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And since in reality we explain the Universe neither better nor worse with this idea than without it, the idea of God, the supreme petitio principii, is valueless.
By laying it down, therefore, at the commencement of the inquiry, that the sage must be happy, the disputed question respecting the summum bonum was in fact begged; with the further assumption, that pain and suffering, so far as they can co-exist with wisdom, are not unhappiness, and are no evil. The following are additional instances of Petitio Principii, under more or less of disguise.
In any other sense they are clear cases of Petitio Principii, since the word laudable, and the idea of boasting, imply principles of conduct; and practical maxims can only be proved from speculative truths, namely, from the properties of the subject-matter, and can not, therefore, be employed to prove those properties.
If the deduced conclusion can be verified in fact, the premisses grow more assured. Thus every real inference is an experiment, and 'proof' is an affair of continuous trial and verification not an infinite falling back upon an elusive 'certainty, but an infinite reaching forwards towards a fuller consummation. It is inevitably a petitio principii.
Hence this is a petitio principii, a begging of the question. If this were all that M. Leibnitz had to offer, he might as well have believed, and remained silent. But this was not all. He endeavours to show, that the world is absolutely perfect, without inferring its perfection from the assumed infinite perfection of its Author.
With this response, somewhat more tart than agreeable, the nobles were obliged to content themselves, and they accordingly took their leave. It must be confessed that they had been disposed to slide rather cavalierly over a good deal of ground towards the great object which they had in view. Certainly the petitio principii was a main feature of their logic.
This is the major premiss, divested of the petitio principii, and cut down to as much as is really known by direct evidence.
With this response, somewhat more tart than agreeable, the nobles were obliged to content themselves, and they accordingly took their leave. It must be confessed that they had been disposed to slide rather cavalierly over a good deal of ground towards the great object which they had in view. Certainly the petitio principii was a main feature of their logic.
The most effectual way, in fact, of exposing a petitio principii, when circumstances allow of it, is by challenging the reasoner to prove his premises; which if he attempts to do, he is necessarily driven into arguing in a circle.
The problem he sets out to solve, and he solves it by a petitio principii, is Why must we meet, why must we part, why must we bear this yoke of Must, Without our leave or ask or given, by tyrant Fate on victim thrust? The impermanence of things oppresses him, for he says in an adieu, . . . Haply some day we meet again; Yet ne'er the self-same man shall meet; the years shall make us other men.
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