placed in this division;
although, instead of disguising different meanings under similar words,
it generally consists in using words or phrases ostensibly differing, as
if they were equivalent: those addressed being expected to renounce
their right to reduce the argument to strict forms of proof, as needless
pedantry in dealing with an author so palpably straightforward. If an
orator says--'Napoleon conquered Europe; in other words, he murdered
five millions of his fellow creatures'--and is allowed to go on, he may
infer from the latter of these propositions many things which the former
of them would hardly have covered. This is a sort of hyperbole, and
there is a corresponding meiosis, as: 'Mill _admits_ that the Syllogism
is useful'; when, in fact, that is Mill's _contention_. It may be
supposed that, if a man be fool enough to be imposed upon by such
transparent colours, it serves him right; but this harsh judgment will
not be urged by any one who knows and considers the weaker brethren.

Sec. 9. The above classification of Fallacies is a rearrangement of the
plans adopted by Whately and Mill. But Fallacies resemble other
spontaneous natural growths in not submitting to precise and definite
classification. The same blunders, looked at from different points of
view, may seem to belong to different groups. Thus, the example given
above to illustrate _fallacia accidentis_, 'that, since it is just to
take interest, it is right to exact it from one's own father,' may also
be regarded as _petitio principii_, if we consider the unconditional
statement of the premise--'to take interest upon a loan is perfectly
just'; for, surely, this is only conditionally true. Or, again, the
first example given of simple ambiguity--'that whatever is written in a
classical language is classical, etc.,' may, if we attend merely to
the major premise, be treated as a bad generalisation, an undue
extension of an inference, founded upon a simple enumeration of the
first few Greek and Latin works that one happened to remember.

It must also be acknowledged that genuine wild fallacies, roaming the
jungle of controversy, are not so easily detected or evaded as specimens
seem to be when exhibited in a Logician's collection; where one surveys
them without fear, like a child at a menagerie. To assume the succinct
mode of statement that is most convenient for refutation, is not the
natural habit of these things. But to give reality to his account of