Note 11 — Chapter I

When in an argument we pass from the collective to the distributive use of a term, or vice versâ, we have what is technically called a fallacy of division or of composition as the case may be. The following are examples: The people who attended Great St Mary’s contributed more than those who attended Little St Mary’s, therefore, A (who attended the former) gave more than B (who attended the latter); All the angles of a triangle are less than two right angles, therefore A, B, and C, which are all the angles of a triangle, are together less than two right angles. The point of the old riddle, “Why do white sheep eat more than black?” consists in the unexpected use of terms collectively instead of distributively.