Begging the Question.  The expression “begging the question” is often heard as a fallacy in argument.  In its simplest form it is similar to inaccurate statement, for it includes assertions introduced without proof, and the statement of things as taken for granted without attempting to prove them, yet using them to prove other statements.  Sometimes, also, a careless thinker, through an extended group of paragraphs will end by taking as proven exactly the proposition he started out to prove, when close analysis will show that nowhere during the discussion does he actually prove it.  As this is frequent in amateur debates, students should be on their guard against it.

Ignoring the Question.  The same kind of flimsy mental process results in ignoring the question.  Instead of sticking closely to the proposition to be proved the speaker argues beside the point, proving not the entire proposition but merely a portion of it.  Or in some manner he may shift his ground and emerge, having proven the wrong point or something he did not start out to consider.  An amateur theatrical producer whose playhouse had been closed by the police for violating the terms of his license started out to defend his action, but ended by proving that all men are equal.  In fact he wound up by quoting the poem by Burns, “A Man’s a Man for A’ That.”  Such a shifting of propositions is a frequent error of speakers.  It occurs so often that one might be disposed to term it a mere trick to deceive, or a clever though unscrupulous device to secure support for a weak claim.  One of the first ways for the speaker to avoid it is to be able to recognize it when it occurs.  One of the most quoted instances of its effective unmasking is the following by Macaulay.

The advocates of Charles, like the advocates of other malefactors against whom overwhelming evidence is produced, generally decline all controversy about the facts, and content themselves with calling testimony to character.  He had so many private virtues!  And had James the Second no private virtues!  Was Oliver Cromwell, his bitterest enemies themselves being judges, destitute of private virtues?  And what, after all, are the virtues ascribed to Charles?  A religious zeal, not more sincere than that of his son, and fully as weak and narrow-minded, and a few of the ordinary household decencies which half the tombstones in England claim for those who lie beneath them.  A good father!  A good husband!  Ample apologies indeed for fifteen years of persecution, tyranny, and falsehood!

We charge him with having broken his coronation oath; and we are told that he kept his marriage vow!  We accuse him of having given up his people to merciless inflictions of the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates; and the defence is, that he took his little son on his knee and kissed him!  We censure him for having violated the articles of the Petition of Right, after having, for good and valuable