(2) Verbal propositions offered as proof of some matter of fact.  These have, indeed, one attribute of axioms; they are self-evident to any one who knows the language; but as they only dissect the meaning of words, nothing but the meaning of words can be inferred from them.  If anything further is arrived at, it must be by the help of real propositions.  How common is such an argument as this:  ’Lying is wrong, because it is vicious’—­the implied major premise being that ’what is vicious is wrong.’  All three propositions are verbal, and we merely learn from them that lying is called vicious and wrong; and to make that knowledge deterrent, it must be supplemented by a further premise, that ’whatever is called wrong ought to be avoided.’  This is a real proposition; but it is much more difficult to prove it than ’that lying ought to be avoided.’  Still, such arguments, though bad Logic, often have a rhetorical force:  to call lying not only wrong but vicious, may be dissuasive by accumulating associations of shame and ignominy.

Definitions, being the most important of verbal propositions (since they imply the possibility of as many other verbal propositions as there are defining attributes and combinations of them), need to be watched with especial care.  If two disputants define the same word in different ways, with each of the different attributes included in their several definitions they may bring in a fresh set of real propositions as to the agency or normal connection of that attribute.  Hence their conclusions about the things denoted by the word defined, diverge in all directions and to any extent.  And it is generally felt that a man who is allowed to define his terms as he pleases, may prove anything to those who, through ignorance or inadvertence, grant that the things that those terms stand for have the attributes that figure in his definitions.

(3) Circulus in demonstrando, the pretence of giving a reason for an assertion, whilst in fact only repeating the assertion itself—­generally in other words.  In such cases the original proposition is, perhaps, really regarded as self-evident, but by force of habit a man says ‘because’; and then, after vainly fumbling in his empty pocket for the coin of reason, the habit of symbolic thinking in words only, without reference to the facts, comes to his rescue, and he ends with a paraphrase of the same assertion.  Thus a man may try to prove the necessity of Causation:  ’Every event must have a cause; because an event is a change of phenomena, and this implies a transformation of something pre-existing; which can only have been possible, if there were forces in operation capable of transforming it.’  Or, again:  ’We ought not to go to war, because it is wrong to shed blood.’  But, plainly, if war did not imply bloodshed, the unlawfulness of this could be nothing against war.  The more serious any matter is, the more important it becomes either to reason thoroughly about it, or to content ourselves with wholesome assertions.  How many ‘arguments’ are superfluous!