WE hope to be able to save students from the fate of Diodorus, (a great logician, who died in his school through shame at being, unable to resolve a quibble propounded by Stilno)—not by hardening, but by enlightening them. Though we bring neither mood nor figure wherewith to test the presence of error, we are not without the hope of qualifying the student for its discovery. It has been confessed from the throne of logic that, 'After all, in the practical detection of each individual fallacy, much must depend on natural and acquired acuteness: nor can any rules be given, the mere learning of which will enable us to apply them with mechanical certainty and readiness.'
Bulwer, in remarking that error is a view of some facts instead of a survey of all, indicated the key to logical fallacy. Error lies principally in defective premises. Sophistry in science is referable to incomplete analysis of nature, of systems—to artificial arrangements—to supposing qualities, to assuming principles, to false inductions from imperfect demonstration.
Dickens, in 'Nicholas Nickleby,' gives the case of a certain lady, who, because she knew one young milliner, who retained red cheeks and did not die of consumption, was immovably of opinion that all representations of the injurious effect of such sedentary occupation were false. It is ever so with the vulgar. Some one case has come under their notice, and it is in vain that you appeal to a chain of facts. They know nothing of induction—they know one case to the contrary, and that is enough. This error is the source of vulgar prejudice. Once teach men that truth does not lie in a single instance, but in a calculation in a balance of probabilities, and you rationalise them. 'The chapter of accidents [or single instances] is the Bible of the fool—it supplies him with a text against everything great, or good, or wise.'*
          * Times.
 
     Where others toil with philosophic force,
     Their nimble nonsense takes a shorter course,
     Flings at your head convictions in the lump,
     And gains' remote conclusions with a jump.—Cowper,
The first source of error is defective induction. We easily arrive at this point of examination by the questions we have proposed for use in the test of syllogism. Formerly, one syllogism was required to be defeated by another—we now attack a fallacy by induction. No false syllogism, says Biennan, can resist the inductive process of sifting particulars.
     I do not like thee. Dr. Fell,
     The reason why, I cannot tell—
     But this I know, and know full well,
     I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.
This kind of thing will not do. Induction pursues the reasoner with an eternal why. A clear because to a clear why, is a demand that is never remitted in sound logic.
Lord Melbourne, in giving his reason for his religion in the House of Lords, said it was the religion of his forefathers and that of his country, therefore, he would support the church. (Cheers from the opposition benches.) The Brahmin and Mussulman give the same reason for theirs. A logician in facts would have said, I hold and support my religion because it is true. What the standard of physical certainty is to facts, what axioms are to science, such is induction to syllogisms—it is the test of their correctness.
Dr. Whately exhibits the following instance of a regularly expressed syllogism:—
  Every dispensation of Providence is beneficial:
  Afflictions are dispensations of Providence,
  Therefore, they are beneficial.
Every applicable rule of Dr. Whately's logic is, of course, applied here—it is true in mood and figure, and yet the argument is fallacious. A fallacy is defined as 'an ingenious mixture of truth and falsehood, so entangled as to be intimately blended—that the falsehood is, in chemical phrase, held in solution: one drop of sound logic is that test which immediately disunites them, makes the foreign substance visible, and precipitates it to the bottom.'* But whence is to come 'this drop of sound logic?' Not from the Doctor's Elements, they have sent forth the fallacy. But touch it with the talisman of facts and; the error will appear.
     * Whately's Logic, Anal. Out., chap. 1, stc. 4.
What facts support the assertion that Afflictions are dispensations of Providence?' The simple question is fatal to the argument. Can such a proposition have facts for its support? Ignorance, congregating in narrow courts, and laziness, accumulating filth, generate sickness and affliction. Are these the dispensations of Providence, or the dispensations o............