76. False Reasonings or Sophisms. -- With Mill we may divide sophisms into two classes:

(1) Sophisms of simple inspection, or a priori sophisms. These are prejudices, that is, maxims generally accepted without argument, which, therefore, no one doubts, and which, nevertheless, are erroneous or at least equivocal.

Example: To lay down as a principle that the logical order must correspond with the ontological -- "ideas with things". This preconceived dogma is one of the supports of Pantheism. -- To repudiate a priori one or more means of knowing and then to pronounce absolutely unknowable whatever eludes the one means of knowing which has been arbitrarily set aside. This prejudice enables Rationalism to deny all revelation. -- To affirm without reserve that man is entitled to unbounded liberty.

(2) Sophisms in reasoning properly so called, or sophisms of inference.

Of these some are sophisms of induction; others, of deduction, comprising sophisms in terms and in form.