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100. By the foregoing methods of proof, fully complied with, we may establish truth, and bring home conviction to a rational mind. There are, however, various devices for stifling their influence, constituting one department of sophistry.

(1.) As regards Deductive evidence, there are forms of language containing error disguised as truth, the fallacies of the syllogistic logician. These are not the most formidable weapons of the sophist, there being a tendency in men to suspect the dexterities of the formal reasoner. This sentence from Pope has a plausible, and no more than a plausible appearance :— "Whoever has flattered his friend successfully, must at once think himself a knave and his friend a fool."

(2.) In the higher class of Inductive proofs, where there is a unanimous concurrence of the Four Methods, or enough to establish a conclusion as logically certain, it is seldom that any attempt is made to nullify the evidence. The laws of motion, gravity, heat, light, &C., are allowed to pass.

(3.) It is in Analogies, and in mere Probability, or in the concurrence of Probabilities, that success is most likely to attend on sophistry and mystification. An argument fairly estimated may have a probability of two to one, or two-thirds; an opponent will bring out prominently the exceptional cases, constituting the one-third; will do his best to keep out of view the majority; will cavil at and deny what he cannot conceal; and so make it appear as if the probability inclined the other way.

In a court of law, when a strong case of combined probabilities is made out, the opposing counsel will comment on the probabilities separately, showing their insufficiency in the detached state, and trying to prevent the jury from attending to their cumulative force.

101. When we make use of a plurality of arguments, we have to consider how to arrange them for ef fect.

The first requisite is to adduce them separately.

ARRANGEMENT OF ARGUMENTS.

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Besides avoiding the confusion of mixing up different topics, we give to each a distinct local habitation, whereby it abides better in the memory; so that, if it be omitted in the reply, the hearer is aware of the void. The designating of the arguments numerically adds to the separateness. This, however, is a cooling application in impassioned address, and was seldom practised by the ancient orators. The cumulative conjunctions can be employed for the same purpose; as, Again, then, now, once more, &c.

As with principles brought forward in Exposition, so with arguments, a terse summary or sharp epithet engraves them on the mind.

102. Next, as regards the number and the order of the arguments.

Number does not always give force. Not to speak of the danger of being tedious and prolix, it is better, in the prospect of opposition, to leave out such as are weak, and such as an opponent could effectively meet.

The order may be various, provided a good position is given to the strongest; in which view these may be placed either first or last. Sometimes it is requisite to postpone an unpalatable topic, until the way is paved for its introduction.

103. In Refutation, or Reply, there are many things to be considered. It is in this department that the training in logical method avails most.

The purely logical aptitude for detecting fallacious syllogisms, unsound inductions, and loosely-defined notions, although not immediately concerned in giving plausibility to a first statement, is always efficacious in reply.

104. It is advantageous to set forth explicitly, at the commencement, all that is admitted on the other side; and to unfold whatever important inferences are fairly deducible from those admissions.

Damaging contradictions are sometimes made to appear at

once; and, in any case, a foundation is laid both for refutation and for argument.

105. If, in the original statement, the arguments were mixed together, they should be disentangled by the respondent, and answered separately.

A speaker accustomed to separate his own arguments will see the benefit of doing the same with his adversary's. In this way, too, he will best encounter the practice alluded to in the following remarks on the oratory of Fox. "If, as is alleged, he was wont to repeat the same thoughts again and again in different words, this might be a defect in the oration, but it was none in the orator. For, thinking not of himself, nor of the rules of rhetoric, but only of success in the struggle, he had found these the most effectual means to imbue a popular audience almost imperceptibly with his own opinions. And he knew that to the multitude one argument stated in five different forms is, in general, held equal to five new arguments." (Stanhope's Life of Pitt, Vol. I., p. 247.)

106. Refutation, or Disproof, necessarily takes place according to all the methods of Argument, or Proof.

Deductive fallacies, or bad syllogisms, can, with or without the help of Logic, be shaped and presented so that their fallaciousness shall be apparent. Some parallel case, drawn from a familiar subject, will contribute to the refutation.

The formal part of reasoning (treated of in the Formal or Scholastic Logic) is less frequently at fault than the premises. Insufficiency may attach to the Major Premise, which (in the regular syllogism) affirms a general truth, or to the Minor, which declares that a particular case falls under the generality: in the first case, the refutation is purely Inductive; in the other case, the relevancy of the minor is closely related to Definition.

As regards the Major. The mode of refuting a general affirmation is to produce exceptions, or other admitted principles contradicting it. The refutation is effective in proportion as

REFUTATION, OR DISPROOF.

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these incompatible facts and principles are well known and understood. When any one affirms that all stimulants are bad, the respondent produces tea, coffee, wine and brandy in sickness, opium as a medicine, and so on.

Earl Montague's defence of the Court of the Lord High Steward for trying Peers, is a good example of rebutting a general charge by particulars.

"It would be easy to make out a long list of squires, merchants, lawyers, surgeons, yeomen, artisans, ploughmen, whose blood, barbarously shed during the late evil times, cries for vengeance to heaven. But what single member of your House, in our days, or in the days of our fathers, or in the days of our grandfathers, suffered death unjustly by sentence of the Court of the Lord High Steward? Hundreds of the common people were sent to the gallows by common juries for the Rye House Plot and the Western Insurrection. One peer, and one alone, my Lord Delamere, was brought at that time before the Court of the Lord High Steward, and he was acquitted. You say that the evidence against him was legally insufficient. Be it so. But so was the evidence against Sydney, against Cornish; against Alice Lisle: yet it sufficed to destroy them. You say that the peers, before whom my Lord Delamere was brought, were selected with shameless unfairness by King James and by Jeffreys. Be it so. But this only proves that under the worst possible King, and under the worst possible High Steward, a lord tried by lords has a better chance for life than a commoner who puts himself on his country."

Many doctrines brought forward in argument are not so much false as confused, being made up of ill-defined, incoherent notions. The assertion that "Nature is a safe guide" is irrefutable because unintelligible. Yet we cannot stop to unfold the ambiguities of the word nature, so as to deprive the proposition of the force of a venerable name. We rather parry such an argument, by admitting that Nature, uncorrupted, left to herself, or with fair play, is a safe guide, and by denying the application in the special instance.

Probably the best way of dealing with a mystifying and confused opponent, is to select a specimen of his arguments for a full and minute exposure. In controversial warfare, opponents of this kind are not uncommon; and there are a few illustrious examples of the method of replying to them. We may adduce Locke's controversy with Stillingfleet; Hobbes's defence of his

theory of the Will against Bishop Bramhall; and, in our time, the reply of Robert Hall to Kinghora on the subject of "Free Communion."

The relevancy of the Minor enters into many disputes. Granting the principle, we refuse the application. Whether a particular case falls under a rule is often a nice point to determine; both legal and moral right and wrong involve such questions. "Falsehood is wrong; is then the subscribing of the thirty-nine Articles, without believing them, a falsehood?"

To show that the subject of the Minor does, or does not, correspond with the subject of the Major (which is the meaning of the Minor), we must often resort to an examination of particulars, such as is required for Induction and for Defini

tion.

People readily agree to such generalities as "Religion was not intended to make our pleasures less;" "Those actions of individuals that do not affect others should not be interfered with by others;" but the carrying out of these into their applications will show the widest discordance, so much so that the conceding of them settles nothing. The real battle must be fought on what seems the Minor premise, but is in fact another inductive generality.

The strict logical handling of those questions (however desirable in itself and useful to the speaker) is too roundabout and abstruse for popular address; the rhetorician must content himself with his usual resource, the starting of palpable contradictions; for which end it is, that he has been above enjoined to master the admitted facts and principles of the other side. The citing of contradictory instances always disproves, and often silences, both bad Inductions and bad Definitions.

107. It is sometimes shown that an opponent is precluded, by something in his own special position, from the benefit of a principle appealed to by him; a special mode of Refutation by Inconsistency, called the Argu mentum ad hominem.

It has been customary to meet those sceptics that maintain

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