“Mr. Allgood, if men are not likely to be influenced in the performance of a known duty by taking an oath to perform it, the oaths commonly administered are superfluous; if they are likely to be so influenced, every one should be made to take an oath to behave rightly throughout his life; but one or the other of these must be the case; therefore, either the oaths commonly administered are superfluous, or every man should be made to take an oath to behave rightly throughout his life.”
“Thank you, Mr. Goose, thank you, for placing the thing in such a lucid and irrefutable light,” answered Mr. Allgood, who seemed to be in mist all the time Mr. Goose was laying down his argument.
Had Mr. Allgood gone on with his questions up to the thousandth, each one being distinct from the other, Mr. Goose would have answered him, as far as he could, in the same formal, argumentative manner. But Mr. Allgood was getting jaded; the stretch of attention required by the reasoning of Mr. Goose was telling upon his patience; so he slided away to talk with one who spoke in less categorical style: not so propositional, syllogistic, and demonstrative.
And, as a rule, who does not sympathise with Mr. Allgood, as against Mr. Goose, in his method of talk? Syllogisms, propositions, predicates, majors, minors, sorites, enthymeme, copula, concrete, and such-like logical terms are all very well from a professor to his students in a lecture room, but introduced into ordinary conversation in company they are altogether out of place. No one with good taste, unless he has fearfully forgotten it, will disfigure his talk with them, however pure and efficient a logician he may be in reality.
Some of this class of talkers are nothing but mere shams in their art. They affect a knowledge of argumentative processes, and obtrude upon your attention by false reasoning conclusions which perhaps appear as legitimate as possible. You cannot deny, yet you cannot believe. You cannot refute by your logic, neither can you admit by your faith. Such are most of the sceptical talkers on the Bible, Christianity, etc. Milton speaks of this argumentative talker when he says,—
“But this juggler
Would think to chain my judgment, as mine eyes,
Obtruding false rules pranked in reason’s garb.”
Another species of this talker is thus described by Butler, in “Hudibras”:—
“He’d undertake to prove, by force
Of argument, a man’s a horse;
He’d prove a buzzard is no fowl,
And that a lord may be an owl;
A calf an alderman, a goose a justice,
And rooks committee men and trustees.”
Another kind may be noticed: the one whose arguments are generally of a class which, when seen through and used by sound wit, rebound upon himself. Trumball, in his “M’Fingal,” thus describes him:—
“But as some muskets do contrive it,
As oft to miss the mark they drive at,
And though well aimed at duck or plover,
Bear wide, and kick their owners over,—
So fared our squire, whose reas’ning toil
Would often on himself recoil,
And so much injured more his side,
The stronger arguments he apply’d.”