A
bad grain crop or a season of reckless speculation may obliterate all
the traceable causes of a change in the tariff. Arguments from motive,
too, are apt to fall into this error. It is notorious that human motives
are mixed. If you argue that a whole class of business organizations are
evil because they have been formed solely for the purpose of making
inordinate and oppressive profits, you leave out of sight a motive which
is strong among American business men--the interest in seeing a great
business more efficiently managed, and the desire to exercise power
beneficently; and your argument suffers from its illegitimate assumption
of a simple cause. So in the same way if you are arguing for or against
the advantages of the elective system in a school or a college, or of a
classical education, or of athletics, it would be folly to assume that
any one cause or effect covered the whole case. Whenever in an argument
you are trying to establish any such large and complex fact, you must be
wary lest you thus assume a single cause where in reality there are a
legion of causes.
41. Deductive Logic--the Syllogism. Deductive logic, as we have seen,
deals with reasoning which passes from general principles to individual
cases. Its typical form is the syllogism, in which we pass from two
propositions which are given to a third, the conclusion.
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