to Russia, and was surprised to find that his opponents admitted all he said and contended that there should be no one dominant power. He had overlooked a third course.

One should not be confused by a specious argument in the form of a dilemma suddenly thrust upon him. He may suspect that there is a fallacy of division, but, being unable to find the weak spot at once, have nothing to offer in refutation but uselessly general charges. He should, therefore, become familiar with the common sources of error in the use of the dilemma, and cultivate the faculty of promptly reducing an elaborate argument to simpler form.

IV. FALLACIES OF BEGGING THE QUESTION

1

The Fallacy of Begging the Question 1 consists in assuming without proof the truth or the falsity of a point which is at issue, or its equivalent.

To reason in any of the following ways is to Beg the Question:

(1) To argue in a circle.

(2) To assume a more general truth which involves the point at issue.

(3) To assume a particular truth which the proposition involves.

(4) To employ "question-begging" words.

(5) To assume a point at issue in defining the terms.

(1) A common form of this fallacy is Arguing in a Circle.2 To argue in a circle is to assume the truth of a premise, from this premise to deduce a conclusion, and then to use the conclusion so reached in an attempt to prove the premise with which we started. Thus, a woman, on seeing a very small porringer, said to a child, "That must have been the little wee bear's porringer, it is so small," and then added, "He must have been smaller than we thought, must n't he?"

1 Also called petitio principii.

2 Called circulus in probando.

To assume that the bear is small in order to prove that the porringer is his, and then, from the fact that such a small porringer is his, to infer that he must be small, is to beg the question by arguing in a circle.

Another example of this fallacy is the following: "Assuming that Goldsmith was kind and impractical, we see that he has put many of his own qualities into the character of the Vicar of Wakefield. And as the Vicar was certainly a kind, though impractical man, we see that these were really the leading qualities of Goldsmith."

Such an argument proceeds like a man lost in the woods, who, after much inconsequent rambling, arrives at the point from which he set out.

This fallacy of arguing in a circle is thus refuted by Felix Adler:

There is an argument in favor of child-labor so un-American and so inhuman that I am almost ashamed to quote it, and yet it has been used, and I fear it is secretly in the minds of some who would not openly stand for it. A manufacturer standing near the furnace of a glasshouse and pointing to a procession of young Slav boys who were carrying the glass on trays, remarked, "Look at their faces, and you will see that it is idle to take them from the glasshouse in order to give them an education; they are what they are, and will always remain what they are." He meant that there are some human beings and these Slavs of the number who are mentally irredeemable, so fast asleep intellectually that they cannot be awakened; designed by nature, therefore, to be hewers of wood and drawers of water. This cruel and wicked thing was said of Slavs; it is the same thing which has been said from time immemorial by the slave-owners of their slaves. First they degrade human beings by denying them the opportunity to develop their better nature: no schools, no teaching, no freedom, no outlook; and then, as if in mockery, they point to the degraded condition of their victims as a reason why they should never be allowed to escape from it.1

This is an argument in a circle if, as is assumed, the degraded

1 The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Felix Adler, in vol. xxv, No. 3, May, 1905.

condition of the workmen was due to their oppressive employment.

Another circular argument is refuted by Herbert Spencer. The last sentence in the quotation exposes tersely the weakness of the fallacy:

Finding that the child is not willing to acquire facts that are distasteful to him, they are forced upon him, and by denying his mind the knowledge it craves, and cramming it with knowledge it cannot digest, we produce a morbid state of the faculties, and a consequent disgust for knowledge in general; and when, as a result, partly of the stolid indolence we have brought on, and partly of still continued unfitness for studies, the child can understand nothing without explanation, we infer that education must necessarily be carried on thus. Having by our method induced helplessness, we straightway make helplessness an excuse for our method.

These two examples of the fallacy of arguing in a circle and these two examples of the refutation of the fallacy are chosen because of their simplicity. By no means so obvious are the errors we commonly meet, for, as we have said, redundancy and confusion are the very nature of fallacies. To be keen in tracking down and clearly exposing such roundtrip arguments, one must be aware of the danger and alert to discover the circle under any disguise.

(2) Sometimes the question is begged by assuming a more general truth which involves the point at issue.1 Dr. Pond, for example, is said to have begun his introduction to the Book of Job with the statement that, although some skeptics have doubted whether Job was an historical character, the Bible settles that question for itself, for in the very first verse of the first chapter, it says: "There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job." In the implied assumption that every word of the Bible is literally true, Dr. Pond assumes a truth so broad as to involve the matter which "some skeptics have doubted."

1 Called assumptio non probata.

(3) Sometimes the question is begged by assuming particular truths which the proposition involves.

In one of Fielding's novels a debate occurs on the question "Can any honor exist independent of religion?" Each disputant tries to frame the definition so as to shut out the other side:

"Square answered that it was impossible to discourse philosophically concerning words till their meaning was first established; that there were scarce any two words of a more vague and uncertain signification than the two he had mentioned; for there were almost as many different opinions concerning honor as concerning religion. 'But,' says he, 'if by honor you mean the true, natural beauty of virtue, I will maintain it may exist independent of any religion whatever.'

"Thwackum replied, 'When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England. And when I mention honor, I mean that mode of divine grace which is not only consistent with and dependent upon that religion, but consistent with and dependent upon no other.'" 1

An effective way of exposing fallacies of begging the question is to state clearly the premises of your opponent's argument and demand proof for them. He must then either ignore the question, or, in attempting to prove the premises, expose his own fallacy.

In the simple forms of the syllogism, fallacies are obvious. But the most dangerous fallacies of everyday argument do not appear in such simple forms. They are indistinct and appear reasonable. This is particularly true of fallacies of begging the question, for they may hang together beautifully and yet have nothing to hang on. Their coherence is accepted in place of truth. Trusting in such argument because it looks reasonable is like relying on a fire-escape because it is made of strong rope, without asking what supports the rope. The following argument attempts to expose the faulty rea

1 Arranged from Tom Jones by Hammond Lamont. See English Composition, pp. 168, 169. (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906.)

soning of an editorial which begs the question a part at a time:

As proof that pupils cannot choose wisely, the opponents of the elective system employ amusing illustrations which prove nothing, but are accepted as substitutes for evidence and reason. A fair example is the following editorial from a Chicago paper:

The average high school boy has hardly got beyond the period when he is puzzled to decide whether he will be a general, an admiral, or a circus clown. To throw open a course of study to the election of such immature minds would be as edifying a spectacle as to allow an infant to experiment with different colored candies, for the similitude could be extended to the ultimate effect on brains and bowels.

This kind of argument is constantly urged against the elective system. Yet the first sentence not only assumes that there is such a being as "the average high school boy," which, for the purpose at hand, not all of us are ready to admit, but it also begs the question as to the maturity of high school pupils. The second sentence, making no distinction between infancy and adolescence, employs a false analogy, and then begs the question again by assuming that the elective system offers the child much that is useless or really harmful, as the colored candies are assumed to be. The truth is, that if any curriculum embraces studies which are useless, or harmful, or prematurely offered, the fault is not with the elective system but with those who allow such studies any place in the programme.

(4) Sometimes a single word begs the question. In the following opening sentence of a student's theme, the question is twice begged: "Each student ought to be allowed to take the form of exercise best suited to his physical needs, instead of wasting his time on the dumb bell drill." In the introduction to an argument in favor of intercollegiate football, a writer asked, "Shall we begrudge the time for sound physical development? Shall we do away with this manly sport?" On one occasion, a speaker announced at the outset, "The question is whether we shall have a policy of preparedness which, unlike the present policy, is for the best interests of the United States." In a debate, a speaker said, "The immediate origin of the question is the failure of Congress to give