and
nothing that is superfluous, and when in addition it is
constructed in the manner best calculated to make it
strong and durable, it has this beauty, which I call the
beauty of fitness. Now these are the characteristics of
all that kind of work of which the rules are handed down
from father to son, or from master to apprentice, and
which is called therefore traditional work ; consequently,
we always find that traditional work has some elements
Of beauty in it. e. J. Poynter : Ten Lectures on Art, pp. 6, 7.
129. Tragedy is the highest earnestness of poetry ;
Comedy altogether sportive. Now earnestness . . . con-
sists in the direction of the mental powers to an aim or
purpose, and the limitation of their activity to that object.
Its opposite, therefore, consists in the apparent want of
aim, and freedom from all restraint in the exercise of the
mental powers ; and it is therefore the more perfect, the
more unreservedly it goes to work, and the more lively
the appearance there is of purposeless fun and unre-
strained Caprice. Aug. W. von Schlegel : Dramatic Art, p. 147.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
31
130. Liberty, indeed, though among the greatest of
blessings, is not so great as that of protection ; inasmuch,
as the end of the former is the progress and improve-
ment of the race, — while that of the latter is its pres-
ervation and perpetuation. And hence, when the two
come into conflict, liberty must, and ever ought, to yield
to protection ; as the existence of the race is of greater
moment than its improvement.
John C Calhoun : A Disquisition on Government.
131. Since therefore the knowledge and survey of
vice is in this world so necessary to the constituting of
human virtue, and the scanning of error to the confirma-
tion of truth, how can we more safely and with less
danger, scout into the regions of sin and falsity, than by
reading all manner of tractates, and hearing all manner
of reason ? And this is the benefit which may be had
Of books promiscuously read. Milton : Areofagitica.
132. It is a singular misuse of terms to place a
supposed perfection at the very beginning of a language.
What is true, is that in ascending step by step the his-
torical course of a language, and thus catching the latter
in the very act of transformation, we distinguish with
greater certainty the laws that govern its cha:
Every language is thus more regular, simpler, more
symmetrical in some sense, at the epoch of its origin
and infancy, than at any other period of its existence or
its development. But in no case that anyone knows of
— in no art, science, or order of things — are simplicity,
32 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
regularity, or symmetry either synonyms or measures of
perfection. Quite the contrary ; and since languages
have actually been compared to organisms, it must be
remembered that any organism is nearer relative per-
fection, the more complex it is — that is, when com-
posed of the union of a large number of parts, more
delicately and subtly put together.
F. Brunetiere : Etudes Critiques, Vol. I, p. 6.
133. Reserve is restraint, and restraint is painful, and
pain is intolerable to the self-indulgent.
H. D. Traill: The New Lucian, p. 71.
134. Want is the consequence of profusion, venality
of want, and dependence of venality.
Bolingbroke : The Idea of a Patriot King.
135. Every body is in space ; what is in space is in
some one part of space ; what is in one part of space
may be in another ; what may be in another part of
space may change its space ; what may change its space
is movable ; therefore, every body is movable.
Sir William Hamilton : Logic, Lect. XIX.
136. No rulers will do that which produces pain to
themselves.
But the unfavorable sentiments of the people will give
pain to them.
Therefore, no rulers will do anything which may excite
the unfavorable sentiments of the people.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 33
But the unfavorable sentiments of the people are excited
by everything which hurts them.
Therefore, no rulers will do anything which may hurt
tlie people. MACAULAY: James Mill's Essay on Government.
137. Seeing that all men desire happiness, and happi-
ness is gained by a right use of the things of life ; and
the right use of them, and good fortune in the use of
them, are given by knowledge ; the inference is that
every man ought by all means to try to make himself
as wise as he can.
138. True happiness cannot consist in things that are
inconsistent with the nature and state of man. This . . .
naturally flows from the very notion of good and evil.
For whatever is inconsistent with the nature of a being,
tends for this very reason to degrade or destroy it, to
corrupt or alter its constitution ; which being directly
opposite to the preservation, perfection, and good of this
being, subverts the foundation of its felicity. Wherefore
reason being the noblest part of man, and constituting his
principal essence, whatever is inconsistent with reason
cannot form his happiness.
Burlamaqui : The Pri7iciples of Natural Law, Pt. I, ch. 6.
139. Warning, it is said, is the end of punishment.
But a punishment inflicted, not by a general rule, but
by an arbitrary discretion, cannot serve the purpose of
a warning. It is therefore useless ; and useless pain
ought not to be inflicted.
Macau lav: Hallam's Constitutional History.
34 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
140. All living, in the first place, however common-
place its aims, however accidental its ideals, involves a
deep paradox. We long to live. Very well, then, we
long to be active. For life means activity ; and activity
that again means longing, striving, suffering, lack, hoping
for the end of the activity in which we are immediately
engaged. . . . Life is will ; and every will aims at its
own completion, that is, at its own cessation. I will to
be wiser than I am. Well, then, I will that my present
foolishness shall cease. I will to get somebody's love ;
and that means that I will the cessation of my unloved
condition. Every will aims at the attainment of its
desire; and attainment is the death of just this desire,
and so of just this act of will. And yet, on the whole,
1 Will tO live. j RoYCE. The Spirit of Moder7i Philosophy, ?. \yy
141. Whether the universe is (a concourse of) atoms,
or nature (is a system), let this first be established, that
I am a part of the whole which is governed by nature ;
next, I am in a manner intimately related to the parts
which are of the same kind with myself. For remem-
bering this, inasmuch as I am a part, I shall be discon-
tented with none of the things which are assigned to me
out of the whole ; for nothing is injurious to the part, if
it is for the advantage of the whole. For the whole
contains nothing which is not for its advantage ; and all
natures indeed have this common principle, but the
nature of the universe has this principle besides, that
it cannot be compelled even by any external cause to
generate anything harmful to itself. By remembering
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 35
then that I am a part of such a whole, I shall be content
with everything that happens.
M. Aurelius: Meditations, X (transl. by Long).
142. Omnis concordia dependet ab imitate, quae est
in voluntatibus. Genus humanum optime se habens est
quaedam concordia ; nam sicut unus homo optime se
habens, et quantum ad animam, et quantum ad corpus,
est concordia quaedam : et similiter domus, civitas, et
regnum : sic totum genus humanum. Ergo genus hu-
manum optime se habens ab imitate quae est in volun-
tatibus dependet. Seel hoc esse non potest ; nisi sit
voluntas una, domina et regulatrix omnium aliarum in
unum. . . . Nee una ista potest esse, nisi sit Princeps
unus omnium, cujus voluntas domina et regulatrix ali-
arum omnium esse possit. Quod si omnes consequentiae
superiores verae, quod sunt ; necesse est, ad optime se
habere humanum genus, Monarcham esse in mundo ; et
per consequens Monarchiam ad bene esse mundi.
Dante : De Monorchia, Bk. I.
143. Haeckel seeks to get out of a difficulty by
assuming that the principle of life has its origin in the
physical and chemical properties of albuminous bodies.
And how are these albuminous -bodies formed? By the
tendency of carbon towards manifold combinations with
other elements. And what is the cause of this tendency
and also of all other chemical properties of bodies ? " I
do not know," answers Haeckel. "Then," it may be
replied, " if your hypothesis is sound, you have done
36 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
nothing more than remove the mystery a little farther,
and if the cause of your vital principle springs in its turn
from an unknown cause, your explanation is reduced to
this : — The original cause of life is equal to x.u
Antonio Fogazzaro.
144, There is no religion possible without a single
visible Church.
There is no Church without government.
There is no government without sovereignty.
There is no sovereignty without infallibility.
Hence, there can be no religion without infallibility.
Joseph de Maistre : " Le Pape" as summed tip by Edmond Scherer.
145. The Church, according to the Catholic doctrine,
is the visible community, founded by Christ, of all the
faithful, in which the active operation of purifying from
sin and sanctifying mankind, developed in it during His
existence on earth, is perpetuated, under the guidance of
His Spirit, to the end of the world, by means of an apos-
tolate, instituted by Him, and of uninterrupted duration.
The bishops are the direct successors of the apostles.
To them are transferred, through ordination and the
laying on of hands, the same graces and spiritual gifts
which their predecessors received from Christ, and which
they, in like manner, transmit by ordination to the priests.
The episcopate is, therefore, an institution ordained by
God — the legitimate organ and exclusive vehicle of the
Holy Spirit. And since an institution of this kind
requires, for the purpose of asserting its unity, a cen-
tre, God has placed at the head of the whole Church
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 37
a supreme overseer, the successor of the Prince of the
Apostles, St. Peter, as His sovereign Vicar and repre-
sentative whose further duty it is to govern the church
through authorities appointed by himself. The hierarchy
— or the priesthood of the new dispensation — is essen-
tial, therefore, for the continuance and completion of the
work of redemption. The episcopate, through its head,
thus representing the church, its decisions on points of
doctrine are consequently infallible.
Geffcken : Church and State (transl. by E. F. Taylor),
Vol. I, ch. ii, pp. 293, 294.
146. Since infinite is the same with absolutely perfect,
we having a notion or idea of the latter, must needs have
of the former. From whence we learn also, that though
the word infinite be in the form thereof negative, yet is
the sense of it, in those things which are really capable
of the same, positive, it being all one with absolutely per-
fect ; as likewise the sense of the word finite is negative,
it being the same with imperfect. So that finite is prop-
erly the negation of infinite, as that which in order of
nature is before it ; and not infinite the negation of
Finite. Cudworth : The Intellectual System of the Universe, ch. 5.
147. I am a finite being, God is infinite : I am imper-
fect and defective. God is perfect and without defects.
It is, therefore, impossible for me to be the cause of this
idea. Either I cannot have such a conception at all, or
its cause must be a being of like reality ; i.e., God him-
self. But I have the idea of God ; and in this case, to
have it is equivalent to having received it. Every con-
38 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
ception, as every phenomenon, has its cause. If I clearly
and distinctly perceive that I cannot be this cause, I know
just as clearly and distinctly that it must be without me ;
that there is, therefore, a being without me.
Kuno Fischer: Descartes and His School, p. 344 (transl. by Cordy).
148. How reconcile the existence of evil with the
being and rule of a wise and good God, almighty to
effect what love proposes and wisdom plans ? . . . There
is but one answer to this question. What love proposes
and wisdom plans must needs be good. This funda-
mental truth of practical reason is the only solution of
the problem. In the view and intent of a Being of
infinite wisdom and goodness, there can be no evil.
Such a being sees and knows and does only good.
What we call evil, therefore, the evil of our experience,
when referred to its source, has precisely the same char-
acter with that which we call good. If God is good, and
if all that is proceeds from him, there is no evil.
F. H. Hedge: Ways of the Spirit and Other Essays. Quoted by
James Martineau, A Study of Religion, Vol. II, p. 56.
149. I. The aim of the Baconian philosophy is to
found and increase the lordship of man, the domain of
culture.
II. There can be no culture without discovery, which
gives the powers of nature into the hands of man.
III. There can be no discovery without science, which
brings the laws of phenomena into light.
IV. There can be no science without knowledge of
nature.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 39
V. This knowledge of nature can have but one course
to pursue, namely, that of experience.
Kuno Fischer : Bacon.
150. Every attempt to interpret the succession of
mental phenomena by means of theorems originally
devised to interpret the movements of matter, involves
the assertion of materialism ; the assertion of materialism
involves the denial of personal immortality ; the denial
of personal immortality deprives morality of its principal
sanction, and prevents us from having any higher ideal
of life than the gratification of egoistic desires ; ergo, we
are justified in insinuating that philosophers who inter-
pret mental manifestations by a reference to material
structure are likely to be men of loose morals.
Fiske : Cos77iic Philosophy, Vol. II, p. 434.
151. You know what Pericles said of his son's dog
Azor ; — Azor rules my boy, my boy rules his mother,
his mother rules me, I rule Athens, Athens rules
Greece, and Greece rules the wrorld, — wherefore Azor
is the ruler of the world. Same remark applies to
Mdlle. Mimi Triboulette's dog, Bichon. Bichon gov-
erns Mdlle. Mimi, Mimi governs the Parisian public,
the Parisian public governs Europe, Europe governs the
two hemispheres ; ergo, Bichon is the governor of the
universe.
E. C Grenville Murray : French Pictures in English Chalk.
152. And the first thing I would do in my governr
ment, I would have nobody to control me, I would be
40 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
absolute ; and who but I ; now, he that is absolute can
do what he likes ; he that can do what he likes can take
his pleasure ; he that can take his pleasure can be con-
tent ; and he that can be content has no more to desire.
Cervantes : Sancho Panza in Don Quixote.
153. A good king alone can derive his right to gov-
ern from God. The reason is plain : good government
alone can be in the divine intention. God has made us
to desire happiness ; he has made our happiness depend
on society ; and the happiness of society depend on
good or bad government. His intention was, therefore,
that government should be good.
Bolingbroke : The Idea of a Patriot King.
154. Sovereignty cannot be represented, for the same
reason that it cannot be alienated; it consists essentially
in the general will, and will is not representable : it is
the same, or it is another ; there is no middle choice.
The deputies of the people can therefore not be its
representatives ; they are only commissioners : they can
conclude nothing definitively. Every law unratified by
the people is null and void : it is not a law at all. The
English think themselves free, but are much mistaken ;
they are so only during the election of members of par-
liament ; as soon as the latter are elected, the former
are slaves ; they become nothing.
Rousseau : Social Contract, III, 15.
155. The people are sovereign by natural right ; of
this sovereignty, the suffrage is the external manifes-
tation, and is consequently also a natural right.
IL L US TRA TIONS OF L O GIC. 4 I
All citizens share alike in this natural right, and are
therefore all electors on the same footing and in the
same manner or sense.
Sovereignty then dwells in the people, that is to say,
in the electors ; he who is elected receives it only by
delegation, and is therefore the mandatory of his
electors. Charles Benoist (Sybil), in Revue Bleue.
156. No one is born a slave ; because every one is
born with his natural rights.
No one can become a slave ; because no one from
being a person can become a thing, a subject of prop-
erty. The supposed property of the master in the
slave is, therefore, matter of usurpation, not of right.
Hence, no slavery is justifiable. paley.
157. I have already given the reader to understand
that the description of liberty which seems to me the
most comprehensive, is that of security against wrong.
Liberty is therefore the object of all government. Men
are more free under every government, even the most
imperfect, than they would be if it were possible for
them to exist without any government at all : they are
more secure from wrong, more undisturbed in the exer-
cise of their natural powers, and therefore more free,
even in the most obvious and grossest sense of the
word, than if they were altogether unprotected against
injury from each other. But as general security is
enjoyed in very different degrees under different gov-
ernments, those which guard it most perfectly, are by
the way of eminence called "free." Such governments
42 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
attain most completely the end which is common to all
government. A free constitution of government and
a good constitution of government are therefore different
expressions for the same idea.
Sir James Mackintosh : On the Study of the Law of
Nature and Natio?zs.
158. It is, say the American advocates, the natural
distinction of a freeman, and the legal privilege of an
Englishman, that he is able to call his possessions his
own, that he can sit secure in the enjoyment of inher-
itance or acquisition, that his house is fortified by the
law, and that nothing can be taken from him but by
his own consent. This consent is given for every man
by his representative in parliament. The Americans,
unrepresented, cannot consent to English taxation as a
corporation, and they will not consent as individuals.
Of this argument, it has been observed by more than
one, that its force extends equally to all other laws, for
a freeman is not to be exposed to punishment, or be
called to any onerous service, but by his own consent.
The Congress has extracted a position from the fanci-
ful Montesquieu, that " in a free state every man being
a free agent, ought to be concerned in his own govern-
ment.' ' Whatever is true of taxation, is true of every
other law, that he who is bound by it, without his con-
sent, is not free, for he is not concerned in his own
government. Samuel Johnson: Taxation no Tyranny.
159. It must not be assumed, as some are fond of
saying, that democracy is simply that form of govern-
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 43
ment in which the greater number are sovereign, for in
oligarchies, and indeed in every government, the major-
ity rules ; or again oligarchy is that form of govern-
ment in which a few are sovereign. Suppose the
whole population of a city to be 1300, and that of these
1000 are rich, and do not allow the remaining 300, who
are poor but free, and in all other respects their equals,
a share of the government — no one will say that this
is a democracy. In like manner, if the poor were few
and the masters of the rich, who outnumber them, no
one would ever call such a government in which the
rich majority have no share of office, an oligarchy.
Therefore we should rather say that democracy is the
form of government in which the free are rulers, and
oligarchy in which the rich ; it is only an accident
that the free are the many and the rich are the few.
Otherwise a government in which the offices were given
according to stature, as is said to be the case in Ethi-
opia, or according to beauty, would be an oligarchy ; for
the number of tall or good-looking men is small. And
yet oligarchy and democracy are not sufficiently distin-
guished merely by these two characteristics of wealth
and freedom. Both of them contain many other ele-
ments, and therefore we must carry our analysis further,
and say that the government is not a democracy in
which the freemen, being few in number, rule over the
many who are not free, as at Apollonia, on the Ionian
Gulf, and at Thera : (for in each of these states, the
nobles, who were also the earliest settlers, were held in
chief honor, although they were but a few out of many).
44 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
Neither is it a democracy when the rich have the gov-
ernment, because they exceed in number ; as was the
case formerly at Colophon, where the bulk of the inhab-
itants wrere possessed of large property before the
Lydian War. But the form of government is a democ-
racy when the free who are also poor and the majority
govern, and oligarchy when the rich and noble govern,
they being at the same time few in number.
Aristotle : Politics, IV, 4 (Jowett's transl.).
160. Every minister acts upon the same idea that
Mr. Burke writes ; namely, that the people must be
hoodwinked, and held in superstitious ignorance by
some bugbear or other ; and what is called the Crown
answers this purpose, and therefore it answers all the
purposes to be expected from it. paine: Rights of Man.
161. If the maxim of the compromiser wrere sound,
it ought to be capable of universal application. Nobody
has a right to make an apology for himself in this mat-
ter, which he wrill not allow to be valid for others. If
one has a right to conceal his true opinions, and to
practice equivocal conformities, then all have a right.
One plea for exemption is in this case as good as
another and nO better. j0Hn Morley: On Compromise, p. 172.
162. Gain is the end of all improvement, and nothing
could deserve that name of which loss was to be the
necessary consequence. But loss must be the necessary
consequence of improving land for the sake of a produce
of which the price could never bring back the expense.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 45
If the complete improvement and cultivation of the
country be, as it most certainly is, the greatest of all
public advantages, this rise in the price of all those
different sorts of rude produce, instead of being con-
sidered as a public calamity, ought to be regarded as the
necessary forerunner and attendant of the greatest of
all public advantages.
Adam Smith : Wealth of Nations, Bk. I, ch. 11.
163. What distinguishes one being from another is
its organization. That is what distinguishes a plant
from a mineral, an animal in one species from one in
another. Every being has therefore its own nature ;
and because of having its own nature, it is predestined
by that nature to a certain end. If the end (purpose)
of the bee, for example, is not that of the lion, and
that of the lion again not identical with that of man, the
reason of it can be found nowhere but in the difference
of their respective natures. Every being is therefore
organized in view of a certain end, so that, if one only
knew its nature completely, one could deduce therefrom
its intention or end. The end of a being is what we
call its good. There is consequently an absolute iden-
tity between the good of a being and its end. Its good
is to compass its end, to travel to the limit of the pur-
pose for which it has been organized.
Jouffroy : Cours de droit naturcL lime Legon.
164. The sum is, the relations of things cannot exist
without the coexistence of the things themselves, or
things cannot be related unless they are ; whenever
46 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
therefore they are related they must be, and if eternally
related, they must eternally be. Or thus, a thing must
first be, before it can be related or have any other affec-
tion, and therefore cannot be related when it is not,
then neither eternally related if not eternal, since other-
wise it would be related before it is, that is, when it is
not, which is impossible. If then the relations of things
be eternal, the things themselves must be co-eternal
with them, and since 'tis as certain that there are such
eternal relations as that there are eternal truths, I there-
fore conclude that the essences of things are eternal.
John Norris : The Theory of the Ideal World, Vol. I, p. 80.
165. Since I prove it to be possible that atoms may
be colorless, I will now show that it certainly is so.
For every color is, or may be, changed into all colors
whatsoever ; but this is a transmutation which primor-
dial elements must by no means undergo ; since it is
necessary that there should remain something unchange-
able, lest all things should be reduced utterly to nothing.
For whatsoever being changed, goes beyond its own
limits, this change forthwith becomes the death or
termination of that which it was before. Be cautious,
therefore, not to tinge the seeds of things with colors,
lest all things for your gratification should be reduced
tO nothing. Lucretius : Dc Rerum Natura, II, 748-756 (Watson).
166. I will now show that there are things linked to
no color from the beginning of time. Well, any color
without any exception changes into any other : and this
first-beginnings ought in no wise to do : something
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 47
unchangeable must remain over, that all things be not
utterly reduced to nothing. For whenever a thing
changes and quits its proper limits, at once this change
of state is the death of that which was before. Therefore
mind not to dye with color the seeds of things, that you
may not have all things altogether returning to nothing.
Lucretius : De Rcnim NaUira, II, 748-756 (Munro).
167. I am going to examine in this discourse the
effect of nature and education upon the mind ; for this
purpose I must first determine what is meant by the
word natitre. This word can arouse in us a confused
idea of a being or a power that has endowed us with all
our senses. The senses are the source of all our ideas ;
without a sense, we are deprived of the ideas related
therewith ; for this reason, a man born blind has no idea
of color ; it is therefore evident that in this sense, mind
must be wholly considered as a gift of nature.
Helvetius: De L ) Esprit, Discozirs III, ch. 1.
168. For how7 the soul by mutation made in matter,
a substance of another kind, should be excited to action :
and how bodily alterations and motions should concern
that which is subject to neither ; it is a difficulty which
confidence may sooner triumph on, than conquer. For
body cannot act on anything but by motion ; motion can-
not be received but by quantity and matter; the soul is a
stranger to such substantiality, and ownes nothing of these,
but that it is cloathed with by our deceived phancies ;
and therefore howr can we conceive it subject to material
impressions ? Glanvill : Scepsis Scicntijica, ch. 5.
48 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
169. But there is a still more irresistible argument
proving to us the absurdity of innate principles. Every
principle is a proposition : either it affirms, or it denies.
Every proposition consists in the connection of at least
two distinct ideas, which are affirmed to agree or dis-
agree with each other. It is impossible that the propo-
sition can be innate, unless the ideas to which it relates
be also innate. A connection where there is nothing to
be connected, a proposition where there is neither sub-
ject nor conclusion, is the most incoherent of all suppo-
sitions. But nothing can be more incontrovertible than
that we do not bring pre-established ideas into the world
With US. William Godwin : Political Justice, Bk. I, ch. 4.
170. Such a science (of the absolute, the uncondi-
tioned, the real, viz. Metaphysics), according to Kant,
must be unattainable by man ; for all knowledge is con-
sciousness, and all consciousness implies a relation
between the subject or person conscious, and the object
or thing of which he is conscious. An object of con-
sciousness cannot be the absolute ; for its existence as
such implies an act of consciousness, and consciousness
is a relation. It cannot be the unconditioned, for con-
sciousness depends on the laws of the conscious mind,
and these are conditions. It cannot be the real, for the
laws of our consciousness can only give us things as
they appear to us, and do not tell us what they are in
tnemselves. Dean Mansel : Letters, Lectures, a?id Reviews, p. 172.
171. If one stage cannot properly present two rooms
or houses, much less two countries or kingdoms, then
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 49
there can be no unity of place. But one stage cannot
properly perform this; therefore, there can be no unity
OI place. Dryden : A Defence of an Essay of Dramatic Poesy.
172. If you have borrowed and not repaid, you owe
me the money : you have not borrowed and not repaid ;
then you do not owe me the money. Epictetus.
173. Every one must, of course, think his own opin-
ions right ; for if he thought them wrong, they would
no longer be his opinions.
Samuel Bailey : Essays on the Formation and Publication
of Opinions.
174. The agreement of the representatives of the
great European powers in session at The Hague (June,
1 899), in favor of a reduction of standing armies would
produce lasting benefit to civilisation, if it could be
determined on ; but as there is little likelihood of such
agreement, we may infer that no benefit to civilisation
Will ensue. Extract from newspaper leader.
175. For if scripture interpret itself, then we must
apply these means to obtain the interpretation of scrip-
ture ; since those who would use other means do not
allow to scripture the power of expounding its own
meaning. WHITAKER: Disputations.
176. If self-denial be the essence of virtue, then it
follows that the man who is naturally temperate, just,
etc., is not virtuous ; but that in order to be virtuous,
50 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
he must, in spite of his natural inclination, wrong his
neighbor, and eat, and drink, etc., to excess.
Benjamin Franklin : Self-denial not the essence of virtue.
Works, Vol. II, p. 64.
177. If that which is known may be overruled by
that which is unknown, no being, not omniscient, can
arrive at Certainty. Johnson : Rassdas, ch. 45.
178. If beauty in our own species was annexed to
use, men would be much more lovely than women ; and
strength and agility would be considered as the only
beauties. " Burke: The Sublime and Beautiful, Sect. VI.
179. If man was created, he was created for some
end ; and being created perfect, the end to which he
was destined could not but be perfect.
Chateaubriand : Genie du CJiristianismc, ch. 4.
180. Were it Crime, I should feel Remorse. Where
there is no Remorse, Crime cannot exist. I am not
sorry ; therefore, I am innocent. Is the proposition a
fair one ?
The excellent Doctor admitted that it was not to be
Contested. Thackeray : Burlesques : " George de Barnwell."
181. If the accused person is guilty of the offence
with which he is charged, he is deeply blamable and
honest men should shun his society ; but since the
enquiry shews clearly that he was not guilty, what
possible reason can you give for continuing to avoid him?
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 5 I
182. Could the point to be observed in a chemical
analysis be sharply and distinctly isolated, we would
rather take the testimony of a man who had no idea
what to expect than of a man who knew well what to
expect ; but it cannot ; and therefore we say that the
evidence of a chemist is worth ten times as much as
the evidence of a non-chemist.
R. H, Hutton : The Incarnation and Principle of Evidence;
Essays, Vol. I, p. 239.
183. Make the necessaries of life too expensive for
the poor to reach them, and you will save their money.
If they buy but few candles, they will pay but little tax ;
and if they buy none, the tax, as to them, will be anni-
hilated. Cowper : On Pitt's proposal to tax candles.
184. The following is a reply sent to a dunning
bookseller : I never ordered the book ; if I did, you
didn't send it ; if you sent it, I never got it ; if I got
it, I paid for it ; if I didn't, I won't.
185. If the enthymeme is an imperfect syllogism, it
is plain that he who has been exercised in the perfect
syllogism must be equally expert in the imperfect also.
Epictetus.
186. Touchstone. — Why, if thou never wast at
court, thou never sawest good manners ; if thou never
sawest good manners, then thy manners must be
wicked ; and wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation.
Thou art in a parlous state, shepherd.
As Yon Like It, III, 2.
$2 ILL US TRA TIONS OF LO GIC.
187. As to Moses, I suppose it will be allowed me that
he could not have persuaded 600,000 men that he had
brought them out of Egypt, through the Red Sea ; fed
them forty years without bread, by miraculous manna,
and the other matters of fact recorded in his books, if
they had not been true. Because every man's senses
that were then alive must have contradicted it. And
therefore he must have imposed upon all their senses,
if he could have made them believe it when it was false,
and no such things done.
Leslie : A Short and Easy Method with a Deist, p. 8.
1 88. I had been told before I came out on this expe-
dition that if there were wolves in the district, there
would be abundance of red deer in the vicinity. Well, I
have had three days' capital shooting, — in all, five red
deer, — but what surprises me most is that I have not
seen track or trail of wolf in all that time ; and I cer-
tainly expected to, after killing my first deer.
Extract from private letter.
189. Saint Augustine has said : Reason would never
submit if it did not judge this submission to be duty.
It is therefore right that reason should submit when it
judges this to be a duty.
D'Alembert replies : If reason submits to its own
judgment, it submits to itself ; and if it submits to itself
alone, this is no submission and reason still rules.
Alfred de Vigny : Stel/o, ch. 8.
190. If everything is matter, and if the thought within
myself, as in all other men, is only an effect of the
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 53
arrangement of particles of matter, who has intro-
duced into the world a totally different idea from that of
material things ? Has matter in its very depths any idea
so pure, simple, and immaterial as that of spirit ? How
can it be the principle of that which denies and excludes
matter from its own existence ? How can matter be what
thinks in man ; that is, the very source of his conviction
that he is not matter? La Bruyere: Des Esfrits-Torts.
191. People really do not know what they mean by
complaining that vice is happy and virtue unhappy in
this world. ... It is manifestly proved that ills of every
sort rain down on the human race like bullets on an
army, without any distinction of persons. Now, if the
good man does not suffer because he is good, and if the
wicked does not prosper because he is wicked, the objec-
tion disappears and common sense has triumphed.
Joseph de Maistre : Les Soirees de Saint Petersbourg.
192. Syllogisms consist of propositions, propositions
of words, and words are the signs of notions ; therefore,
if our notions, the basis of all, are confined and over-
hastily taken from things, nothing that is built on them
Can be tirm. Bacon: Nov?i?n Organum.
193. If lawyers can find no reason for a law, they
presume that it once had a good one ; and because it
once had a good one, it has so still. Therefore, it ought
to be retained. Bentham.
194. If God exists, He possesses life ; if He has life,
He has senses ; if He has senses, He is subject to cor-
54 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
ruption. If He has no body, He has no soul, and is
therefore incapable of action ; and if He possesses a
body, He is perishable. Montaigne.
195. "If God exists, He is perfect ; if He is perfect,
He is wise, almighty, just ; if He is just and almighty,
my soul is immortal ; if my soul is immortal, thirty years
of life are nothing to me, and these years, with all that
happens in them, may be necessary for the maintenance
of the universe." If the first proposition is admitted,
the rest can never be shaken ; if it be denied, there is
no use in disputing about its consequences.
Edward Caird : Essay on Rousseau.
196. The only evil of hunger is that it produces first
pain, then sickness, and finally death. If it did not pro-
duce these, it would be no calamity. If these are not
evils, it is no calamity. We will propose a very plain
dilemma : either physical pain is an evil, or it is not an
evil. If it is an evil, then there is necessary evil in the
universe ; if it is not, why should the poor be delivered
trom It . Macaulay : Southey^s Colloquies.
197. If an exile or banished man is driven from his
country for any crime, it does not belong to the nation
in which he has taken refuge to punish him for a fault
committed in a foreign country. For nature gives to
mankind and to nations the right of punishing only for
their defence and safety ; whence it follows that he can
only be punished by those whom he has offended. But
this reason shows that if the justice of each nation ought
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 55
in general to be confined to the punishment of crimes
committed within its own territories, we ought to except
from this rule the villains who, by the quality and fre-
quency of their crimes, violate all public security, and
declare themselves the enemies of the human race.
Poisoners, assassins, and incendiaries by profession, may
be exterminated wherever they are seized ; for they
attack and injure all nations by trampling under foot
the foundations of the common safety.
Burke : On the Policy of the Allies (Appendix).
198. If our first principles are intuitively certain, and if
we reason from them consequentially, our conclusions will
be demonstratively certain ; but if our principles be only
intuitively probable, our conclusions will be only demon-
stratively probable. In mathematics, the first principles
from which we reason are a set of axioms which are not
only intuitively certain, but of which we find it impos-
sible to conceive the contraries * to be true ; and hence
the peculiar evidence which belongs to all the conclusions
that follow from these principles as necessary conse-
quences. Quoted in the Works of Dugald Stewart, Vol. Ill, p. 30.
199. If no man has a right to political power, then
neither Jew nor Gentile has such a right. The whole
foundation of government is taken away. But if govern-
ment be taken away, the property and the persons of
men are insecure ; and it is acknowledged that men have
a right to their property and to personal security. If it
be right that the property of men should be protected,
1 Contradictories would be the strictly logical term.
56 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
and if this can only be done by means of government,
then it must be right that government should exist.
Now there cannot be government unless some person or
persons possess political power. Therefore, it is right
that some person or persons should possess political
power. That is to say, some person or persons must
have a right to political power.
Macaulay: Essay on the Civil Disabilities of the lews.
200. If our life was perfect, we should know nothing
but pleasure. As it is imperfect, we have to know both
pleasure and pain ; now, it is from the experience of
these two contraries that we get the idea of good and
evil. But as pleasure and pain do not come to all
men in the same way, we attach the idea of good and
evil to various objects, each according to his experience,
his passions, his opinions, etc.
Vauvenargues : De V Esprit Humain, XXII.
201. I infer thus. If it is true that painting employs
in its imitations quite different media or signs from
poetry, the former employing shapes and colors in space,
the latter articulate tones in time ; if it is unquestion-
able that the signs must have a convenient relation
to the thing signified, then coexisting signs can only
express objects which coexist, or whose parts coexist,
and successive signs can only express objects which are
successive, or whose parts are successive.
Objects which coexist, or whose parts coexist, are
called bodies. Consequently bodies with their visible
qualities are the proper objects of painting.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. S7
Objects which are in succession, or whose parts are
in succession, are called actions. Consequently actions
are the proper objects of poetry.
Lessing : Laokoon, Sect. XVI (transl. by E. Frothingham).
202. The empirical argument (of pessimism) may be
shortly stated in the form of a disjunctive syllogism.
If happiness be attainable at all, it must be attainable
either in life or earth as it exists at present, or, in a
transcendental life after death ; or (disregarding existing
individuals) in a more highly developed state of society
on earth at some future time. But it is not attainable
in any of these ways. Therefore it is not attainable at
3--W* J. W. Barlow: The Ultimatum of Pessimism,^. 15.
203. Men believe either what is actual fact or what is
probable ; this is believed ; this, therefore, is either a fact
or probable ; now it is not probable, therefore it is a fact.
Aristotle: Rhetoric (Bohn's transl.).
204. What one can plead, the rest can plead as well ;
For amongst equals lies no last appeal,
And all confess themselves are fallible.
Now, since you grant some necessary guide,
All who can err are justly laid aside,
Because a trust so sacred to confer
Shews want of such a sure interpreter ;
And how can he be needful who can err ?
Then, granting that unerring guide we want,
That such there is you stand obliged to grant ;
58 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
It then remains that Church can only be
The guide, which owns unfailing certainty ;
Or else you slip your hold, and change your side,
Relapsing from a necessary guide.
Dryden : The Hind and the Panther -, Pt. II, 474-486.
205. That the hour of dissolution cannot possibly be
far distant from an old man is most undoubtedly certain ;
but unhappy indeed must he be, if in so long a course
of years he has yet to learn that there is nothing in
that circumstance which can remarkably alarm his fears :
on the contrary, it is an event either utterly to be dis-
regarded, if it extinguish the soul's existence ; or much
to be wished, if it convey her to some region where she
shall continue to exist forever. One of these two con-
sequences must necessarily ensue the disunion of the
soul and body ; there is no other possible alternative.
What then have I to fear, if after death J shall either
not be miserable, or shall certainly be happy ?
Cicero : De Senectnte, XIX (Melmoth's transl.).
206. Philosophers are always giving out the following
dilemma in order to console us in our mortal condition : —
The soul is either mortal or immortal.
If it is mortal, it will suffer no pain.
It immortal, it will go on improving.
They never handle the other branch, "What if it
should become worse?" and they leave to poets the
threats of future punishment, thus making matters very
easy for themselves. Montaigne: Essais, II, 12.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 59
207. Dr. Edmunds had maintained that no amount
of evidence would make him believe in certain obvious
absurdities, say the lions in Trafalgar Square drink-
ing out of the fountains. Mr. Wallace replied : < The
asserted fact is either possible or not possible. If possi-
ble, such evidence as we have been considering would
prove it ; if not possible, such evidence could not exist.'
No such evidence exists for the lions ; for the phe-
nomena of so-called spiritualism, we have consentient
testimony in every land, period, and stage of culture.
That certainly makes a difference, whatever the weight
and value of the difference may be.
Andrew Lang : Cock Lane and Common-Sense, p. 21, ?iote.
208. The essence of the Charter is universal suf-
frage. If you withhold that, it matters not very much
what else you grant. If you grant that, it matters not
at all what else you withhold. If you grant that, the
COUntry is lost. MACAULAY: The People's Charter.
209. Thomas Anglus, when reproached for the
obscurity of his writings, replied : —
Either the learned understand me, or they do not.
If they understand me, and find me in error, it is an
easy matter for them to refute me.
If they do not understand me, it is very unreasonable
of them to cry out against my teachings.
Disraeli : Cariosities of Literature.
210. No honest man will plead for an accused person ;
for the accused is either guilty or innocent. If the
60 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
accused is guilty, he ought not to be defended ; and if
he is innocent, it must be apparent to his judges.
211. Either the education of the poor will be general,
or it will not. If it is not, and only a few are educated,
then it is a distinction, and those few may be proud.
If it be general, it ceases to be a distinction and at
the same time a ground of pride. Johnson •. in Bosweii.
212. A Jacobite, Sir, believes in the divine right of
kings. He that believes in the divine right of kings
believes in a divinity. A Jacobite believes in the divine
right of Bishops. He that believes in the divine right
of Bishops believes in the divine authority of the Chris-
tian religion. Therefore, Sir, a Jacobite is neither an
Atheist nor a Deist. That cannot be said of a Whig ;
for Whiggism is a negation of all principle.
Johnson : in BoswelL
213. If canals could be profitably opened, it would
not only be superfluous and absurd, but positively per-
nicious for government to undertake them ; for in this
case private interests would accomplish the object far
more economically. If they could not be opened with a
profit, it would be pernicious to force capital into an
unproductive channel. In either case, therefore, nothing
but mischief can result from the interference of govern-
ment.
Xorrens : Against the Construction of Public Works by Government,
214. Do the slaves diminish in numbers ? It can be
nothing: but ill-treatment that causes the diminution.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 6 1
This ill-treatment the abolition must and will restrain.
In this case, therefore, we ought to vote for the abolition.
On the other hand, do you choose to say that the slaves
clearly increase in numbers ? Then you want no impor-
tations, and in this case also you may safely vote for
the abolition. Or, if you choose to say, as the third and
only other case which can be put, and which perhaps is
the nearest to the truth, that the population is nearly
stationary, and the treatment neither so bad nor so good
as it might be ; then surely, sir, it will not be denied
that this of all others is, on each of the two grounds, the
proper period for stopping further supplies : for your
population, which you own is already stationary, will
thus be made undoubtedly to increase from the births,
and the good treatment of your present slaves, which
I am now supposing is but very moderate, will be neces-
sarily improved also by the same measure of abolition.
I say, therefore, that these propositions, contradictory
as they may be represented, are in truth not at all incon-
sistent, but even come in aid of each other, and lead to
a conclusion that is decisive.
Pitt : Abolition of the Slave Trade, 1792.
215. "In rerum naturd (said Don Ferrante), there
are but two genera of things : substances and accidents ;
and if I prove that the plague cannot be either the one
or the other, I shall have proved that it has no existence,
and is a chimera. Thus : substances are either spiritual
or material. That the plague is a spiritual substance is
an absurdity which no one would maintain ; therefore,
no need of discussing it. Material substances are either
62 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
simple or compound. Now, that the plague is not a
simple substance is demonstrable in four words. It is
not an aerial substance ; for, if it were so, it would, instead
of passing from one body to another, immediately fly to
its own sphere. It is not watery, for it would moisten,
and would dry in the wind. It is not fiery, for it would
burn. It is not earthy, for it would be visible. Neither
is it a compound substance ; for it would have to be
sensible to sight or touch ; and who has ever seen the
plague ? We must go on to see whether it can be an
accident. Worse and worse. These doctors tell us that
it is transmitted from one body to another ; and this is
their Achilles, their pretext for prescriptions without
foundation. Now, supposing it to be an accident, it
would become a transmitted accident, two words which
are irreconcilable (incompatible), for nothing in all phi-
losophy is clearer than this, namely, that an accident
cannot pass from one subject to another. And if, in
order to avoid this Scylla, they call it a produced acci-
dent, then they fall into Charybdis ; for if it is produced,
it is not communicated, does not spread, as they chatter-
ingly declare. With these principles, what is the use of
talking about pimples, exanthemata, carbuncles . . .? "
" All trifles and nonsense," said one.
" No, no," resumed Don Ferrante, " I don't say that :
science is science : only one should know how to apply it.
Exanthemata, carbuncles, glandular swellings, . . . etc., are
all respectable words with their very proper and sound
meaning ; but I say that they have nothing whatever to
do with the question." Manzoni : I Promcssi Sfosz, ch. 37.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 63
216. An abundant stream divides two limits of one
property, . . . and over this stream stood a bridge ; and
at the head of it a gallows, over which were appointed
four judges to decide according to the law established
by the lord of the stream, the bridge, and the territory.
The law ran in this wise : "If any one shall pass over
this bridge from one side to the other, he must first
swear as to whence he comes and on what business he
is bound, and if he swear truly he must be allowed to
go ; but if he swear falsely he shall on that account die
by hanging on the gallows which is there ; and that
without remission whatever." This law and its stern
conditions being known, many went over ; and as soon
as it was perceived that they swore truly, the judges
allowed them to pass freely. It happened, however,
that on swearing one man, he took the oath and declared
that he was going to die on that gallows, and that he
had no other business. The judges consulted the terms
of the oath, and said : " If we allow that man to go
free, he has sworn falsely, and according to the law he
ought to die ; and if we hang him, the oath that he was
going to hang on that gallows was true, and according
to the same law he ought to be free." ..." I then say,"
replied Sancho, " that of that man the part that told the
truth should go free, and the part that spake false shall
be hanged ; and thus the condition of going over shall
be fulfilled to the letter." " Then, Sir Governor," replied
the petitioner, " it will be necessary to divide the man
into parts, — the lying and the truthful, — and if he is
divided, he will surely die." . . . Sancho replied : " If the
64 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
reasons are equally good for hanging and for freeing the
man, let him go, for it is always more blessed to do good
than to do evil, . . . and my master Don Quixote gave
me this precept : When justice hangs in the balance, it
is best to take the side of mercy."
Cervantes: Don Quixote, Pt. II, ch. 51.
217. A man cannot lose either the past or the future ;
for what a man has not, how can any man take this from
iUUl ■ Marcus Aurelius.
218. It has been argued that there can be no real
distinction between right and wrong, for whatever is, is
right, and wrong certainly is.
219. A. You admitted but a moment ago that two
negatives make an affirmative, did you not ? Thus,
when you say, "not involuntary," you really mean
voluntary.
B. Yes, this seems to me indisputable.
A. In that case, every time a man says "No, no,"
he means " Yes."
220. Solomon says that a backbiter separates between
chief friends, and so does the winter.
Cowper : Corrcsponde7ice.
221. Words are but wind; and learning is nothing
but words ; ergo, learning is nothing but wind.
Swift: A Talc of a Tub, Sec. VIII.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 65
222. On the strength of the two following dicta of
Carlyle, a fallacy was heard the other day to be com-
mitted ; what was it ?
Perfect ignorance is quiet.
Perfect knowledge is quiet.
And since the same philosopher declares that happy
men, and also wise men, are full of the present, it has
in similar fashion been held that the wise are happy
223. Apology for a counterfeiter : —
Why should a man be hanged for making money,
when every one complains of the want of it ?
The Rambler, No. 161.
224. If the golden age is passed, it was not genuine.
Gold cannot rust or decay ; it comes out of all admix-
tures, and all decompositions, pure and indestructible.
A. W. VON SCHLEGEL.
225. Although " absence makes the heart grow
fonder," if we find that wre have not the requisite num-
ber of attendance marks at college, we do not expect
to be greeted very fondly when we present ourselves for
examination. Student's illustratio?i of u ambiguous middle"
226. The real truth of the matter is, that the water
along the Posilipo shore is too pure and too cold for
them ; they prefer it with the chill off, and think that
the admixture of a little sewage makes it more stimulat-
ing and strengthening. Liquid manure is good for
66 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
vegetables : all flesh is grass, and man as the flower of
the field : therefore liquid manure is good for human
beings. w. J. A. Stainer: Dolce Napoli, p. 139.
227. Manes. — I will prove that my bodie was immor-
tall ; because it was in prison.
Gran. — As how ?
Manes. — Did your masters never teach you that the
soule was immortall ?
Gran. — Yes.
Manes. — And the bodie is the prison of the soule.
Gran. — True.
Manes. — Why then, thus to make my bodie immor-
tall, I put it in prison. j0rtN Lilly : Campaspe, Act I, Sc. 2.
228. Soc. — Truth and sincerity are very precious
things, are they not ?
Ale. — Yes, truly, I think of all things the most
precious.
Soc. — And do we not generally keep our most
precious gifts for our friends alone ?
Ale. — No doubt we do so.
Soc. — You will not deny, then, that truth and sin-
cerity should be given to our friends ?
Ale. — Certainly, we ought to give them to those we
love.
Soc. — Ought we not also to deny them to our
enemies ?
Ale. — It certainly seems so, from the argument ; but
I like not this conclusion.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 6?
229. Simo. — Here is what I remember to have
heard from some sage : " An art is a set of rules based
on perceptions carefully and consistently trained to
serve some good and useful end — some end that
belongs to life."
TycJiiadcs. — Your memory has not failed you as far
as that authority goes.
Simo. — Well, if dining out includes all these points,
it is an art, and nothing else, is it not ?
Tychiades. — Undoubtedly, in that case, it is an art.
Lucian : The Parasite (transl. by Irwin).
230. If a personal interpretation of the book of
Revelation is permissible, how can it be denied in the
case of the book of Nature ?
Draper : History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, p. 363.
231. Dryden authorizes the conceit that medicine
can never be useful or requisite, because —
" God never made his works for man to mend."
De Quincey: Casuistry, note 6.
232. Is not a journeyman barber as good as a jour-
neyman baker ? The only difference is, the baker uses
flour for the belly, and the barber uses it for the head ;
and as the head is a more noble member than the belly,
so is a barber more noble than a baker ; for what is the
belly Without the head ? SMOLLETT : Roderick Random, ch. 17.
233. The Bible says the Jews were a nation favored
by God ; but I, who am a freethinker, say that cannot
be, because the Jews lived in a corner of the earth, and
68 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
freethinking makes it plain that those who live in corners
cannot be favorites of God. The New Testament all
along asserts the truth of Christianity, but freethinking
denies it, because Christianity was communicated but to
few, and whatever is communicated but to few cannot
be true ; for that is like whispering, and the proverb
says that there is no whispering without lying.
234. How many languages are there which you do
not understand — the Punic, Spanish, Gallic, Egyptian,
etc. ? With regard to all these, you are as if you were
deaf, yet you are indifferent about the matter. Is it
then so great a misfortune to be deaf to one language
more . Cicero's stoical consolation for deafiiess in Ttisc. Quest., Bk. V.
Quoted by Hume in " The Sceptic^
235. Goodness in action is like unto straightness ;
wherefore that which is done well we term right. For
as the straight way is most acceptable to him that
travelleth, because by it he cometh soonest to his
journey's end ; so in action, that which doth lie the
evenest between us and the end we desire must needs
be the fittest for our use.
Hooker : Ecclesiastical Polity, Bk. I, ch. 8, 2.
236. " All flesh is grass," is not only metaphorically,
but literally true ; for all those creatures we behold are
but the herbs of the field, digested into flesh in them,
or more remotely carnified in ourselves. Nay, further,
we are what we all abhor, anthropophagi, and cannibals,
devourers not only of men, but of ourselves; and that
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 69
not in an allegory but a positive truth : for all this mass
of flesh which we behold, came in at our mouths : this
frame we look upon, hath been upon our trenchers ; in
brief we have devoured ourselves.
Sir Thomas Browne : Religio Media, Sect. XXXVII.
237. Why does the murderer deserve death ? The
answer will be, because he has deliberately taken human
life. Then, of course, the same guilt is perpetrated,
and the same penalty incurred, when the law deliberately
takes human life in return. For wherein is there a
difference ? Both acts of homicide are perpetrated wil-
fully ; and to our mind the homicide of the law is worse
than the homicide of the assassin, inasmuch as it is
committed in cool blood, and in the sight of day.
Eclectic Review, July, 1S49.
238. There existed, fifty years ago, a most irrational
prejudice, very strongly rooted in the social conventions
of the time, about masculine and feminine accomplish-
ments. . . . This illogical prejudice was based on a bad
syllogism of this kind : —
Girls speak French, and learn music and drawing.
Benjamin speaks French, and learns music and draw-
ing.
Benjamin is a girl.
HAMERTON : The Intellectual Life, pp. 241, 242.
239. Enthydemus . . . began nearly as follows : O
Cleinias, are those who learn the wise or the ignorant ?
. . . Cleinias answered that those who learned were the
wise.
70 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
Enthydemus proceeded : There are those whom you
call teachers, are there not ?
The boy assented.
And they are the teachers of those who learn ; the
grammar master and the lyre master used to teach you
and other boys ; and you were the learners ?
Yes.
And when you were learners you did not as yet know
the things which you were learning ?
No, he said.
And were you wise then ?
No, indeed, he said.
But if you were not wise you were unlearned.
Certainly.
You then, learning what you did not know, were
unlearned when you were learning ?
The youth nodded assent.
Then the unlearned learn, and not the wise, Cleinias,
as you imagine. . . .
Then before the youth had well time to recover,
Dionysodorus took him in hand and said : Yes, Cleinias ;
and when the grammar master dictated to you, were
they the wise boys or the unlearned who learned the
dictation ?
The wise, replied Cleinias.
Then after all the wise are the learners and not the
unlearned ; and your last answer to Enthydemus was
Wrong. Plato : Enthydemus, p. 276.
240. The best of all taxes are taxes on consumption
and taxes on the transfer of property : now all the latter
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. J I
and many of the former are levied by stamps ; stamp
duties therefore are good taxes, and taxes on justice are
all stamp duties ; therefore taxes on -justice are good
taxes. Bentham : Protest against Law Taxes, summarized by Jevons.
241. This particular problem, which (as you see)
offers some difficulties, was presented to no less than
eight classes in other schools, before this one ; and it
was found on every occasion that every pupil who solved
it was above the average in general ability. Now, in
your class not a single pupil has succeeded in working
it ; and the obvious inference is that you must have
unusually poor material to deal with.
Letter of a school inspector to a teacher.
242. He (Aristotle) proves the world to be perfect,
because it consists of bodies ; and that bodies are so,
because they consist of a triple dimension; and that a
triple dimension is perfect, because three are all ; and
that three are all, because when 't is but one or two, we
can't say all, but when 't is three, we may. Is not this
an absolute demonstration ? We can say all at the
number three: therefore the world is perfect.
Glanvill : Scepsis Scientifica, ch. 19.
N 243. Why has not Man a microscopic eye?
For this plain reason, Man is not a Fly.
Pope : Essay on Man, I, 193, 194.
244. I believe that any disturbance of the repose of
the world is very remote, because it is our undeniable
T2 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
right and an unquestionable duty to be prepared with
the means of defence, should such an event occur.
Brougham : Quoted in Life of George Eliot.
245. Those who cannot be charming are not great,
and you prove this, for you are charming.
Victor Hugo to George Sand (1862)
246. The martyrdom of men in support of a dogma,
so far from proving its truth, proves rather its doubt-
fulness, no geometer having thought it ever worth
his while to die in order to establish any mathematical
proposition, truth needing no such sacrifices, which are
actually unserviceable and useless to it, since it is able
spontaneously to force its own way.
Draper : The Intellectual Development of Europe, Vol. II, pp. 197, 198.
247. Ambiguities in Latin, which possesses no article,
are much more numerous than in German ; as, for
example, in the well-known example in which a drunken
student says that he has not drunk ' vinum,' because he
avails himself of the reservatio mentalis of understand-
ing by ' vinum ' wine in its full extent, that is, all the
wine that exists ; and the wine that exists in India, or
even in his neighbor's glass, he has, of course, not drunk.
Lange : History of Materialism, Vol. I, p. 212.
248. Nature teaches us of two evils to choose the
least : and to bear with oppression as long as there is a
necessity of so doing ; and you will infer from hence
that tyrants have some right by the law of nature to
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 73
oppress their subjects, and go unpunished, because, as
circumstances may fall out, it may sometimes be a less
mischief to bear with them than to remove them.
Milton : A Defence of the People of England.
249. When we are ill of a bodily disease, we consult
a physician in order to learn the nature of the malady,
and to be cured of it ; consequently, when we are in
moral perplexity, or when we have been guilty of some
wrong (which is moral disease), we ought to consult a
healer of consciences ; that is, a moral adviser.
250. To the philosopher the State is a human organ-
ism, a human person ; but if so, the human spirit which
lives in it must also have a human body, for spirit and
body belong to one another, and between them make
up the person. In a body which is not organized and
human the spirit of man cannot truly live. The body
politic must therefore imitate the body natural of man.
The perfect State is, as it were, the visible body of
Humanity. Bluntschli : The Theory of the State, Bk. I, ch. 2.
251. If a general is permitted to lead whole regiments
to slaughter for the honour of the country, it is mere
prejudice which forbids a great savant to sacrifice a few
existences for a magnificent discovery, such as that of
the virus of rabies or of diphtheria. . . . Why should we
not admit the existence of other battlefields than those
on which death is encountered for the caprice of a ruler
or the aggrandisement of a country ? . . . Why should
74 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
there not be glorious engagements in which defeat would
be inflicted on the scourges that depopulate the world ?
Francois de Curel : La Nouvelle Idole.
252. His assertion that because it would be no sin to
divert the course of the Danube, therefore it is none to
let out a few ounces of blood from an artery, would jus-
tify not suicide only, but homicide also. For the lives
of ten thousand men are of less consequence to their
country than the course of that river to the regions
through which it flows. Population would soon make
society amends for the loss of her ten thousand mem-
bers, but the loss of the Danube would be felt by all the
millions that dwell upon its banks, to all generations.
But the life of a man and the water of a river can never
come into competition with each other, in point of value,
unless in the estimation of an unprincipled philosopher.
Cowper : On Hume^s Apology for Suicide.
253. Suicide is indeed one of those acts which may
be condemned by moralists as a sin, but which, in mod-
ern times at least, cannot be regarded as within the
legitimate sphere of law ; for a society which accords to
its members perfect liberty of emigration, cannot reason-
ably pronounce the simple renunciation of life to be an
offence against itself.
W. E. H. Lecky : History of European Morals, Vol. II, p. 51.
254. The vital force which at present constitutes our
personality, and builds it up, is perpetually changing.
Not for two moments of time is the arrangement of the
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 75
molecules of matter within any living organism the same ;
nor is the coexistence of thought and feeling stationary
for a single instant within the mind of any individual.
Our present life is a dynamical process of incessant
change, of progressive evolution and development ; but
throughout this whole process, our individuality survives.
Individuality is not only consistent with change, but
change is absolutely necessary to it. It is essential to
the very life of the individual. Why, then, may not the
individuality of the individual continue after the larger
and more thoroughgoing change of the molecules which
We Call death ? W. Knight : Immortality.
255. . . . Some would scratch their heads, and try
What they should write, and how, and why ;
But I conceive, such folks are quite in
Mistakes, in theory of writing.
If once for principle \ is laid,
That thought is trouble to the head ;
I argue thus : the world agrees,
That he writes well, who writes with ease :
Then he, by sequel logical,
Writes best, who never thinks at all.
Pryor : Epistle to Fleetwood Shepherd.
256. Look here ; you and I have roomed together for
nearly three years, and have discussed many subjects
during that time. Now, I have never once heard you
admit yourself beaten in argument, nor even suggest you
might be wrong. You must think yourself infallible.
Remark of student to his friend.
76 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
257. That which the commonalty accounts true, is
most part false ; they are still opposite to wise men ;
but all the world is of this humor (vulgus) ; and thou
thyself art de vulgo> one of the commonalty ; and he,
and he ; and so are all the rest ; and therefore to be
approved in nought you say or do, mere idiots and asses.
Burton : The Anatomy of Melancholy.
258. Gentlemen, we have heard from all the represen-
tatives of the different classes of laboring men, and their
conclusions all point in one direction. Every represen-
tative has in turn shown the benefits which have accrued
to his trade or occupation by striking for shorter hours
and higher wages. Now, what is good for one must be
good for all ; and I consequently call upon all united
workmen to join in demanding, by the same method, the
rights which they are thus certain to gain.
Quoted, verbatim, from a speech at a labor union.
259. To hear the roaring of the sea as one does, one
must hear the parts which compose its totality, that is,
the sound of each wave, . . . although this noise would
not be noticed if the wave were alone. One must be
affected a little by the movement of one wave, one must
have some perception of each several noise, however
small it be. Otherwise one would not hear that of
100,000 waves, for of 100,000 zeros one can never
make a quantity. Leibniz.
260. If the Liberty of a man consists in the Empire
of his Reason, the absence whereof would betray him to
the bondage of his Passions ; then the Liberty of a
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. ^
Commonwealth consists in the Empire of her Laws,
the absence whereof would betray her to the Lust of
Tyrants. And these I conceive to be the Principles
upon which Aristotle and Livy (injuriously accused
by Leviathan for not writing out of nature) have
grounded their assertion, that a Commonwealth is an
Empire of Laws, and not of Men. But they must not
carry it so. " For," says he, " the Liberty, whereof
there is so frequent and honorable mention in the
History and Philosophy of the ancient Greeks and
Romans, and the Writings and Discourses of those that
from them have received all their learning in the Poli-
tics, is not the Liberty of particular Men, but the
Liberty of the Commonwealth." He might as well
have said, that the Estates of particular Men in a Com-
monwealth are not the Riches of particular Men, but
the Riches of the Commonwealth ; for equality of
Estates causes equality of Power, and equality of Power
is the Liberty not only of the Commonwealth but of
every Man. James Harrington: Oceana.
261. David said in his wrrath, All men are liars.
Therefore, David was a liar.
Therefore, What David said was not true.
Therefore, David was not a liar.
But if David was not a liar, what he said wras true —
namely, that all men are liars.
262. The accusers, in answer to Pilate, declared as
follows : " If he had not been worthy of death, we
7 8 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
would not have brought him before thee." Discuss
fully the implication and assumptions involved in this
assertion.
263. The public are a parcel of blockheads, and all
blockheads are critics, and all critics are spiders, and
spiders are a set of reptiles that all the world despises.
Goldsmith : Critical Review, March, 1760.
264. Quiquid continetur in loco, corporeum est.
At spiritus continetur in loco.
Ergo, spiritus corporeum est.
Si spiritus sunt quanti, sunt corporei.
At sunt quanti ; ergo, corporei.
Burton : The A7iatomy of Melancholy, Pt. I, Sect. 1, mem. i, subs. 1.
265. Interest created priests ; priests created preju-
dices ; prejudices gave rise to wars : and wars will last
so long as there are prejudices, prejudices so long as
there are priests, and priests so long as it is anybody's
interest tO be One. Diderot: The Sceptic's Walk.
266. Bodine goes further yet, and will have the ani-
mate separatae, genii, spirits, angels, devils and so like-
wise souls of men departed, if corporeal (which he most
eagerly contends), to be of some shape, and that abso-
lutely round, like sun and moon, because that is the
most perfect form, quae nihil habet asperitatis, nihil
angiitis incisuni, nihil aufractibus involutum, nihil
eminensy sed inter corpoj'a est perfectissima ; therefore
all spirits (he concludes) are in their proper shapes
round. Burton ; The Anatomy of Melancholy,
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 79
267. A person contended that a dress folded up
tightly weighed more than a loosely folded one, and had
trunks made large so as to diminish the charge for
freight. Gore : The Art of Scientific Enquiry, p. 132.
268. A very clever but somewhat paradoxical journal
seriously complained not long ago that seven men were
sentenced to death for one murder ; evidently thinking
that seven < lives ' ought not to be sacrificed in retali-
ation for One. pERCY Greg : The DcviVs Advocate, Vol. I, p. 156.
269. Those who set up Nature as a standard of
action do not intend a merely verbal proposition ; they
do not mean that the standard, whatever it be, should
be called Nature ; they think they are giving some in-
formation as to what the standard of action really is.
They who say that we ought to act according to Nature
do not mean the mere identical proposition that we
ought to do what we ought to do. They think that the
word Nature affords some external criterion of what we
should do ; and if they lay down as a rule for what
ought to be, a word which in its proper signification
denotes what is, they do so because they have a notion,
either clearly or confusedly, that what is, constitutes
the rule and standard of what ought to be.
J. S. Mill: Nature.
270. "What is capable of reason," says Zeno, "is
better than what is not capable of it ; there is nothing
better than the world; it is therefore capable of reason."
Cotta, by this very same mode of reasoning, makes of
80 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
the world a mathematician ; and further of it a musician
and organist according to the following argument, also
drawn from Zeno. " The whole is greater than the
part ; we are capable of wisdom, and we are parts of
the world ; hence the world is wise."
Montaigne: Essais, II, 12.
271. Zeno, with his dry syllogistic method, argued
thus: "That which uses reason is better than that
which does not use reason ; but nothing is better than
the universe ; therefore the universe uses reason.' '
And again, ".Of nothing that is without sense can any
part be sentient ; but parts of the universe are sentient ;
the universe, therefore, is not without sense." And
once more, " Nothing that is destitute of mind and
reason can generate from itself a living being endowed
with reason ; but the universe generates living beings
endowed with reason ; therefore the universe is a living
being and endowed with reason."
J. Drummond : Philo Judaetis, p. yS.
272. There is still preserved at Richmond the model
of a bridge, constructed by . . . Mr. Atwood ... in
the confidence that he had explained the wonderful
properties of the arch as resulting from the compound
action of simple wedges, or of the rectilinear solids of
which the material arch was composed ; and of which
supposed discovery his model was to exhibit ocular
proof. Accordingly, he took a sufficient number of
wedges of brass highly polished. Arranging these at
first on a skeleton arch of wood, he then removed this
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 8 I
scaffolding or support ; and the bridge not only stood
firm, without any cement between the squares, but he
could take away any given portion of them, as a third
or a half, and appending a corresponding weight, at
either side, the remaining part stood as before. Our
venerable sovereign . . . said : " But, Mr. Atwood, you
have presumed the figure. You have put the arch first
in this wooden skeleton. Can you build a bridge of the
same wedges in any other figure ? A straight bridge,
or with two lines touching at the apex ? If not, is it
not evident that the bits of brass derive their con-
tinuance in the present position from the property of
the arch, and not the arch from the property of the
wedge?" The objection was fatal, the justice of the
remark not to be resisted ; and I have ever deemed it
a forcible illustration of the Aristotelian axiom, with
respect to all just reasoning, that the whole is of neces-
sity prior to its parts. Coleridge; The Friend, II, 10.
273. Nothing can be more obvious than that all
animals were created solely and exclusively for the use
of man.
" Even the tiger that devours him?" said Mr. Escot.
" Certainly," said Dr. Gaster.
" How do you prove it ? " said Mr. Escot.
"It requires no proof," said Dr. Gaster: "it is a
point of doctrine. It is written, therefore it is so."
"Nothing can be more logical," said Mr. Jenkison.
"It has been said," continued he, "that the ox was
made expressly to be eaten by man ; it may be said by
82 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
a parity of reasoning, that man was expressly made to
be eaten by the tiger : but as wild oxen exist where
there are no men, and men where there are no tigers, it
would seem that in these instances they do not properly
answer the ends of their creation."
Thomas Love Peacock : Headlong Hall, ch. 2.
274. What principle is assumed in the following
quotations, and in how far is it logically applied ?
Water was made to bear the great structures which
we call ships. Fenelon.
Dogs are commonly of two different colors — one
light, and the other brownish — in order that wherever
they may be in a house, they may be easily distinguished
when on articles of furniture, with the color of which
they would otherwise be confounded.
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.
Fleas, wherever they happen to be, jump on light-
colored objects. This instinct was given to them in
order that we might catch them more easily.
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.
The melon is naturally divided into slices, and thus
is intended as a family fruit ; while the pumpkin, on
account of its larger size, may be shared with neighbors.
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre.
275. I will conclude, therefore, that if a judge should
have a prejudice in respect of persons, it should become
you rather to have a faith implicit in my judgment, as
well as in respect of some skill I have in divinity, as also
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC, 83
that I hope no honest man doubts of the uprightness of
my conscience. And the best thankfulness that you
that are so far "my creature" can use towards me is to
reverence and follow my judgment and not to contradict
it, except where you may demonstrate unto me that I
am mistaken or wrong informed.
lames I to the Archbishop of Canterbury.
276. How (it has been asked) does a child come to
form the very abstract and metaphysical idea expressed
by the pronoun / or moi ? In answer to this question, I
have only to observe that when we set about the expla-
nation of a phenomenon, we must proceed on the suppo-
sition that it is possible to resolve it into some more
general law or laws with which we are already acquainted.
But in the case before us, how can this be expected, by
those who consider that all our knowledge of mind is
derived from the exercise of reflection ; and that every
act of this power implies a conviction of our own exist-
ence as reflecting and intelligent beings ? Every theory,
therefore, which pretends to account for this conviction,
must necessarily involve that sort of paralogism which
logicians call a petitio principii ; inasmuch as it must
resolve the thing to be explaiped into some law or laws,
the evidence of which rests ultimately on the assump-
tion in question. Dugald Stewart.
277. Let us suppose that the result of a particular
psychological investigation is that a certain judgment,
e.g., ' Everything has a cause' is i a priori' The psy-
chologist who makes this discovery is apt to trespass on
84 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
the domain of philosophy, and add, 'it is therefore true/
Now if ' Everything has a cause ' is to be accepted as
true, because it is i a priori/ then for that very reason
it is not ultimate ; two propositions at least must be
accepted before it; ist, all <a priori ' judgments are
true, and 2d, this is an <a priori' judgment. Both of
which are assertions both disputable and disputed.
A. J. Balfour : A Defence of Philosophic Doubt, p. 6.
278. It gives me some concern ... to reflect that a
convert made in Bedlam is more likely to be a stumbling-
block to others than to advance their faith. But if it
has that effect upon any, it is owing to their reasoning
amiss, and drawing their conclusions from false prem-
ises. He who can ascribe an amendment of life and
manners and a reformation of the heart itself to mad-
ness, is guilty of an absurdity that in any other case
would fasten the imputation of madness upon himself ;
for by so doing he ascribes a reasonable effect to an
unreasonable cause, and a positive effect to a negative.
Cowper: Letter to Lady Hcsketh, 4th July, 1765.
279. If the President can at his pleasure, in the first
instance, send troops into any city, town, or hamlet in
the country, under pretence of enforcing some law, his
judgment — which means his pleasure — being the sole
criterion, then there can be no difference between the
powers of the President and those of Emperor William
or the Czar of Russia. Neither of these potentates
ever claimed anything more.
Governor Altgeldrto the Legislature of Illinois, Jan. 1895, Quoted
in the Montreal Gazette, nth January, 1895.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 85
280. To say that matter is divisible, because extended,
amounts to no more than saying it is so because it con-
sists of parts distinct and removable from one another ;
a pretty way of proving the point, being no better than
the ladies' reason, it is divisible because it is.
Abraham Tucker : The Light of Nature, Vol. I, p. 287.
281. Mini a docto doctore
Domandatur causam et rationem quaere
Opium facit dormire.
A quoi respondeo,
Quia est in eo
Vertus dormitiva
Cujus est natura
Sensus assoupire.
Moliere : Le Malade Imaginaire, IIIme Intermede.
282. Why is the biniodide of mercury red ? Because
there are contained in its substance tiny particles which
chemical analysis cannot bring to light and which have
the power of making it red. Without these infinitesi-
mally small particles the biniodide of mercury would not
be red. Why is this drop of oil, suspended in a saline
solution of equal density, spherical in shape ? Because
its substance contains tiny particles which chemical
analysis fails to reveal and which have the power of
giving the drop a spherical shape. Deprived of these
infinitesimally small particles, the drop of oil would be
amorphous, like Weismann's protoplasm, — not spherical.
F. Le Dantec : Revue Philosophique, May, 1899.
86 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
283. Therefore when you assert that a law of progress
governs the world, that life is tending from the Imper-
fect to the Perfect, and that this tendency results neces-
sarily from natural selection alone, it seems to us — the
profane — that you contradict yourselves, for you see
the Universe developing according to so purely intel-
lectual a concept as that of perfection, while you at
the same time deny that intelligence presides over the
Universe. Antonio Fogazzaro : " Per la Bellezza d^tin idea."
284. The rule of faith laid down by Vincentius of
Lirineum, in the fifth century, Quod ubique, quod sem-
per, quod ab omnibus, is inapplicable as a practical guide ;
because none of the distinctive tenets of the Christian
sects, — none of the doctrines that divide Christianity,
answer this description. No article of faith has been
held by all Christians, at all times, and in all places.
None combines the three attributes required by him, of
universality, antiquity, and agreement. If, in order to
make this maxim applicable, we arbitrarily exclude a cer-
tain portion of those who have laid claim to the appella-
tion of Christians ; if we call certain sects heretical and
schismatical, and thus eliminate them from the aggre-
gate body whose consent constitutes authority, then our
reasoning proceeds in a circle. We begin by assuming
as solved the very problem of which we are seeking the
solution. We propose to test the soundness of certain
doctrines by the judgment of a certain tribunal, and we
make the constitution of the tribunal depend upon those
very doctrines.
G. C Lewis, hiflucnce of Authority in Matters of Opinion, p. 57.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 87
285. They suppose themselves to be in the right (as
other disputants do) and their adversaries in the wrong,
which yet those cannot be if there be no truth, since
error is a departing from truth, and where there is no
truth there can be no error, even as where there is no
law there can be no sin. And a Libertine that denies all
moral distinction between good and evil may as well say
that a man sins, as a Sceptic that allows no truth, that
a man errs. One is as inconsistent as the other, because
error does as much suppose truth, as sin does the dis-
tinction of good and evil. Such sceptics, then, would
overthrow themselves, allowing that truth and science
in Hypothesi which they deny in TJiesi. They contra-
dict the doctrine they maintain, and in pretending to
prove it, they really disprove it.
John Norris : The Theory of the Ideal World, p. 63.
286. The professor did well to lay stress, not on the
material triumphs of electricity, which are obvious to
the most superficial observer, but on the improvement
in social conditions resulting from material advantages.
It may be doubted whether engineering is entitled to
the credit Mr. was inclined to give it, of uplifting
legislative aims and political ideals. We have not noticed
any improvement in our legislators or aldermen since the
horse-cars gave way to the trolley.
Newspaper comment on an academic address.
287. Against what specific form of fallacy did Voltaire
direct the following verses, referring to the earthquake
at Lisbon in 1755 ?
88 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
" Direz-vous, en voyant cet amas de victimes ; —
Dieu s'est venge, la mort est le prix de leurs crimes ?
Lisbonne est abimee et Ton danse a Paris ! "
288. As he was setting out on a distant and somewhat
hazardous expedition, his native servants tied round the
neck of the mule a small bag supposed to be of prevent-
ive and mystic virtue. As the place was crowded and
a whole townspeople looking on, Mr. Newman thought
that he would take an opportunity of disproving the
superstition. So he made a long speech of explanation
in his best Arabic, and cut off the bag, to the horror of
all about him. But as ill-fortune would have it, the
mule had not got thirty yards up the street before she
put her foot into a hole and broke her leg ; upon which
all the natives were confirmed in their former faith in
the power of the bag, and said, " You see now what
happens to unbelievers. "Bagehot: phy5icsandPolmcs^x^
289. When a deadly and mysterious disease fell upon
the cattle of England, some divines, not content with
treating it as a judgment, proceeded to trace it to certain
popular writings containing what were deemed heterodox
opinions about the Pentateuch, or about the eternity
of punishment. It may be true that the disease was
imported from a country where such speculations are
• unknown ; that the authors objected to had no cattle ;
that the farmers, who chiefly suffered from the disease,
were for the most part absolutely unconscious of the
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 89
existence of these books, and if they knew them would
have indignantly repudiated them ; that the town popu-
lations who chiefly read them were only affected indi-
rectly by a rise in the price of food, which falls with
perfect impartiality upon the orthodox and upon the
heterodox ; that particular counties were peculiarly suf-
ferers, without being at all conspicuous for their scep-
ticism ; that similar writings appeared in former periods,
without cattle being in any respect the worse ; and that
at the very period at which the plague was raging, other
countries, in which far more audacious speculations were
rife, enjoyed an absolute immunity. In the face of all
these consequences, the theory has been confidently
urged and warmly applauded.
Lecky: History of European Morals, Vol. I, ch. 3, p. 357.
290. It is laid down, for example, that universities
should " test the man for what he knows, not where he
learned it," apparently under the impression that the
object of restricting University degrees to those trained
in particular institutions is to create a "monopoly" in
favor of the institutions, or the localities where they
happen to exist. The same view is almost grotesquely
brought out in another passage :
" The student of St. Patrick's College, Carlow, passes
through Dublin, where the Queen's University ignores
him, on his way to the London University which admits
him, — surely such an absurdity cannot be permitted to
continue."
I do not know whether the fact that the student of
St. Patrick's College, Carlow, can now obtain his degree
90 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
from London University without passing the site of the
Queen's University, will diminish in our author's eyes
the absurdity which he here discovers ; but to my mind
the only absurdity in the case — and it is a very great
absurdity — is the application of such tests to such
Subjects. j# E Cairnes : Political Essays, p. 285.
291. Walking together in one of the principal streets
of Lyons, we met the Host, with an accompanying crowd.
" You must pull off your hat, Walduck." — "I will die
first," he exclaimed. As ... I did not wish to behold
an act of martyrdom, / pulled off his hat. Afterwards,
passing by the cathedral, I said to him : "I must leave
you here, for I won't go in to be insulted." He followed
me with his hat off. " I thought you would die first ! " —
" O no ; here I have no business or right to be. If the
owners of this building choose to make a . . . rule that
no one shall enter with his hat, they do what they have
a legal right to do, and I must submit to their terms.
Not so in the broad highway." The reasoning was not
good, but one is not critical when the conclusion is the
right One practically. Crabb Robinson : Diary, Vol. I, p. 434.
292. Take for example Dr. Livingstone's argument
with the negro conjurer. The missionary was trying to
dissuade the savage from his fetichistic ways of invoking
rain. "You see," said he, "that after all your opera-
tions, sometimes it rains and sometimes it does not,
exactly as when you have not operated at all." " But,"
replied the sorcerer, "it is just the same with you doc-
tors ; you give your remedies, and sometimes the patient
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 9 1
gets well and sometimes he dies, just as when you do
nothing at all." To that the pious missionary replied :
" The doctor does his duty, after which God performs
the cure if it pleases him." "Well," rejoined the sav-
age, "it is just so with me. I do what is necessary to
procure rain, after which God sends it or withholds it
according to his pleasure." jAMES: Psychology,?**. I, p. 363.
293. Are you a prince of the House of Hanover, and
you exclude all the leading Whig families from your
councils ? Do you profess to govern according to Law,
and is it consistent with that profession, to impart your
confidence and affection to those men only, who, though
now perhaps detached from the desperate cause of the
Pretender, are marked in this country by an hereditary
attachment to high and arbitrary principles of govern-
ment ? Are you so infatuated as to take the sense of
your people from the representation of ministers, or
from the shouts of a mob, notoriously hired to surround
your coach, or stationed at a theatre ? And if you are,
in reality, that public Man, that King, that Magistrate,
which these questions suppose you to be, is it any
answer to your people to say that among your domestics
you are good-humored, — that to one lady you are faith-
ful ; — that to your children you are indulgent ?
Junius : Letter to the King (George III).
294. This reminds us of the "astounding discovery"
with which Dr. Buckland is reported to have lately
electrified the Bristolians. Ephraim Jenkinson's ghost
must have heard with jealousy, on the banks of the
92 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
Styx, the shouts of applause which echoed the doctor's
assertion on the banks of the Avon, that the world had
already lasted " millions of years " ; that " a new version
of Genesis " would be shortly required, since a new light
"had been thrown on Hebrew scholarship!" The
doctor's declaration is very properly described as the
only "original feat" elicited at the meeting. What
fun ! to hear a mite in the cavity of a Gloucester
cheese gravely reasoning on the streaks (or strata) of
red and yellow, and finally concluding, all things duly
considered, that the invoice of the farmer who made it
bears a wrong date, and that the process of fabricating
the cheese in question must have been begun as long
ago, at least, as the days of the Heptarchy !
Francis Mahony : The Reliques of Father Frout, p. 437.
295. See account of the proceedings against Governor
Eyre of Jamaica, in connection with the execution of
Gordon, as related by Justin McCarthy in the History
of Our Own Times, ch. 49.
Chief Justice (Sir Alexander Cockburn). — After the
most careful perusal of the evidence which was adduced
against him (Gordon), I come irresistibly to the con-
clusion that if the man had been tried upon that evi-
dence— I must correct myself. He could not have
been tried upon that evidence. I was going too far, a
great deal too far, in assuming that he could. No com-
petent judge acquainted with the duties of his office
could have received that evidence. Three-fourths, I
had almost said nine-tenths, of that evidence upon
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 93
which that man was convicted and sentenced to death
was evidence which according to no known rules — not
only of ordinary, but of military law — according to
no rules of right or justice could possibly have been
admitted ; and it never would have been admitted if a
competent judge had presided, or if there had been the
advantage of a military officer of any experience in the
practice of courts-martial.
Carlyle. — Lordship, If you were to speak six hundred
years instead of six hours, you would only prove the
more to us that, unwritten if you will, but real and
fundamental, anterior to all written laws and first mak-
ing written laws possible, there must have been, and is,
and will be, coeval with Human Society ... an actual
Martial Law, of more validity than any other law
Whatever. Shooting Niagara: and After?
Justin McCarthy. — The business of the Lord Chief
Justice, however, was not to go in philosophical quest
of those higher laws of which Mr. Carlyle assumed to
be the interpreter. His was the humbler, but more
practical, part to expound the laws of England, and he
did his duty.
296. M. Hugo was at the Opera on the night the
sentence of the Court of Peers, condemning Barbes to
death, was published. The great poet composed the
following verses :
" Par votre ange envolee, ainsi qu'une colombe,
Par le royal enfant, doux et frele roseau,
94 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
Grace encore une fois ! Grace au nom de la tombe !
Grace au nom du berceau ! "
Louis Philippe replied to the author of ' Ruy Bias '
most graciously, that he had already subscribed to a
wish so noble, and that the verses had only confirmed
his previous disposition to mercy. Now in countries
where fools most abound, did one ever read of more
monstrous, palpable folly ? In any country, save this,
would a poet who chose to write four crack-brained
verses, comparing an angel to a dove, and a little boy
to a reed, and calling upon the chief magistrate, in the
name of the angel, or dove (the Princess Mary), in her
tomb, and the little infant in his cradle, have received a
"gracious answer " to his nonsense? . . . Suppose the
Count of Paris to be twenty times a reed, and the
Princess Mary a host of angels, is that any reason why
the law should not have its course ?
Thackeray : The Paris Sketch Book.
297. " For what are tythes and tricks but an impo-
sition, all a confounded imposture, and I can prove it.
'I wish you would,' cried my son Moses, 'and I think/
continued he, 'that I should be able to answer you.'
'Very well, sir,' cried the Squire; . . . ' if you are
for a cool argument upon that subject, I am ready to
accept the challenge. And, first, whether are you for
managing it analogically or dialogically ? ' ' I am for
managing it rationally,' cried Moses, quite happy at being
permitted to dispute. ' Good again,' cried the Squire,
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 95
'and firstly, of the first, I hope you '11 not deny, that
whatever is, is. If you don't grant me that, I can go
no further.' 'Why,' returned Moses, 'I think I may
grant that, and make the best of it.' 'I hope, too,'
returned the other, ' you '11 grant that a part is less than
the whole.' 'I grant that too,' cried Moses, 'it is but
just and reasonable.' 'I hope,' cried the Squire, 'you
will not deny that the two angles of a triangle are equal
to two right ones.' ' Nothing can be plainer,' returned
t 'other, and looked round with his usual importance.
' Very well, ' cried the Squire, speaking very quick, ' the
premises being thus settled, I proceed to observe, that
the concatenation of self-existences proceeding in a
reciprocal duplicate ratio, naturally produce a problem-
atical dialogism, which in some measure proves that
the essence of spirituality may be referred to the second
predicable.' ' Hold, hold,' cried the other, ' I deny that.
Do you think I can thus tamely submit to such hetero-
dox doctrines ? ' ' What ? ' replied the Squire, as if in a
passion, ' not submit ? Answer me one plain question :
do you think Aristotle right, when he says, that rela-
tives are related?' 'Undoubtedly,' replied the other.
'If so, then,' cried the Squire, 'answer me directly to
what I propose : Whether do you judge the analytical
investigation of the first part of my enthymeme deficient,
secundum quoad, or quoad minus ? and give me your
reasons ; give me your reasons, I say, directly.' ' I
protest,' cried Moses, ' I don't rightly comprehend the
force of your reasoning ; but if it be reduced to one
simple proposition, I fancy it may then have an answer.'
96 ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC.
c O Sir,' cried the Squire, < I am your most humble
servant : I find you want me to furnish you with argu-
ments and intellect too. No, Sir, there I protest you are
tOO hard for me/ ' Goldsmith : The Vicar of Wakefield, ch. 7.
298. A short while since a certain Reviewer an-
nounced that I gave myself great pretensions as a
philosopher. I a philosopher ; I advance pretensions !
My dear Saturday friend, and you ? Don't you teach
everything to everybody ? and punish the naughty boys
if they don't learn as you bid them ? You teach politics
to Lord John and Mr. Gladstone. You teach poets
how to write ; painters, how to paint ; gentlemen, man-
ners ; and opera-dancers, how to pirouette. I was not
a little amused of late by an instance of the modesty
of our Saturday friend, who more Athenian than the
Athenians, and apropos of a Greek book by a Greek
author, sat down and gravely showed the Greek gentle-
man how to write his own language.
Thackeray : Roundabout Papers. " Small-beer Chronicle."
299. The advocates of this bill proposed to abolish
bull-baiting on the score of cruelty. It is strange
enough that such an argument should be employed by
a set of persons who have a most vexatious code of laws
for the protection of their own amusements. I do not
mean at present to condemn the game laws ; but when
gentlemen talk of cruelty, I must remind them that it
belongs as much to shooting, as to the* sport of bull-
baiting ; nay more so, as it frequently happens that
where one bird is shot, a great many others go off
ILLUSTRATIONS OF LOGIC. 97
much wounded. When therefore I hear humane gentle-
men even make a boast of having wounded a number of
birds in this way, it only affords me a further proof
that savage sports do not make savage people.
Wyndham : On the proposal to abolish bzill-baiting, 1800.
300. What is the world to think of that right honor-
able gentleman's (Pitt) discretion and judgment from
this night, who, upon the subject of the Irish propo-
sitions, ventures neither more nor less than to charge
us with shifting our ground and playing a double game ?
. . . For him to talk of our shifting our ground ! He !
who has shifted his ground until, in truth, he has no
ground to stand upon ! He ! who has assumed so many
shapes, colours, and characters, in the progress of this
extraordinary undertaking ! He ! who has proclaimed
determinations only to recede from them ; who has
asserted principles only to renounce them ! . . . Com-
pare the twenty propositions now upon your table with
the eleven original ones, as the right honorable gentle-
man introduced them to this house; compare his lan-
guage on that day with the language of . this night ;
compare the nature of the two strings of propositions,
substantially and fundamentally subverted in many parts,
in all materially altered, with those reiterated declarations
that not one principle could on any terms be meddled with.
Let the House reflect upon these circumstances, and let
them judge, whethei a grosser piece of insanity was ever
heard of, than that the author of all this miserable foolery
should charge others with shifting their ground !
Charles James Fox: On the Irish Commercial Propositions, 1785.
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Hudson's Classical English Reader 1.00
Kent's Shakespeare Note-Book 60
Litchfield's Spenser's Britomart 60
Maxcy's Tragedy of Hamlet .45
Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature 1.50
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Sherman's Analytics of Literature 1.25
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Gayley's Classic Myths in English Literature 1.50
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Hudson's Life, Art, and Characters of Shakespeare. 2 vols 4.00
Hudson's Classical English Reader 1.00
Hudson's Text-Book of Prose 1.25
Hudson's Text-Book of Poetry 1.25
Hudson's Essays on English, Studies in Shakespeare, etc. 25
Kent's Shakespeare Note-Book 60
Litchfield's Spenser's Britomart 60
Minto's Manual of English Prose Literature 1.50
Minto's Characteristics of the English Poets 1.50
Phelps' Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement 1.00
Smith's Synopsis of English and American Literature .80
Standard English Classics : 13 volumes now ready.
Thayer's Best Elizabethan Plays 1.25
White's Philosophy of American Literature .30
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English Composition and Rhetoric
Text-books and works of reference for
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Lessons in English. Adapted to the study of American Classics. A
text-book for high schools and academies. By Sara E. H. Lock-
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A Practical Course in English Composition. By Alphonso G. New-
comer, Assistant Professor of English in Leland Stanford Junior
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A Method of English Composition. By T. Whiting Bancroft, late
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The Practical Elements of Rhetoric. By John F. Genung, Professor
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A Handbook of Rhetorical Analysis. Studies in style and invention,
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Outlines of Rhetoric. Embodied in rules, illustrative examples, and a
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The Principles of Argumentation. By George P. Baker, Assistant
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TEXT-BOOKS ON RHETORIC
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By JOHN F. GENUNG,
Professor of Rhetoric in A mherst College.
The Practical Elements of Rhetoric. i2mo. Cloth. 483 pages.
For introduction, $1.25.
Outlines of Rhetoric. Embodied in rules, illustrative examples, and
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A Handbook of Rhetorical Analysis. Studies in style and inven-
tion, designed to accompany the author's " Practical- Elements of
Rhetoric." i2mo. Cloth. 306 pages. Introduction and teachers'
price, $1.12.
Professor Genung's Practical Elements of Rhetoric, though
a work on a trite subject, has aroused general enthusiasm by
its freshness and practical worth.
The treatment is characterized by good sense, simplicity,
originality, availability, completeness, and ample illustration.
It is throughout constructive and the student is regarded
at every step as endeavoring to make literature. All of the
literary forms have been given something of the fullness
hitherto accorded only to argument and oratory.
The Outlines of Rhetoric is in no sense a condensation or
adaptation of the author's " Elements/' but an entirely new
book prepared for a different field.
Great care has been taken in this work to state the prin-
ciples in such plain and simple language that the pupil will
not fail to understand ; and such is its clearness that even
beginners will find many of the deeper principles of expres-
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THE HARVARD EDITION OF
SHAKESPEARE'S COMPLETE WORKS
By HENRY N. HUDSON, LL.D.,
Author of the "Life, Art, and Characters of Shakespeare,"
Editor of "School Shakespeare," etc.
In twenty volumes, duodecimo, two plays in each volume ; also in ten volumes,
of four plays each.
RETAIL PRICES:
, .... \ cloth . . .$25.00 I Trt , . 0j,>:rt„ ( cloth . . .$20.00
20-vol. edition { half calf , /^<00 | xo-vol. edition j half calf % § ^ ^
The Harvard Edition has been undertaken and the plan of it
shaped with a special view to making the Poet's pages pleasant and
attractive to general readers. A history of each play is given in its
appropriate volume. The plays are arranged in three distinct series :
Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies ; and the plays of each series pre-
sented, as nearly as may be, in the chronological order of the writing.
A special merit of this edition is, that each volume has two sets of
notes, — one mainly devoted to explaining the text, and placed at the
foot of the page, the other mostly occupied with matters of textual
comment and criticism, and printed at the end of each play. The
edition is thus admirably suited to the uses both of the general reader
and of the special student.
Horace Howard Furness: A noble edition, with happy mingle of illustration,
explanation, and keen, subtle, sympathetic criticism.
Professor Dowden : Hudson's edition takes its place beside the best work of
English Shakespeare students.
Professor C. T. Winchester: It seems to me, without question, the best edition
now printed.
Life, Art, and Characters of Shakespeare
By HENRY X. HUDSON.
In two volumes.
i2mo. 1003 pages. Retail prices: cloth, ^4.00; half calf, $8.00.
Edwin Booth, the great actor and eminent Shakespearean scholar,
once said that he received more real good from the original criticisms
and suggestive comments as given by Dr. Hudson in these two books
than from any other writer on Shakespeare.
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GAYLEY'S CLASSIC MYTHS
THE CLASSIC MYTHS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE.
Based chiefly on Bulfinch's " Age of Fable " (1855). Accompanied by an
Interpretative and Illustrative Commentary.
EDITED BY
CHARLES MILLS GAYLEY,
Professor of the English Language and Literature in the
University of California.
i2mo. Half leather. 540 pages. Fully illustrated, together with 16 full-
page illustrations. For introduction, $1.50.
Attention is called to these special features of this book :
An introduction on the indebtedness of English poetry
to the literature of fable ; and on methods of teaching
mythology.
An elementary account of myth-making and of the prin-
cipal poets of mythology, and of the beginnings of the world,
of gods and of men among the Greeks.
A thorough revision and systematization of Bulfinch's
Stories of Gods and Heroes : with additional stories, and
with selections from English poems based upon the myths.
Illustrative cuts from Baumeister, Roscher, and other
standard authorities on mythology.
Certain necessary modifications in Bulfinch's treatment of
the mythology of nations other than the Greek and Roman.
Notes, following the text (as in the school editions of
Latin and Greek authors), containing an historical and
interpretative commentary upon certain myths, supplemen-
tary poetical citations, a list of the better known allusions
to mythological fiction, references to works of art, and hints
to teachers and students.
GINN & COMPANY, Publishers,
Boston. New York. Chicago. Atlanta. Dallas.
NOV 22 1899
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