The book of fallacies Author:Jeremy Bentham Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Section VII. Contrast Between The Present Work And Hamilton's " Parliamentary Logic." Of this work, the general conception bad been formed, and in the comp... more »osition of it some little progress made, when the advertisements brought under the author's notice the posthumous work intituled " Parliamentary Logic, by the late William Gerard Hamilton," distinguished from so many other Hamil- tons by the name of Single-speech Hamilton. Of finding the need of a work such as the present, superseded in any considerable degree by thut of the right honourable orator, the author had neither hope nor apprehension : but his surprise was not inconsiderable on finding scarcely in any part of the two works any the smallest degree of coincidence. In respect of practical views and objects, it would not indeed be true to say that between the one and the other there exists not any relation ; for there exists a pretty close one, namely, the relation of contrariety. When, under the title of " Directions to Servants," Swift presented to view a collection of such various faults as servants, of different descriptions, had been found or supposed by him liable to fall into, his object (it need scarce be said), if he had any serious object beyond that of making his readers laugh, was, not that compliance, but that non-compliance, with the directions so humorously delivered, should be the practical result. Taking that work of Swift's for his pattern, and what seemed the serious object of it, for his guidance, the author of this work occasionally found in the form of a direction for the framing of a fallacy, what seemed the most convenient vehicle for conveying a conception of its nature: as in some instances, for conveying a conception of the nature of the figure he is occupied in the description ...« less