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Updated: May 8, 2025
The fallacy of the proverb, that "those who run may read," being established, modern science set about the adoption of a medium, available to those sons of the century who are always on the run. The pictorial printing-press is now your only wear! Every thing is communicated by delineation. We are not told, but shown how the world is wagging.
There is a strong tendency in the human mind to flatter itself with secret hopes, with some lucky reservation in our own favour, though reason may point out the grossness of the trick in general; and, besides, there is a wonderful power in words, formed into regular propositions, and printed in capital letters, to draw the assent after them, till we have proof of their fallacy.
We cannot speak more favourably of the manner in which the notes are written than of the matter of which they consist. We find in every page words used in wrong senses, and constructions which violate the plainest rules of grammar. We have the vulgarism of "mutual friend," for "common friend." We have "fallacy" used as synonymous with "falsehood."
Newman is guilty of a fallacy when he brings up brick, sell, and cut as instances in support of his position, for in these cases Mr. Arnold would only object to his use of them in their slang sense. He himself would hardly venture to say that Hector was a brick, that Achilles cut Agamemnon, or that Ulysses sold Polyphemus.
This fault is very incident to the scholarly style, which often sacrifices emphasis and conviction to a futile air of encyclopaedic grandeur. Those who are repelled by this redundance of ornament, from which even great writers are not wholly exempt, have sometimes been driven by the force of reaction into a singular fallacy.
In what manner then will you be eased, if the expenses of government are to be raised solely out of the commerce of this country; do you not readily apprehend the fallacy of this argument?
There is, for instance, a popular and prevalent fallacy that women ought to be submissive to, and governed by, their lords and masters. In feminine fiction we see a very wholesome reaction against this mistaken supposition. The hero of the female tale is often a poor, frivolous, easily led person.
Pray, dearest Eleanor, does that good aunt of yours now don't frown, I am not going to speak disrespectfully of her ever take a liking to young gentlemen whom you detest, and insist upon the fallacy of your opinion and the unerring rectitude of hers? If so, you can pity and comprehend my grief. Mamma has formed quite an attachment to a very disagreeable person!
It is the number of laborers which produces the surplus for taxation; and numbers, therefore, indiscriminately, are the fair index of wealth. That it is the use of the word "property" here, and its application to some of the people of the State, which produces the fallacy. How does the Southern farmer procure slaves? Either by importation or by purchase from his neighbor.
Despite the vigor of this sketch, the perusal of ten pages of Sartor Resartus or of the French Revolution teaches more in regard to the nature of this imagination than all the commentaries. For a point of view in criticism that has seemed correct to many on this matter, compare the well-known chapter on the "Pathetic Fallacy" by Ruskin, in his Modern Painters. Ibid., p. 115.
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