INTRODUCTION.

Section I.

A FALLACY, WHAT.

By the name of fallacy it is common to designate any argument employed, or topic suggested, for the purpose, or with a probability, of producing the effect of deception, of causing some erroneous opinion to be entertained by any person to whose mind such argument may have been presented.

Section II.

FALLACIES, BY WHOM TREATED OF HERETOFORE.

The earliest author extant in whose works

any mention is made on the subject of fallacies is Aristotle ; by whom, in the course or rather on the occasion of his treatise on Logic, not only is this subject started, but a list of the species of arguments to which this denomination is applicable is undertaken to be given. Upon the principle of the exhaustive method at so early a period employed by that astonishing genius, and in comparison of what it might and ought to have been, so little turned to account since, two is the

B

number of parts into which the whole mass is distributed-fallacies in the diction, fallacies not in the diction and thirteen (whereof in the diction six, not in the diction seven) is the number of the articles distributed between those two parts a.

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

To do something in the way of filling up this blank is the object of the present work.

In speaking of Aristotle's collection of fallacies, as a stock to which from his time to the present no addition has been made, all that is meant, is, that whatsoever arguments may have had deception for their object, none besides those brought to view by Aristotle, have been brought to view in that character and under that name; for between the time of Aristotle and the present, treatises of the art of oratory, or popular argumentation, have not been wanting in various

a Zopioua, from whence our English word sophism, is the word employed by Aristotle. The choice of the appellation is singular enough; σopos is the word that was already in use for designating a wise man. It was the same appellation that was commonly employed for the designation of the seven Sages. 2001575, from whence our sophist, being an impretative of Σopos, was the word applied as it were in irony to designate the tribe of wranglers, whose pretension to the praise of wisdom had no better ground than an abuse of words..

languages and in considerable number: nor can any of these be found in which, by him who may wish to put a deceit upon those to whom he has to address himself, instruction in no small quantity may not be obtained.

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

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

war.

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

number of parts into which the whole mass is distributed-fallacies in the diction, fallacies not in the diction and thirteen (whereof in the diction six, not in the diction seven) is the number of the articles distributed between those two parts a.

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

To do something in the way of filling up this blank is the object of the present work.

In speaking of Aristotle's collection of fallacies, as a stock to which from his time to the present no addition has been made, all that is meant, is, that whatsoever arguments may have had deception for their object, none besides those brought to view by Aristotle, have been brought to view in that character and under that name; for between the time of Aristotle and the present, treatises of the art of oratory, or popular argumentation, have not been wanting in various

Zopioua, from whence our English word sophism, is the word employed by Aristotle. The choice of the appellation is singular enough; σopos is the word that was already in use for designating a wise man. It was the same appellation that was commonly employed for the designation of the seven Sages. 2001575, from whence our sophist, being an impretative of Logos, was the word applied as it were in irony to designate the tribe of wranglers, whose pretension to the praise of wisdom had no better ground than an abuse of words..