(2) A dicto secundum quid ad dictum secundum alterum quid.  It may be urged that, since the tax on tea is uniform, therefore all consumers contribute equally to the revenue for their enjoyment of it.  But written out fairly this argument runs thus:  Since tea is taxed uniformly 4d. per lb., all consumers pay equally for their enjoyment of it whatever quantity they use.  These qualifications introduced, nobody can be deceived.

(3) A dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid, also called fallacia accidentis.  Thus:  To take interest upon a loan is perfectly just, therefore, I do right to exact it from my own father in distress.  The popular answer to this sort of blunder is that ’circumstances alter cases.’  We commit this error in supposing that what is true of the average is likely to be true of each case; as if one should say:  ’The offices are ready to insure my house [with thousands of others] against fire at a rate per annum which will leave them heavy losers unless it lasts a hundred years; so, as we are told not to take long views of life, I shall not insure.’

The Fallacy of Division and Composition consists in suggesting, or assuming, that what is true of things severally denoted by a term is true of them taken together.  That every man is mortal is generally admitted, but we cannot infer that, therefore, the human race will become extinct.  That the remote prospects of the race are tragic may be plausibly argued, but not from that premise.

Changing the Premises is a fallacy usually placed in this division; although, instead of disguising different meanings under similar words, it generally consists in using words or phrases ostensibly differing, as if they were equivalent:  those addressed being expected to renounce their right to reduce the argument to strict forms of proof, as needless pedantry in dealing with an author so palpably straightforward.  If an orator says—­’Napoleon conquered Europe; in other words, he murdered five millions of his fellow creatures’—­and is allowed to go on, he may infer from the latter of these propositions many things which the former of them would hardly have covered.  This is a sort of hyperbole, and there is a corresponding meiosis, as:  ’Mill admits that the Syllogism is useful’; when, in fact, that is Mill’s contention.  It may be supposed that, if a man be fool enough to be imposed upon by such transparent colours, it serves him right; but this harsh judgment will not be urged by any one who knows and considers the weaker brethren.

Sec. 9.  The above classification of Fallacies is a rearrangement of the plans adopted by Whately and Mill.  But Fallacies resemble other spontaneous natural growths in not submitting to precise and definite classification.  The same blunders, looked at from different points of view, may seem to belong to different groups.  Thus, the example given above to illustrate fallacia accidentis, ’that, since it is