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CHAPTER VI.: FOURTH CAUSE—SELF-DEFENCE AGAINST COUNTER-FALLACIES. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 2 [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 2.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

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CHAPTER VI.

FOURTH CAUSE—SELF-DEFENCE AGAINST COUNTER-FALLACIES.

The opposers of a pernicious measure may be sometimes driven to employ fallacies, from their supposed utility as an answer to counter-fallacies.

“Such is the nature of men,” they may say, “that these arguments, weak and inconclusive as they are, are those which on the bulk of the people (upon whom ultimately everything depends) make the strongest and most effectual impression: the measure is a most mischievous one;—it were a crime on our parts to leave unemployed any means not criminal, that promise to be contributory to its defeat. It is the weakness of the public mind, not the weakness of our cause, that compels us to employ such engines in the defence of it.”

This defence might indeed be satisfactory, where the fallacies in question are employed—not as substitutes, but only as supplements to relevant and direct arguments.

But if employed as supplements, to prove their being employed in that character, and in that character only, and that the use thus made of them is not inconsistent with sincerity, two conditions seem requisite:—

1. That arguments of the direct and relevant kind be placed in the front of the battle, declared to be the main arguments, the arguments and considerations by which the opposition or support to the proposed measure was produced;

2. That on the occasion of employing the fallacies in question, an acknowledgment should be made of their true character, of their intrinsic weakness, and of the considerations which, as above, seemed to impose on the individual in question the obligation of employing them, and of the regret with which the consciousness of such an obligation was accompanied.

If, even when employed in opposition to a measure really pernicious, these warnings are omitted to be annexed to them, the omission affords but too strong a presumption of general insincerity. On the occasion in question, a man would have nothing to fear from any avowal made of their true character. Yet he omits to make this avowal. Why? Because he foresees that, on some other occasion or occasions, arguments of this class will constitute his sole reliance.

The more closely the above considerations are adverted to, the stronger is the proof which the use of such arguments, without such warnings, will be seen to afford of improbity or imbecility, or a mixture of the two, on the part of him by whom they are employed: of imbecility of mind, if the weakness of such arguments has really failed of becoming visible to him; of improbity, if, conscious of their weakness, and of their tendency to debilitate and pervert the faculties, intellectual and moral, of such persons as are swayed by them, he gives currency to them unaccompanied by such warning.

Is it of the one or of the other species of imperfection, or of a mixture of both, that such deceptious argumentation is evidentiary? On this occasion, as on others, the answer is not easy; nor, fortunately, is it material to estimate the connexion between these two divisions of the mental frame: so constantly and so materially does each of them exert an influence on the other, that it is difficult for either to suffer, but the other must suffer more or less along with it. On many a well-meaning man this base and spurious metal has no doubt passed for sterling; but if you see it burnished, and held up in triumph by the hands of a man of strong as well as brilliant talents—by a very Master of the Mint—set him down, without fear of injuring him, upon the list of those who deceive, without having any such excuse to plead as that of having been deceived.