will believe, as a
rule, that they have agreed with you out of pure conviction. For what
is not to our interest mostly seems absurd to us; our intellect being
no _siccum lumen_. This trick might be called "taking the tree by its
root"; its usual name is the _argumentum ab utili_.

XXXVI.

You may also puzzle and bewilder your opponent by mere bombast; and
the trick is possible, because a man generally supposes that there
must be some meaning in words:

_Gewoehnlich glaubt der Mensch, wenn er nur Worte hoert,
Es muesse sich dabei doch auch was denken lassen_.

If he is secretly conscious of his own weakness, and accustomed to
hear much that he does not understand, and to make as though he did,
you can easily impose upon him by some serious fooling that sounds
very deep or learned, and deprives him of hearing, sight, and thought;
and by giving out that it is the most indisputable proof of what you
assert. It is a well-known fact that in recent times some philosophers
have practised this trick on the whole of the public with the most
brilliant success. But since present examples are odious, we may refer
to _The Vicar of Wakefield_ for an old one.

XXXVII.

Should your opponent be in the right, but, luckily for your
contention, choose a faulty proof, you can easily manage to refute it,
and then claim that you have thus refuted his whole position. This
is a trick which ought to be one of the first; it is, at bottom, an
expedient by which an _argumentum ad hominem_ is put forward as an
_argumentum ad rem_. If no accurate proof occurs to him or to the
bystanders, you have won the day. For example, if a man advances the
ontological argument by way of proving God's existence, you can get
the best of him, for the ontological argument may easily be refuted.
This is the way in which bad advocates lose a good case, by trying to
justify it by an authority which does not fit it, when no fitting one
occurs to them.

XXXVIII.

A last trick is to become personal, insulting, rude, as soon as you
perceive that your opponent has the upper hand, and that you are going
to come off worst. It consists in passing from the subject of dispute,
as from a lost game, to the disputant himself, and in some way
attacking his person. It may be called the _argumentum ad personam_,
to distinguish it from the _argumentum ad hominem_, which passes
from the objective discussion of the subject pure and simple to the
statements or admissio