Fallacies of Induction, where the facts on which the induction proceeds are erroneous, may be termed Fallacies of Observation. The term is not strictly accurate, or rather, not accurately coextensive with the class of fallacies which I propose to designate by it. Induction is not always grounded on facts immediately observed, but sometimes on facts inferred: and when these last are erroneous, the error may not be, in the literal sense of the term, an instance of bad observation, but of bad inference. It will be convenient, however, to make only one class of all the inductions of which the error lies in not sufficiently ascertaining the facts on which the theory is grounded; whether the cause of failure be mal-observation, or simple non-observation, and whether the mal-observation be direct, or by means of intermediate marks which do not prove what they are supposed to prove. And in the absence of any comprehensive term to denote the ascertainment, by whatever means, of the facts on which an induction is grounded, I will venture to retain for this class of fallacies, under the explanation now given, the title of Fallacies of Observation.
The other class of inductive fallacies, in which the facts are correct, but the conclusion not warranted by them, are properly denominated Fallacies of Generalization: and these, again, fall into various subordinate classes or natural groups, some of which will be enumerated in their proper place.
When we now turn to Fallacies of Deduction, namely those modes of incorrect argumentation in which the premises, or some of them, are general propositions, and the argument a ratiocination; we may of course subdivide these also into two species similar to the two preceding, namely, those which proceed on false premises, and those of which the premises, though true, do not support the conclusion. But of these species, the first must necessarily fall under some one of the heads already enumerated. For the error must be either in those premises which are general propositions, or in those which assert individual facts. In the former case it is an Inductive Fallacy, of one or the other class; in the latter it is a Fallacy of Observation: unless, in either case, the erroneous premise has been assumed on simple inspection, in which case the fallacy is _à priori_. Or finally, the premises, of whichever kind they are, may never have been conceived in so distinct a manner as to produce any clear consciousness by what means they were arrived at; as in the case of what is called reasoning in a circle: and then the fallacy is one of Confusion.