§ 870. The 'argumentum ad verecundiam' is an appeal to the feeling of reverence or shame. It is an argument much used by the old to the young and by Conservatives to Radicals. § 871. The 'argumentum ad ignorantiam' consists simply in trading on the ignorance of the person addressed, so that it covers any kind of fallacy that is likely to prove effective with the hearer. § 872. The 'argumentum ad baculum' is unquestionably a form of irrelevancy. To knock a man down when he differs from you in opinion may prove your strength, but hardly your logic. A sub-variety of this form of irrelevancy was exhibited lately at a socialist lecture in Oxford, at which an undergraduate, unable or unwilling to meet the arguments of the speaker, uncorked a bottle, which had the effect of instantaneously dispersing the audience. This might be set down as the 'argumentum ad nasum.' § 873. We now come to the Fallacy of the Consequent, a term which has been more hopelessly abused than any. What Aristotle meant by it was simply the assertion of the consequent in a conjunctive proposition, which amounts to the same thing as the simple conversion of A (§ 489), and is a fallacy of distribution. Aristotle's example is this-- If it has rained, the ground is wet. .'. If the ground is wet, it has rained. This fallacy, he tells us, is often employed in rhetoric in dealing with presumptive evidence. Thus a speaker, wanting to prove that a man is an adulterer, will argue that he is a showy dresser, and has been seen about at nights. Both these things however may be the case, and yet the charge not be true. § 874. The Fallacy of Petitio or Assumptio Principii [Greek: tò èn àrchê aìteîstai or lambánein] to which we now come, consists in an unfair assumption of the point at issue. The word [Greek: aìteîstai], in Aristotle's name for it points to the Greek method of dialectic by means of question and answer. This fact is rather disguised by the mysterious phrase 'begging the question.' The fallacy would be committed when you asked your opponent to grant, overtly or covertly, the very proposition originally propounded for discussion.