or "depart this life." The superstitions, noted above as leading to various fallacies of "effect-to-cause" reasoning, also work the other way. A person who fears that death will come to his family within a year because a mirror has been broken in his house credits a fallacious "cause-to-effect" reasoning. People who believe that misfortune lurks in the number thirteen, that seeing the new moon over the right shoulder or that sitting with the grain of the card-table will bring good luck, defy all the laws of logic, and seem hopelessly beyond the reach of argumentation.

The error of ascribing an observed effect to a cause which may have been prevented from operating is similar to the error of holding that certain results must follow a given cause when, as a matter of fact, the operation of the cause may be checkmated. The latter kind of inference is more liable to error; it is easier to find the cause of an observed effect than to predict an effect from a known cause. If money has disappeared from the till, we are satisfied that theft has been committed; and we can eliminate possible causes, one by one, until suspicion points to the probable thief. This suspicion directs the search for corroborating evidence. But even though we may be sure that a certain clerk has a strong motive for stealing money, we are by no means sure that he will do so. Other factors, such as honor or fear of punishment, may be more powerful than his great desire for the money.

The causes which warrant us in predicting any effect are usually so complex that we are liable to err by resting our argument on a cause or causes which prove to be inadequate. To affirm that the passage of a given shipping subsidy bill, providing grants of money to shipowners, will restore the prestige of the American mer

chant marine seems to be an error of this kind. A study of the success of other nations in building up their foreign shipping reveals numerous causes: the lower wages of shipbuilders and sailors, the lack of a variety of attractive employments, the American protective tariff, in addition to the subsidies granted by these nations. To hold that subsidies alone will enable the United States to wrest the traffic from the present carriers is to predict a success which has never followed from the unaided operation of that cause. A man who enters business with the idea that the influence of his family connections is sure to bring him rapid promotion may find that such influence, powerful as it may be, is insufficient to bring about the desired result without the aid of application and ability. Equally disappointing has been the career of many a man who has begun the practice of law with the idea that a keen mind is a guarantee of brilliant success. We may observe on every hand evidence of the fact that forces do not always achieve the result toward which they tend. The failures are due to the counteracting influences of other forces, or to the lack of necessary supplementary forces, or to both.

III. FALLACIES OF IGNORING THE QUESTION Fallacies of ignoring the question,1 or arguing beside the point, consist in evading, through ignorance or intent, the real point at issue. The error is due sometimes to failure to analyze the question, and sometimes to the deliberate attempt of a man with a weak case to withdraw attention from the heart of the question. The universal tendency of the human mind to wander from the point makes the fallacy of Ignoring the Question both common and dangerous.

1 Called ignoratio elenchi.

To reason in any of the following ways is to ignore the question:

(1) To infer from the character, professions, or con

duct of an individual the truth or falsity of a general proposition.

(2) To reach a conclusion through appeal to prejudice, passion, or sense of humor.

(3) To argue that "what has been, should be." (4) To shift ground.

(5) To proceed to a conclusion other than the one at issue.

(6) To refute a proposition which was not maintained. (7) To treat contrary terms as though they were contradictory.

(1) When we infer from the character, professions, or conduct of an individual the truth or falsity of a general proposition not relating solely to that individual, we argue beside the point.1 Sometimes we do this when, in seeking to discredit a principle advocated by a person whose own conduct violates that principle, we reply, "You are a pretty one to talk about that." We evade the issue by drawing attention from the merits of the principle to the personal merits of the one who advocates it. There is no necessary connection, however, between the character of a person and the worth of his advice, although there is an obvious connection between the character of a person and the effect of his advice. Temperance is a virtue though advocated by a drunkard, but a drunkard contributes more to the cause of temperance by example than by precept.

Sometimes we argue beside the point in attempting to defend a person by praising traits of his character

1 This is sometimes called the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem.

which have nothing to do with the charges brought against him. Macaulay thus ridicules this type of ignoring the question:

The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with calling testimony to character. He had so many private virtues! And had James the Second no private virtues? Was Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, destitute of private virtues? And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles? A religious zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few of the ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones in England claim for those who lie beneath them. A good father! A good husband! Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, and falsehood!

We charge him with having broken his coronation oath; and we are told that he kept his marriage vow! We accuse him of having given up his people to the merciless inflictions of the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates; and the defense is, that he took his little son on his knee and kissed him! We censure him for having violated the articles of the Petition of Right, after having, for good and valuable consideration, promised to observe them; and we are informed that he was accustomed to hear prayers at six o'clock in the morning! It is to such considerations as these, together with his Vandyke dress, his handsome face, and his peaked beard, that he owes, we verily believe, most of his popularity with the present generation.

(2) Another form of ignoring the question consists in the attempt to bring people to the desired action through appeals to their passion or prejudice or sense of humor, rather than to their reason.1 Many of the

1 This is sometimes called the fallacy of argumentum ad populum. To take advantage of the ignorance of an audience, by proceeding to an

newspaper attacks on the simplified spelling movement illustrate this fallacy. Examples are all too common in political campaigns, for this is the favorite trick of the demagogue. It is effective wherever the ignorance or lethargy of the people addressed prevents them from discriminating between the true and the false, the relevant and the irrelevant. It is as contemptible as it is

common.

In the course of a debate between Bishop Wilberforce and Huxley, in which Huxley defended the doctrine of evolution, the Bishop said: "I should like to ask Professor Huxley as to his belief in being descended from an ape. Is it on his grandfather's or his grandmother's side that the ape ancestry comes in?" Then, in a graver tone, he asserted that the views of Huxley were contrary to the revelations of Scripture. In the course of his refutation Huxley said: "I asserted — and I repeat that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were any ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would rather be a man who plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and to distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice."

(3) An appeal to veneration for authority, custom, or tradition instead of to reason is one form of the fallacy of ignoring the question. It is the pernicious argument that "what has been, should be," and "what has not been, cannot be.” All generalizations which deny irrelevant conclusion which they cannot recognize as such, is sometimes called the fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantiam. As the two are likely to go hand in hand, the distinction is of little use for practical purposes.