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Then cropped up 'levitations' and 'elongations' of the person, and Mr. Home delighted to put red-hot coals on the heads of his friends. None of these manifestations, however, were sufficient to make the spiritualistic theory any other than a huge petitio principii.

The assumption that each series is complete without a break, and that an all-including analysis of vital processes in terms of mechanical processes must ultimately be possible, is a petitio principii, and breaks down before the objections raised by the vitalists. The most central problem in the whole matter, namely, the relation of the causal to the teleological, has not been touched.

Oh those hates and passions! They are the dialectical balls with which Mr. Brown goes through his performance in that circle of petitio principii so hated by all logicians, the middle sphere of intellects too light for the solid earth of fact and too gross for the aerial heaven of imagination. It will be a fitting conclusion to present to Mr. Brown a very serious matter which he has overlooked.

Yet the acknowledgment so explicitly made, has not prevented one set of writers from continuing to represent the syllogism as the correct analysis of what the mind actually performs in discovering and proving the larger half of the truths, whether of science or of daily life, which we believe; while those who have avoided this inconsistency, and followed out the general theorem respecting the logical value of the syllogism to its legitimate corollary, have been led to impute uselessness and frivolity to the syllogistic theory itself, on the ground of the petitio principii which they allege to be inherent in every syllogism.

Such is a brief abstract of the argument of the Essay. Can any thing be less conclusive, a more complete fallacy and petitio principii? Mr.

And yet this is your course in relation to industry. You forget the end aimed at, which is the well-being of the community; you set it aside; more, you sacrifice it by a perfect petitio principii. But we cannot lead our opponents to look at things from our point of view; let us now take theirs: let us examine the question as producers. I will seek to prove: 1.

Still, with the same 'petitio principii' that the Reformed religion and the dogmas of the Contra-Remonstrants were one and the same thing, he assured the Assembly that the authority of the magistrates would be sustained by him so long as it did not lead to the subversion of religion. Clearly the time for argument had passed.

Hanging an assassin is illogical because it does not restore the life of his victim; incarceration is logical; therefore, incarceration does quod, erat demonstrandum. Two wrongs certainly do not make a right, but the veritable thing in dispute is whether taking the life of a life-taker is a wrong. So naked and unashamed an example of petitio principii would disgrace a debater in a pinafore.

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.

Perhaps, however, that way of putting it may be objected to, on the ground that it is a petitio principii and assumes the very fact it is necessary to prove, viz. that the lowest tribes that are or can be known to us have made the search and given it up, whereas the contention is that they have never made the search. That contention, I will remark in passing, is one which never can be proved.