For this abandonment, no one reason that will bear looking at can be numbered up, in the instance of any one of the five measures endeavoured to be laid upon the shelf; for if it could, that would be the reason assigned for the relinquishment, and not this unmeaning assemblage of three syllables.
A suit which, to do full justice to it, requires but Ch, 4.] FALLACIES OF DELAY. 203 six weeks, or six days, or six minutes in one day, has it been made to last six years? That your caution and your wisdom may not be questioned, by a first experiment reduce the time to five years, then if that succeeds in another parliament, should anotlier parliament be in a humour (which it is hoped it will not), reduce it to four years, — then again to three years; — and if it should be the lot of your grandchildren to see it reduced to two years, they may think themselves well off, and admire your prudence.
Justice, — to which in every eye but that of the plunderer and oppressor, rich and poor have an equal right, — do nine-tenths of the people stand excluded from all hope of, by the load of expense that has been heaped up. You propose to reduce this expense. The extent of the evil is admitted, and the nature of the remedy cannot admit of doubt: but by the magic of the three syllables gra-du-al, you will limit the remedy to the reduction of about one-tenth of the expense. Some time afterwards you may reduce another tenth, and go on so, that in about two centuries, justice may, perhaps, become generally accessible.
Importance of the business — extreme difficulty of the business — danger of innovation — need of caution and circumspection — impossibility of foreseeing all consequences — danger of precipitation — every thing should be gradual — one thin^v at a time — this is not the time — great occupation at present — wait for more leisure — people well satisfied — no petitions presented — no complaints heard — ^no such mischief has yet 204 FALLACIES OF DELAY. \Ch. 4.
taken place — stay till it has taken place; — such is the prattle which the magpye in office who, understanding nothing, understands that he must have something to say on every subject, shouts out among his auditors as a succedaneum to thought.
Transfer the scene to domestic life, and suppose a man who, his fortune not enabling him without running into debt to keep one race-horse, has been for some time in the habit of keeping six. To transfer to this private theatre the wisdom and the benefit of the gradual system, what you would have to recommend to your friend would be something of this sort: — Spend the first year in considering which of your six horses to give up; the next year, if you can satisfy yourself which it shall be, give up some one of them: by this sacrifice, the sincerity of your intention and your reputation for economy will be established; which done, you need think no more about the matter.
As all psychological ideas have their necessary root in physical ones, one source of delusion in psychological arguments consists in giving an improper extension to some metaphor which has been made choice of.
It would be a service done to the cause of truth, if some advocate for the gradual system would let us into the secret of the metaphor or physical image, if any, which he has in view, and in the same language give us the idea of some physical disaster as the result of precipitation. A patient killed by rapid bleeding, a chariot dashed in pieces by runaway steeds, a vessel overset by carrying too much sail in a squall, — all Ch. 4.] FALLACIES OF DELAY. 205 these images suppose a degree of precipitation which, if pursued by the proposers of a political measure, would be at once apparent, and the obvious and assignable consequence of their course would afford unanswerable arguments against them.
All this while though by a friend to the measure, no such word as above will be employed in the character of argument; yet cases are not wanting in which the dilatory course recommended may be consented to or even proposed by him.
Suppose a dozen distinct abuses in the seat of legislative power, each abuse having a set of members interested in the support of it; attack the whole body at once, all these parties join together to a certainty, and oppose you with their united force. Attack the abuses one by one, and it is possible that you may have but one of these parties, or at least less than all of them, to cope with at a time. Possible? Yes: — -but of probability, little can be said. To each branch of the public service belongs a class of public servants, each of which has its sinister interest, the source of the mass of abuses on which it feeds; and in the person and power of the universal patron, the fountain of all honour and of all abuse, all those sinister interests are joined and embodied into one.
This is a branch of science in which no man is ever deficient; this is what is understood, — understood to perfection by him to whom nothing else ever was or can be clear, — Hoc discunt omnes, unto alpha et beta puelli.
206 FALLACIES OF DELAV. [Ch. 4.
If there be a case in which such graduality as is Iiere described can have been consented to, and with a reasonable prospect of advantage, it must have been a case in which, without such consent, the whole business would be hopeless.
Under the existing system, by which the door of the theatre of legislation is opened by opulence to members, in whose instance application of the faculty of thought to the business about which they are supposed to occupy themselves, would have been an effect without a cause, so gross is the ignorance, and in consequence, even where good intention is not altogether wanting, so extreme the timidity and apprehension, that on their part, without assurance of extreme slowness, no concurrence to a proposal for setting one foot before another, at even the slowest pace, would be obtained at all: their pace, the only pace at which they can be persuaded to move, is that M'hich the traveller would take, whose lot it should be to be travelling in a pitch-dark night, over a road broken and slippery, edged with precipices on each side. Time is requisite for quieting timidity: why? because time is requisite for instructing ignorance.
Sect. 1. Lawyers; their interest in the employment of this fallacy.
In proportion to the magnitude of their respective shares in the general fund of abuse, the various fraternities interested in the support of abuses have each Sect. 1.] FALLACIES OF DELAY. 207 of them their interest in turning to the best account this as well as every other article in the list of fallacies.
But it is the fraternity of lawyers, who (if they have not decidedly the most to gain by the dexterous management of this or of other fallacies) have, from the greatest quantity of practice, derived the greatest degree of dexterity in the management of it.
Judicature requiring reflection, and the greater the complication of the case, the greater the degree and length of reflection which the case requires: under favour of this association, they have succeeded in establishing a general impression of a sort of proportion in quantity as well as necessity of connexion between delay and attention to justice. Not that, in fact, a hundredth part of the established delay has had any origin in a regard for justice; but, — for want of sufficient insight into that state of things by which in persons so circumstanced in power and interest the general prevalence of any such regard has been rendered physically impossible, — in his endeavours to propagate the notion of a sort of general proportion between delay and regard for justice, the man of law has, unhappily, been but too successful. And it is, perhaps, to this error, in respect to matters of fact, that the snail's-pace fallacy is indebted, more than to any other cause, for its dupes. Be this as it may, sure it is, that in no track of reform has the rate of progress, which it is the object of this fallacy to secure, been adhered to with greater eff*ect. By the Statute Book, if run over, (and little more than the titles would be necessary) in this view, a curious exemplification of the truth of this observation is afforded. An abuse so monstrous, that, on the part of the judicial hands by which it was manufactured, the slightest doubt of the mischievousness of it was absolutely impossible, — generation after generation groaning under this abuse, — and at length, when, by causes kept of course as much as possible out of sight, the support of the abuse has been deemed no longer practicable, comes at length a remedy. And what remedy? Never any thing better than a feeble palliative.
Ch. 5.] FALLACIES OF DELAY ii09 Fallacy of artful Diversion.
Ad vereciindiam.
E.vposition and Exposure.
The device here in question may be explained by the following direction or receipt for the manufacture and application of it: — When any measure is proposed, which on any account whatsoever it suits your interest or your humour to oppose, at the same time that, in consideration of its undeniable utility, or on any other account, you regard it unadvisable to pass direct condemnation on it, — hold up to view some other measure, such as, whether it bear any relation or none to the measure on the carpet, will, in the conception of your hearers, present itself as superior in the order of importance. Your language, then, is — Why that? (meaning the measure already proposed.) — Why not this? — or this? mentioning some other, which it is your hope to render more acceptable, and by means of it to create a diversion, and turn aside from the obnoxious measure the affections and attention of those whom you have to deal M'ith.
One case there is, in which the appellation of fallacy cannot with justice be applied to tliis argument; and that is, where the effectuation or pursuit of the measure first proposed would operate as a bar or an 210 FALLACIES OP DELAY. [Ch. 5.
obstacle to some other measure of a more beneficial character held up to view by the argument as competitor to it: and what, in the way of Exposure, will be said of the sort of expedient just described, will not apply to this case.
However, where the measure first proposed is of unquestionable utility, and you oppose it merely because it is adverse to your own sinister interest, you must not susjgest anv relevant measure of reform in lieu of it, except in a case in which, in the shape of argument, every mode of opposition is considered as hopeless: for unless for the purpose of forestalling the time and attention that would be necessary to the effectuation of the proposed beneficial measure, a measure altogether irrelevant and foreign to it is set up, a risk is incurred, that something, however inferior in degree, may be effected towards the diminution of the abuse or imperfection in question.
In the character of an irrelevant counter-measure, any measure or accidental business whatever may be made to serve, so long as it can be made to preoccupy a sufficient portion of the disposable time and attention of the public men on whose suffrages the effectuation or frustration of the measure depends.
But supposing the necessity for a relevant countermeasure to exist, and you have accordingly given introduction to it, the first thing then to be done is, to stave off the undesirable moment of its effectuation as long as possible.
According to established usage, you have given no- Ch.b.l FALLACIES OF DELAY. 211 tice of your intention to propose a measure on the subject and to the effect in question. The intention is of too great importance to be framed and carried into act in the compass of the same year or session: you accordingly announce your intention for next session. When the next session comes, the measure is of too great importance to be brought on the carpet at the commencement of the session; at that period it is not yet mature enough. If it be not advisable to delay it any longer, you bring it forward just as the session closes. Time is thus gained, and without any decided loss in the shape of reputation: for what you undertook, has to the letter been performed. When the measure has been once brought in, you have to take your choice, in the first place, between operations for delay and operations for rejection. Operations for delay exhibit a manifest title to preference: so long as their effect can be made to last, they accomplish their object, and no sacrifice either of design or of reputation has been made. The extreme importance and extreme difficulty are themes on which you blow the trumpet, and which you need not fear the not hearing sufficiently echoed. When the treasury of delay has been exhausted, you have your choice to take between trusting to the chapter of accidents for the defeat of the measure, or endeavouring to engage some friend to oppose it and propose the rejection of it. But you must be unfortunate indeed, if you can find no opponents, no tolerably plausible opponents, unless among friends, and friends specially commis- ^212 FALLACIES OF DELAY. [C/l. 5.
sioned for the purpose: a sort of confidence more or less dangerous must in that case be reposed.
Upon the whole, you must however be singularly unfortunate or unskilful, if by the counter-measure of diversion any considerable reduction of the abuse or imperfection be, spite of your utmost endeavours, effected, or any share of reputation that you need care about, sacrificed.
PART THE FOURTH.
FALLACIES OF CONFUSION, The object of ivhicli is, to perplex, when Discussion can 710 longer be avoided.
CHAPTER L Question-begging Appellatives.
Ad judicium.
Petitio principii, or begging the question, is a fallacy very well known even to those who are not conversant with the principles of logic. In answer to a given question, the party who employs the fallacy contents himself by simply affirming the point in debate. Why does opium occasion sleep? — Because it is soporiferous.
Begging the question is one of the fallacies enumerated by Aristotle; but Aristotle has not pointed out (what it will be the object of this chapter to expose) the mode of using the fallacy with the greatest effect, and least risk of detection, — namely, by the employment of a single appellative.
Exposition and Exposure. Among the appellatives employed for the designation of objects belonging to the field of moral science, 214 FALLACIES OF CONFUSION. [C/l. 1.
there are some by which the object is presented singly, unaccompanied by any sentiment of approbation or disapprobation attached to it: — as, desire, labour, dispositio)i, character, habit, &c. With reference to the two sorts of appellatives which will come immediately to be mentioned, appellatives of this sort may be termed neutral.
There are others by means of which, in addition to the principal object, the idea of general approbation as habitually attached to that object is presented: — as, industry, honour, piety, generosity, gratitude, &c. These are termed eulogistic or laudatory.
Others there are again, by means of which, in addition to the principal object, the idea of general disapprobation, as habitually attached to that object, is presented: — as, lust, avarice, luxury, covetousness, prodigality, &c. These may be termed dyslogistic or vituperative *.
Among pains, pleasures, desires, emotions, motives, affections, propensities, dispositions, and other moral entities, some, but very far from all, are furnished with appellatives of all three sorts: — some, with none but eulogistic; others, and in a greater number, with none but those of the dyslogistic cast. By appella- * See the nature of these denominations amply illustrated in Springsof-Action Table.
Of the field of thought and action, this, the moral department, though it be that part in which the most abundant employment is given to the instrument of deception here in question, is not the only part. Scarcely, perhaps, can any part be found to which it has not been applied.
Ch. I.] FALLACIES OF CONFUSION. 215 tives, I mean here, of course, single-xvoy'ded appellatives; for by words, take but enough of them, any thing may be expressed.
Originally, all terms expressive of any of these objects were (it seems reasonable to think) neutral. By degrees they acquired, some of them an eulogistic, some a dyslogistic, cast. This ciiange extended itself as the moral sense (if so loose and delusive a term may on this occasion be employed) advanced in growth.
But to return. As to the mode of employing this fallacy, it neither requires nor so much as admits of being taught: a man falls into it but too naturally of himself; and the more naturally and freely, the less he jBnds himself under the restraint of any such sense as that of shame. The sreat difficulty is to unlearn it: in the case of this, as oi so many other fallacies, by teaching it, the humble endeavour here is to unteach it.
In speaking of the conduct, the behaviour, the inte?ition, the motive, the disposition of this or that man, if he be one who is indifferent to you, of whom you care not whether he be well or ill thought of, you employ the neutral term: — if a man whom, on the occasion and for the purpose in question, it is your object to recommend to favour, especially a man of your own party, you employ the eulogistic term: — if he be a man whom it is your object to consign to aversion or contempt, you employ the dyslogistic term.
To the proposition of which it is the leading tern), every such eulogistic or dyslogistic appellative, secretly as it were, and in general insensibly, slips in another proposition of which that same leading term is the subject, and an assertion of approbation or disapprobation the predicate. The person, act, or thing in question is o?' deserves to be, or is and deserves to be, an object of general approbation; or the person, act, or thing in question is or deserves to be, or is and deserves to be, an object of general disapprobation.
The proposition thus asserted, is commonly a proposition that requires to be proved. But in the case where the use of the term thus employed is fallacious, the proposition is one that is not true, and cannot be proved: and where the person by whom the fallacy is employed is conscious of its deceptive tendency, the object in the employment thus given to the appellative is, by means of the artifice, to cause that to be taken for true which is not so.
By appropriate eulogistic and dyslogistic terms, so many arguments are made, by which, taking them altogether, misrule, in all its several departments, finds its justif;ying arguments, and these in but too many eyes, conclusive. Take, for instance, the following eulogistic terms: — 1. In the war department, honour and glory.
2. In international affairs, honour, glory, and dignity.
3. In the financial department, liberality. It being always at the expense of unwilling contributors that this virtue (for among the virtues it has its place in Ch. J.] FALLACIES 01- CONFUSION. 217 Aristotle) is exercised; for liberality, depredation may, in perhaps every case, and without any impropriety, be substituted.
4. In the higher parts of all official departments, dignity; — dignity, though not in itself depredation, operates as often as the word is used, as a pretence for, and thence as a cause of, depredation. Wherever you see dignity, be sure that money is requisite for the support of it: and that, in so far as the dignitary's own money is regarded as insufficient, public money raised by taxes imposed on all other individuals, on the principle of liberality, must be found for the supply of it*.
Exercised at a man's own expense, liberality may be, or may not be, according to circumstances, a virtue: — exercised at the expense of the public, it never can be any thing better than vice. Exercised at a man's own expense, whether it be accompanied with prudence or no, whether it be accompanied or not with beneficence, it is at any rate disinterestedness: — exercised at the expense of the public, it is pure selfishness: it is, in a word, depredation: money or money's worth is taken from the public to purchase, for the use of the liberal man, respect, affection, gratitude with its eventual fruits in the shape of services of all sorts: in a word, reputation, power.
When you have a practice or measure to condemn, * See this principle avowed and maintained by the scribes of both parties, Burke and Rose, as shown in the defences of economy against those advocates of depredation.
find out some more general appellative within the import of which the obnoxious practice or measure in question cannot be denied to be included, and to which you or those whose interests and prejudices you have espoused, have contrived to annex a certain degree of unpopularity, in so much that the name of it has contracted a dyslogistic quality, — has become a bad name.
Take, for example, improvement and innovation; under its own name to pass censure on any improvement might be too bold: applied to such an object, any expressions of censure you could employ might lose their force: employing them, you would seem to be running on in the track of self-contradiction and nonsense.
But improvement means something new, and so does innovation. Happily for your purpose, innovation has contracted a bad sense; it means something which is new and bad at the same time. Improvement, it is true, in indicating sometliing new, indicates something good at the same time; and therefore, if the thing in question be good as well as new, innovation is not a proper term for it. However, as the idea of novelty was the only idea originally attached to the term innovation, and the only one which is directly expressed in the etymology of it, you may still venture to employ the word innovation, since no man can readily and immediately convict your appellation of being an improper one upon the face of it.
With the appellation thus chosen for the purpose of passing condemnation on the measure, he by whom it has been brought to view in the character of an improvement is not (it is true) very likely to be well satisfied: but of this 3'ou could not have had any expectation. What you want, is a pretence which your own partisans can lay hold of, for the purpose of deducing from it a colourable warrant for passing upon the improvement that censure which you are determined, and they, if not determined, are disposed and intend, to pass on it.
Of this instrument of deception, the potency is most deplorable. It is but of late years that so much as the nature of it has in any way been laid before the public: and now that it has been laid before the public, the need there is of its being opposed with effect, and the extreme difficulty of opposing it with effect, are at the same time and in equal degree manifest. In every part of the field of thought and discourse, the effect of language depends upon the principle of association, — upon the association formed between words and those ideas of which in that way they have become the signs. But in no small part of the field of discourse, one or other of the two censorial and reciprocally correspondent and opposite affections,— the amicable and the hostile, — that by which approbation and that by which disapprobation is expressed,— are associated with the word in question by a tie little less strong than that by which the object in question, be it person or thing, — be the thing a real or fictitious entity, be it operation or quality, is 220 FALLACIES OF CONFUSION. [Ch. I.
associated with that same articulate audible sign and its visible representations.
To diminish the effect of this instrument of deception (for to do it away completely, to render all minds without exception at all times insensible to it, seems scarcely possible), must, at any rate, be a work of time. But in proportion as its effect on the understanding, and through that channel on the temper and conduct of mankind, is diminished, the good effect of the exposure will become manifest.
By such of these passion-kindling appellatives as are of the eulogistic cast, comparatively speaking, no bad effect is produced: but by those which are of the dyslogistic, prodigious is the mischievous effect produced, considered in a moral point of view. By a single word or two of this complexion, what hostility has been produced! how intense the feeling of it! how wide the range of it! how full of mischief, in all imaginable shapes, the effects ^!
* As an instance remarkable enough, though not in respect of the mischievousness, yet in respect of the extent and the importance of the effects producible by a single word, note Lord Erskine's defence of the Whigs, avowedly produced by the application of the dyslogistic word faction to that party in the state.
CHAPTER II.
Impostor Terms.
Ad judicium.
Ej'position.
The fallacy which consists in the employment of impostor terms, in some respects resembles that which has been exposed in the preceding chapter: but it is applied chiefly to the defence of things, which under their proper name are manifestly indefensible: instead, therefore, of speaking of such things under their proper name, the sophist has recourse to some appellative, which, along with the indefensible object, includes some other; generally an object of favour; — or at once substitutes an object of approbation for an object of censure. For instance, persecutors in matters of religion have no such word as persecution in their vocabulary; zeal is the word by which they characterize all their actions.
In the employment of this fallacy, two things are requisite: 1. A fact or circumstance, which, under its proper name, and seen in its true colours, would be an object of censure, and which, therefore, it is necessary to disguise; (^res tegenda;) 2. The appellative, which the sophist employs to conceal what would be deemed otfensive, or even to bespeak a degree of favour for it by the aid of some happier accessary; (Tegumen.) * Exposure.
Example. — Influence of the Crown.
The sinister influence of the crown is an object whicli, if expressed by any peculiar and distinctive appellation, would, comparatively speaking, find perhaps but few defenders, but which, so long as no other denomination is employed for the designation of it than the generic term influence, will rarely meet with indiscriminating reprobation.
* The device here in question is not peculiar to politicians. By an example drawn from private life, it may to some eyes be placed, perhaps, in a clearer point of view. The word gallantry is employed to denote either of two dispositions, which, though not altogether without connexion, may either of them exist without the other. In one of these senses, it denotes, on the part of the stronger sex, the disposition to testify on all occasions towards the weaker sex those sentiments of respect and kindness by which civilized is so strikingly and happily distinguished from savage life. In the other sense, it is, in the main, synonymous to adultery: yet, not so completely synonymous (as indeed words perfectly synonymous are of rare occurrence) but that, in addition to this sense, it presents an accessary and collateral one. Having, from the habit of being employed in the other sense, acquired, in addition to its direct sense, a collateral sense of the eulogistic cast, it serves to give to the act, habit, or disposition, which in this sense it is employed to present, something of an eulogistic tincture, in lieu of that dyslogistic colouring under which the object is presented by its direct and proper name. Whatever act a man regards himself as being known to have performed, or meditates the performance of, under any expectation of his being eventually known to have performed it, he will not, in speaking of it, make use of any term the tendency of which Ch. 2.] TALLACIES OF CONFUSION. 223 Corruption, — the term which, in the eyes of those to whom this species of influence is an object of disapprobation, is the appropriate and only single-worded term capable of being employed for the expression of it, — is a term of the dyslogistic cast. This, then, by any person whose meaning it is not to join in the condemnation passed on the practice or state of things which is designated, is one that cannot possibly be employed. In speaking of this practice and state of things, he is therefore obliged to go upon the look-out, and find some term, which, at the same time that its claim to the capacity of presenting to view the object in question cannot be contested, shall be of the eulois to call forth, on the part of the hearer or reader, any sentiment of disapprobation pointed at the sort of act in question, and consequently, through the medium of the act, at the agent by whom it has been performed. To the word adultery, this effect, to every man more or less impleasant, is attached by the usage of language. On every occasion in which it is necessary to his purpose to bring to view an act of this obnoxious description, he will naturally be on the look-out for a term in the use of which he may be supposed to have had another meaning, and which, in so far as it conveys an idea of the forbidden act in question, presents it with an accompaniment, not of reproach, but rather of approbation, which in general would not have accompanied it but for the other signification which the word is also employed to designate. This term he finds in the word gallantry.