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And don't you fancy a fairy, looking in at your window for a flash after having just jumped over the moon and played mulberry bush with the Pleiades, would think you were a vegetable structure, and that sitting still was the nature of the organism?" "I don't happen to believe in fairies," said the doctor rather stiffly, for the argumentum ad hominem was becoming too common.
But the fact is, that in most of these apologies no such reasoning is employed, and even when it is to be found in their pages, is only incidental and by way of illustration, to explain the rational character of the Christian doctrine of God by a sort of argumentum ad hominem.
Fight everything which injures it. Above all, fight bad traditions, instincts that have become useless or harmful. "Scio et volo me esse hominem," writes Nicolai at the close of his book. "I know that I am a man, and I wish to be one."
"A-hem " repeated the Yankee, the argumentum ad hominem still prominent in his eyes "well, now, I take it, friend, there's no love to spare for the people you speak of down in these parts. They don't seem to smell at all pleasant in this country."
"Drive post-haste," he said, "and there will be three francs for drink-money for you." Then, seeing that Lucien hesitated, "Come! come!" he exclaimed, and Lucien took his place again, telling himself that he meant to try the effect of the argumentum ad hominem.
Some of the bewhiskered men who sat about him stirred, but cast their eyes toward their own captain, young Banion, whose function as their spokesman had thus been usurped by his defeated rival, Woodhull. Perhaps few of them suspected the argumentum ad hominem or rather ad feminam in Woodhull's speech. Banion alone knew this favor-currying when he saw it, and knew well enough the real reason.
Our own death does not sufficiently terrify and trouble us; let us, moreover, charge ourselves with those of our wives, children, and family: our own affairs do not afford us anxiety enough; let us undertake those of our neighbours and friends, still more to break our brains and torment us: "Vah! quemquamne hominem in animum instituere, aut Parare, quod sit carius, quam ipse est sibi?"
In the heat of discussion Brandenburg on one occasion is said to have given his intended son-in-law a box on the ear! an argument 'ad hominem' which seems to have had the effect of sending the Palatine into the bosom of the ancient church and causing him to rely thenceforth upon the assistance of the League.
Therefore I regard this paragraph, p. 223-4, as a specimen of admirable special pleading 'ad hominem' in the Court of eristic Logic; but I condemn it as a wilful resignation or temporary self-deposition of the reason. I will not suppose what my reason declares to be no position at all, and therefore an impossible sub-position. Ib. p. 235.
To do more than this, should be rather exceptive, and confined to subordinate matters, else Centralization becomes mischievous...." And again, later in the year, in answer to a letter from Mr. Toulmin Smith: "What I said of 'Democracy' was meant as argumentum ad hominem to that side, not as intending to identify myself with it, but I see the danger you speak of.
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