Every applicable rule of Dr. Whately's logic is, of course, applied here--it is true in mood and figure, and yet the argument is fallacious. A fallacy is defined as 'an ingenious mixture of truth and falsehood, so entangled as to be intimately blended--that the falsehood is, in chemical phrase, _held in solution_: one drop of sound logic is that test which immediately disunites them, makes the foreign substance visible, and precipitates it to the bottom.'* But whence is to come 'this drop of sound logic?' Not from the Doctor's _Elements,_ they have sent forth the fallacy. But touch it with the talisman of facts and; the error will appear. * Whately's Logic, Anal. Out., chap. 1, stc. 4. What facts support the assertion that Afflictions are dispensations of Providence?' The simple question is fatal to the argument. Can such a proposition have facts for its support? Ignorance, congregating in narrow courts, and laziness, accumulating filth, generate sickness and affliction. Are these the dispensations of Providence, or the dispensations of folly and crime? To ascribe them to Providence is virtually to allow ignorance and laziness to step into the throne of God, and call upon men to believe in _their_ beneficent dispensations. Dr. Watts, another writer on logic, set the Christian congregations of England to sing the same species of fallacy:--- "Diseases are the servants, Lord, They come at thy command; I'll not attempt a murm'ring word, Against thy chast'ning hand." According to this lyrical logician, whenever wise precautions arrest the progress of pestilence, or the physician's skill subdues disease, Jehovah is robbed of a servant. By such an argument, humanity is made to be in rebellion against heaven, and our medical colleges are in antagonism with Deity, and the recent appointment, by the Russell government, of a Sanatory Commission, was high blasphemy. It is the degradation of language to employ it to such a purpose, and logic needs revising to save us from publishing such puerility in the name of learning and of reason. It must have been logic of this kind that induced a strong-thoughted woman to hazard the bold but tenable conjecture, that 'If an argument has truth in it, less than a philosopher will see it--and if it has not, less than a logician will refute it.'* * A Few Days in Athens, by Frances Wright. R. G. Latham, M.D., in his 'First Outlines of Logic applied to Grammar and Etymology,' has introduced the particular instance of the syllogism on Providence here cited from Whately. It would be no difficult task to present other instances of the same species of polemical fallacy from Dr. Whately and other writers on logic, did it comport with the rule I have chosen for observance. I give these cases chiefly to show how extensively and obtrusively they are introduced. 'We have,' says Mr. Mill, 'five distinguishable classes of fallacy, which may to expressed in the following synoptic table:--