Found Poetry of Fallacies (1864)

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"Proposed Dictionary of Mechanical Fallacies"

"While Ignorant of Follies How Can We Become Wise?"

The author ("E") writes to the readers of 1864 in The Journal of the Franklin Institute¹ an odd and open letter on truth, beauty, and the importance of recognizing fallacy.  "E" has a bit of a hard time of it, writing more in the style of an early 19th-century figure than someone at mid-century, but sooner or letter he gets to his point, and along the way there are some pretty interesting observations. He also takes things a bit too far in places, but if you concentrate on his successes, the article is worth a read. It isn't a suggestion of De Morgan's A Budget of Paradoxes, but "E" provides enough in three pages to make it a good read.  

In the spirit of poetic adventure I offer some of the "E" article below in situ as "Found Poetry of Fallacies":

As a class to none is the caution, “Beware of Fallacies” more necessary than to inventors.

Of all men they ought to know that truth is only to be reached

through conflicts with error through that which steals on them in flattering guise and captivates them with plausible counterfeits.

It may seem strange that so many keen and shrewd inquires fall into mechanical sophistries

and what is worse fall in love with them but the illusions are too seductive to be resisted.

The fact is as true in physics as in morals:

 "When fiction rises pleasing to the eye. Men will believe because they love the lie”  (Witness those who yet befool themselves with Perpetual Motions the grossest of mechanical falsehoods."

 

As this has been thought rather anomalous and outré a few more thoughts on it may not be deemed out of place.

The proposition is not so preposterous as it may seem nor is it so at all. The principle is universally recognized.

In all things we need to be shown the evil and the good.

To appreciate the one we must know something of the other.

While ignorant of follies how can we become wise.

Intelligence is a ceaseless struggle with error in social civil political philosophical mechanical and every other department of life...

The full article, via Google Books:

 

 

Notes:

1.  Journal of the Franklin Institute, Volume 47; Volume 77 1864.