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Helpful, Rob said. Did you do better? I asked. The following passage from the argument in refutation of the Epicureans, in the second book of Cicero,De Finibus, affords a fine example of this sort of fallacy: “Et quidem illud ipsum non nimium probo (et tantum patior) philosophum loqui de cupiditatibus finiendis. An potest cupiditas finiri? tollenda est, atque extrahenda radicitus. Quis est enim, in quo sit cupiditas, quin recte cupidus dici possit? Ergo et avarus erit, sed finite: adulter, verum habebit modum: et luxuriosus eodem modo. Qualis ista philosophia est, quæ non interitum afferat pravitatis, sed sit contenta mediocritate vitiorum? The question was, whether certain desires, when kept within bounds, are vices or not; and the argument decides the point by applying to them a word (cupiditas) which implies vice. It is shown, however, in the remarks which follow, that Cicero did not intend this as a serious argument, but as a criticism on what he deemed an inappropriate expression. “Rem ipsam prorsus probo: elegantiam desidero. Appellet hæc desideria naturæ; cupiditatis nomen servet alio, etc. But many persons, both ancient and modern, have employed this, or something equivalent to it, as a real and conclusive argument. We may remark that the passage respecting cupiditas and cupidus is also an example of another fallacy already noticed, that of Paronymous Terms. Perception being infallible evidence of whatever is really perceived, the error now under consideration can be committed no otherwise than by mistaking for conception what is, in fact, inference. We have formerly shown how intimately the two are blended in almost every thing which is called observation, and still more in every Description.[255]What is actually on any occasion perceived by our senses being so minute in amount, and generally so unimportant a portion of the state of facts which we wish to ascertain or to communicate; it would be absurd to say that either in our observations, or in conveying their result to others, we ought not to mingle inference with fact; all that can be said is, that when we do so we ought to be aware of what we are doing, and to know what part of the assertion rests on consciousness, and is therefore indisputable, what part on inference, and is therefore questionable. Rob knew from the expressions on their faces, from what he had already seen of their methods, that he could expect no mercy. These men were clearing out. They had played the game to the end of the string and now within a few hours they would be scattering to the four winds, hunting places of concealment, before the State Police and the Federal Narcotics Division could broadcast accurate information. Their numerical equality under all the figures; and Waiting for his attacker to make the next move. Where will you be going first? I asked. § 3. Those who considered thedictum de omni as the foundation of the syllogism, looked upon arguments in a manner corresponding to the erroneous view which Hobbes took of propositions. Because there are some propositions which are merely verbal, Hobbes, in order apparently that his definition might be rigorously universal, defined a proposition as if no propositions declared any thing except the meaning of words. If Hobbes was right; if no further account than this could be given of the import of propositions; no theory could be given but the commonly received one, of the combination of propositions in a syllogism. If the minor premise asserted nothing more than that something belongs to a class, and if the major premise asserted nothing of that class except that it is included in another class, the conclusion would only be that what was included in the lower class is included in the higher, and the result, therefore, nothing except that the classification is consistent with itself. But we have seen that it is no sufficient account of the meaning of a proposition, to say that it refers something to, or excludes something from, a class. Every proposition which conveys real information asserts a matter of fact, dependent onthe laws of nature, and not on classification. It asserts that a given object does or does not possess a given attribute; or it asserts that two attributes, or sets of attributes, do or do not (constantly or occasionally) co-exist. Since such is the purport of all propositions which convey any realknowledge, and since ratiocination is a mode of acquiring real knowledge, any theory of ratiocination which does not recognize this import of propositions, can not, we may be sure, be the true one. Besides, from time immemorial, women have smiled in the face of imminent rape. Smiling at a would-be rapist is the equivalent of smiling around a pistol someone has thrust in your mouth. Especially if you have a ring piercing your tongue. But smile she does, and then explains to them, in English, of course, that she is an American, and she wishes they would let her proceed up the mountain in peace. The only word they understand isAmerican. So, naturally, they pounce upon her, and pummel her, and throw her to the ground, and rape her, all four of them, one at a time, or so her story goes. My mother still isnt sure. Im not sure I want her here again, Maggie said. Len Macintosh was waiting for me when I got back to the hotel. Sitting in the lobby and smoking his sissy cigarettes. He climbed up out of his chair, met me, and said: Television commentators? Annie asked. Can you hypnotize a person through a television set? No. It is scarcely necessary to say, that in order to ascertain the uniform concomitance of variations in the effect with variations in the cause, the same precautions must be used as in any other case of the determination of an invariable sequence. We must endeavor to retain all the other antecedents unchanged, while that particular one is subjected to the requisite series of variations; or, in other words, that we may be warranted in inferring causation from concomitance of variations, the concomitance itself must be proved by the Method of Difference. You can say that again, Roy thought, smiling inwardly..