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General Oglethorpe told the story of a Colonel Prendergast, an officer in the Duke of Marlborough's army, who predicted among his comrades that he should die on a certain day. The battle of Malplaquet took place on that day. The colonel was in the midst of it but came out unhurt. The firing had ceased, and his brother officers jested with him about the fallacy of his prediction.

Somehow even a popular fallacy has an aspect of truth when it suits one's own case. The Perpetual Curate went through his aunts' garden with a conscious smile, feeling once more master of himself and his concerns. There was, to tell the truth, even a slight shade of self-content and approbation upon his handsome countenance.

But it is in the individual consciousness that time curvature receives its most striking confirmation those lesser returns and rhythms to which we give the name of periodicity. Before considering these, however, a fundamental fallacy of the modern mind must be exposed.

When stated in precise terms, the fallacy of the "forward emission" theory is evident: "On issuing from the vocal cords the tone is directed in a curved path, around the back of the tongue. There the tone is straightened out, and made to impinge on the roof of the mouth at a precisely defined point.

It is a radical, a primitive impulse-elementary. It will be said, I am aware, that when we persist in acts because we feel we should not persist in them, our conduct is but a modification of that which ordinarily springs from the combativeness of phrenology. But a glance will show the fallacy of this idea. The phrenological combativeness has for its essence, the necessity of self-defence.

But although ARISTOTLE generally receives the credit of having exposed and demolished the fallacy of CTESIAS, it will be seen by a reference to his treatise On the Progressive Motions of Animals, that in reality he approached the question with some hesitation, and has not only left it doubtful in one passage whether the elephant has joints in his knee, although he demonstrates that it has joints in the shoulders ; but in another he distinctly affirms that on account of his weight the elephant cannot bend his forelegs together, but only one at a time, and reclines to sleep on that particular side.

They are also in fallacies, for every appearance confirmed as truth becomes a fallacy, and so far as they confirm themselves by fallacies they become naturalists and to that extent believe nothing that they cannot perceive by one of the bodily senses, particularly that of sight, for this especially acts as one with thought. They finally become sensuous.

He died of consumption in the workhouse of Ballykeerin, and there could not be a stronger proof of the fallacy with which he reasoned than the gratifying fact, that he had not been more than two months dead, when his son recovered his reason, to the inexpressible joy of his mother; so that had he followed up his own sense of what was right, he would have lived to see his most sanguine wishes, with regard to his son, accomplished, and perhaps have still been able to enjoy a comparatively long and happy life.

The fallacy of this conclusion is sufficiently apparent from the state in which cherries are found, after they have been steeped in brandy: instead of becoming more tender, they are rendered as tough as leather. Similar effects are produced on food in the stomach, as well as out of it.

He was so very old for his age, she thought; he could not be much beyond thirty; his hair was thick and full of waves, his eyes bright and clear, his complexion not yet divested of all youth's relics. "Now, Miss May, I'm at your service," said the philosopher, with a lingering look at his impaled fallacy; and he closed the book, keeping it, however, on his knee.