Index of Popular Fallacies
POPULAR FALLACIES
Not a man, woman, or
child in ten miles round Guildhall, who really believes this saying.
The inventor of it did not believe it himself. It was made in
revenge by somebody, who was disappointed of a regale. It is a
vile cold-scrag-of-mutton sophism; a lie palmed upon the palate,
which knows better things. If nothing else could be said for a
feast, this is sufficient, that from the superflux there is usually
something left for the next day. Morally interpreted, it belongs
to a class of proverbs, which have a tendency to make us undervalue
money. Of this cast are those notable observations, that money
is not health; riches cannot purchase every thing: the metaphor
which makes gold to be mere muck, with the morality which traces
fine clothing to the sheep's back, and denounces pearl as the
unhandsome excretion of an oyster. Hence, too, the phrase which
imputes dirt to acres -- a sophistry so barefaced, that even the
literal sense of it is true only in a wet season. This, and abundance
of similar sage saws assuming to inculcate content, we verily
believe to have been the invention of some cunning borrower, who
had designs upon the purse of his wealthier neighbour, which he
could only hope to carry by force of these verbal jugglings. Translate
any one of these sayings out of the artful metonyme which envelops
it, and the trick is apparent. Goodly legs and shoulders of mutton,
exhilarating cordials, books, pictures, the opportunities of seeing
foreign countries, independence, heart's ease, a man's own time
to himself, are not much -- however we may be pleased to scandalise
with that appellation the faithful metal that provides them for
us.