date

22 July 1810 6 Fallacies Ch | | Cause
22 July 1810 6

Fallacies Ch | | Cause and Obstacle

4

| | Universities 1 [...?]

| | 1. Per[...?] Universities

Note (a)?

The sanction /ceremony/ /let/ it may be said is an abuse, it involves in it in the supposition of its efficacy /efficiency/ is involved necessarily involved a supposition absurd and impious.: viz that man - any man by whom an oath is administered has God at his command, as /a Judge has a Sheriff and/ Sheriff has at his command a Sheriff and a Sheriff an execution, the man dooming the fellow creature to /infinite and/ clerant[?] or infinite or nobody knows or cares what losses and st[...?]ter torment and the almighty executing the sentence of course. If man has not this power over the Almighty, the oath is a vain ceremony, and in[?] regard to the punishment of which it is supposed to be productive the violation of it an act without effects

Let this be so /allowed/: For argument sake let this be so: but if so it be, the consequence is - not that the act of administering exercise of authority, but that it is an act of tyranny no less absurd and thus[?] impious.

The ceremony /engagement/ can not be at the same time awful, and frivolous: the engagement obligatory and unobligatory: the violation /profanation[?]/ of it flagitious and inurent[?]: awful /sacred/ for the purpose of justifying those by whom it is thus habitually administered, frivolous for the purpose of justifying them in administering it under a certainty of its being violated, and in and by its violation /being violated/ becoming a cause of perjury.
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  • Title: [10 July 1810 5 Ins or Eitherside Fallacies]
    Description: 10 July 1810 5 Ins or Eitherside

    Fallacies Ch | | Cause and Obstacle

    3

    | | Universities 1. Virtue

    Virtue Universities

    If [...?] be good work[?] every men soever be the pleads[?] [...?].

    At the time of that ceremony which in the metaphorical language of the place is called matriculation, the ceremony in the performance of which the youth becomes a Member of /limb/ the Kind Mother a body of laws constituting a closely printed 12\T oT\ volume is put into his hand, and at the same time an oath is administered to him by which he binds himself /he is made/ /a form of words is put into his mouth and repeated by him/ /under the sanction of an oath he is understood to bind himself/

    to observance to be paid without exception to every particle of law contained in it.

    Of this Oath the violation is constant, universal and notorious. (a)

    True it is that of the great bulk of the ordinances thus violated nothing can exceed the frivolousness: nothing consequently the innoxiousness of the acts by which the violation of them is performed /committed/ /accomplished/. But be the importance of the transgressions themselves ever so great ever so inconsiderable, this sanction employed to enforce observance, the sanction violated by unobservance is still the same.

    Murder is an atrocious deed going abroad without having put under the drive[?] a piece of lawn[?] called a band is an insignificant omission: but if a promise be given not to either of those acts, and in the evading of past promise the ceremony employed is the same, and that ceremony /the ceremony[?]/ is called an

    oath

    or the taking of law oath, if that oath be violated, perjury is committed, and so far as concerns the ceremony, the [...?]ch [...?]ld the violation of it the perjury, is the same /the impiety[?]/.

    (a) Note stating some of the instances
  • Title: [10 July 1810 4. Ins or Eitherside]
    Description: 10 July 1810 4. Ins or Eitherside

    Fallacies Ch | | Cause X Obstacle

    2 Universities 1. Virtue

    An oath /Oaths/, according to the nature of the proposition /for/ the truth of which it is employed to afford /find/ /ensure/ security is distinguished /are divided/ into assertory and promissory.

    In strictness the distinction is not a perfectly correct one: since /forasmuch as/ by a /by the sort of oath called/ promissory oath all that is done all that can be done, is to convey /give/ intimation of the present existence of a matter of fact as having place at that moment in the mind of him who swears /speaks/ /whose discourse it is/, viz. an intention of maintaining the line of conduct so promised to be maintained Between the two species of oaths, the true /real/ distinction lies - not in this viz. that the one contains an assertion, the other not, but in the different modes of violation of which they are respectively susceptible. In the case of the simply assertory or assertive oath, there is but one way /mode/ in which the oath can be violated, perjury committed: viz. if of any part of the matter of fact represented by the swearer as believed by him to be true, there be any part in respect of which he belief /either fails of entertaining such persuasion/, or much more if he entertains the opposite belief if the opposite persuasion be that which he entertains.

    The promissory oath on the other hand is understood to be violated in either of two cases: 1. if even at the very time of uttering the promise to maintain the line of conduct undertaken for /so promised/, the intention of maintaining it is in any part wanting, or if at any future point of time on the part of the person in question any point act opposite to or inconsistent with the line of conduct so undertaken for, comes

    eventually

    eventually /in the event/ knowingly and willingly to be performed.
  • Title: [PRIVATE §. 3. Exposure A o 1811]
    Description: PRIVATE

    §. 3. Exposure A o 1811

    To the absurdity involved, as above, in the notion of tying up the hands of generations yet to come is added in this case that which consists in the use sought to be made of supernatural power: the hand pressed into the service is that of the invisible and supreme ruler of the universe. In the former case may be seen an absurd object or end aimed at: in the present case a contrivance involving a separate absurdity is employed in the character of a means employed in the prosecution of that absurd end.

    The oath taken the form of words involved in it being pronounced, is or is not the almighty bound to do what is expected of him? Of the two contradictory propositions which is it that you believe?

    If he is not bound, then the sanction, the security, the bond, the obligation amounts to nothing. After it has been thus sought to be imposed, matters stand exactly upon the same footing as if no such obligation had been sought to be imposed.

    In the margin, Bentham has noted at this point: ‘Put it not on the footing of reasonableness or unreasonableness. On this ground it can not be put without [...?] the other.’

    If he is bound, then observe the consequence. The almighty is bound: and by whom bound? - of all the worms that crawl about upon the face of this minute speck in the mundane system called the earth in the shape of men not only by some one, but by any one, and by any number of thoem that please

    And to what is he bound? To every observance to a great number of contradictory and incompatible observances, if so they please in numbers as great as to any number of conflicting legislators it may please to concur in the imposing of these unperformable tasks.