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To say that there is no logical alternative between Rome and Agnosticism is a sufficiently shallow though popular sophism. At most it means that from certain given premisses one or other of those conclusions must follow syllogistically a statement that would be more interesting were the said premisses indisputable and admitted by all the world.
To demonstrate this, is to render a moral reason. Such is the object of virtue. A common sophism, which, like many others, depends on the abuse of a metaphorical expression to a literal purpose, has produced much of the confusion which has involved the theory of morals. It is said that no person is bound to be just or kind, if, on his neglect, he should fail to incur some penalty.
A few rich men among a multitude of poor have all the more power because they are few, and they used all their influence with the people to dethrone the Prophet from His height, and to undermine His career. These illustrious men found their best tools in the Rabbis, who circulated the sophism that the people who followed the teaching of this man must quickly come to ruin.
Whatever difference we may suppose betwixt them, it is still incomprehensible to us; and we are obliged either to conceive an external object merely as a relation without a relative, or to make it the very same with a perception or impression. The consequence I shall draw from this may, at first sight, appear a mere sophism; but upon the least examination will be found solid and satisfactory.
Deerslayer, on the other hand, manifested a very different temper, proving by the moderation of his language, the fairness of his views, and the simplicity of his distinctions, that he possessed every disposition to hear reason, a strong, innate desire to do justice, and an ingenuousness that was singularly indisposed to have recourse to sophism to maintain an argument; or to defend a prejudice.
This, it must certainly be perceived, by an attentive investigation, is the result of the Sophism in question. In vain, gentlemen, are all your efforts; you cannot give money to one without taking it from another.
We must eliminate this error, common to the scheme of the atheist and to that of the theist, if we would organize the truths which both contain, and present them together in one harmonious and symmetrical system; into a system which will enable us, not merely to stand upon the defensive, and parry off the attacks of the sceptic, but to enter upon his own territory, and demolish his strongholds; not merely to oppose his argument by a counter-argument, but to explode his sophism, and exhibit the cause of God in cloudless splendour.
Philotas the physician lived in his service, and one day at supper when Philotas silenced a tiresome talker with a foolish sophism the young Antony gave him as a reward the whole sideboard of plate. But in the middle of this gaiety and feasting Antony was recalled to Europe by letters which told him that his wife and brother had been driven out of Rome by Octavianus.
Inexorable logic as voiced by Commines, if it was logic at all and not a sophism, might coerce the King to a terrible justice, but would the father's love not welcome the reconcilement of a son's penitence as a way of escape from the ultimate horror of the logic?
It is needless to remark that this whole argument, whatever may be said of the former one, is a pure fallacy, and a petitio principii throughout. The Cartesian form of it is the most glaringly fallacious, and indeed exposes itself; for by that reasoning we might prove the existence of a fiery dragon or any other phantom of the brain. But even King's more concealed sophism is equally absurd.
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