'The Athenians who opposed the union of Greece and Macedonia were old men, and the result was mischievous; other similar instances are found in history; therefore the government of old men is always mischievous.'--A fallacy of false generality. Everybody knows that some old men have been wise governors. Cicero, from his experience, drew the opposite conclusion--that the only safe rulers were old men. 'All old political leaders are mischievous; Gladstone is old; therefore he is to be considered politically mischievous.'--Even were the precedent not false the argument is superfluous, for the effect of Gladstone's politics is now matter of fact or history. 'Gladstone is politically mischievous; he advocates Home Rule for Ireland; therefore Irish Home Rule must be mischievous.'--A fallacy of division: a political leader might on the whole be mischievous, but his measures need not on that account be each and every one mischievous. If dialectic were taught generally and on a rational method, a responsible author would avoid bad reasoning of this sort as carefully as he avoids bad grammar, vulgar imagery, or faulty arithmetic. * * * * * * Transcriber's note: Punctuation has been corrected without comment. The spelling in this book is that found in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Page 78: 'comformable' corrected to 'conformable' "The following is an argument conformable to the above rules." Page 99: "un-extended, im-material, im-ponderable" The author used hyphens in the above words for emphasis. Other instances of hyphens used for emphasis occur in the book. Other instances of hyphenated and unhyphenated words occur in the book. Page 164: 'premiss' is a variant of 'premise' (OED), which occurs more frequently in the book. Page 216: 'inclose is a variant of 'enclose' (OED). "All the fish that the net inclosed were an indiscriminate...."