to teach universal knowledge; Theology is surely a branch of knowledge; how then is it possible for it to profess all branches of knowledge, and yet to exclude from the subjects of its teaching one which, to say the least, is as important and as large as any of them?  I do not see that either premise of this argument is open to exception.[51]

The obvious answer is that “university” is a vague term and that there may be many kinds of universities, as indeed there are in this country; moreover, the importance of theology is an arguable matter even among church members.

A well-recognized, but often subtle, form of begging the question is what is known as “arguing in a circle.”  Usually the fallacy is so wrapped up in verbiage that it is hard to pick out.  Here is a clear and well-put detection of a case of it: 

There is an argument in favor of child labor so un-American and so inhuman that I am almost ashamed to quote it, and yet it has been used, and I fear it is secretly in the minds of some who would not openly stand for it.  A manufacturer standing near the furnace of a glasshouse and pointing to a procession of young Slav boys who were carrying the glass on trays, remarked, “Look at their faces, and you will see that it is idle to take them from the glasshouse in order to give them an education:  they are what they are, and will always remain what they are.”  He meant that there are some human beings—­and these Slavs of the number—­who are mentally irredeemable, so fast asleep intellectually that they cannot be awakened; designed by nature, therefore, to be hewers of wood and drawers of water.  This cruel and wicked thing was said of Slavs; it is the same thing which has been said from time immemorial by the slave owners of their slaves.  First they degrade human beings by denying them the opportunity to develop their better nature:  no schools, no teaching, no freedom, no outlook; and then, as if in mockery, they point to the degraded condition of their victims as a reason why they should never be allowed to escape from it.[52]

In a diffuse and disorderly argument there is always a chance to find some begging of the question which may consist either of getting back to an assumption of the original proposition and so arguing in a circle, or of simply assuming that what has been asserted has been proved.  The fallacy of the invented example, in which a fictitious case is described as an illustration, and presently assumed as a real case, is a not uncommon form of begging the question.

48.  Ignoring the Question.  This is a closely allied error in reasoning that is apt to be due to the same kind of confused and woolly thinking.  It consists in slipping away from the question in debate and arguing vigorously at something else.  A famous exposure of the fallacy is Macaulay’s denunciation of the arguments in favor of Charles I: