Note 34 — Chapter VII · FALLACIES OF CONFUSION.

An example of this fallacy is the popular error that strong drink must be a cause of strength. There is here fallacy within fallacy; for granting that the words "strong" and "strength" were not (as they are) applied in a totally different sense to fermented liquors and to the human body, there would still be involved the error of supposing that an effect must be like its cause; that the conditions of a phenomenon are likely to resemble the phenomenon itself; which we have already treated of as an à priori fallacy of the first rank. As well might it be supposed that a strong poison will make the person who takes it, strong.