Speeches are convincing, that's their purpose. A person stands up and talks to others... but all with a sole purpose. This speaker might appear to be altogether selfless and doing it all for his audience. However, this is what he's supposed to do. Otherwise, why would people support him if they feel he's doing it for selfish reasons? They would never favor him, because in the end, everyone runs on selfish ideals. But then, how does the speaker pretend it is not for himself that he is doing it, but for the overall good of everyone? Well, through the use of fallacies, of course! Many speakers use these, and their audiences don't even notice. Among these speakers stands Mahatma Gandhi, who fills his Kingsley speech with fallacies but to a successful extent, as these are quite hard to find.
"Even in ordinary affairs we know that people do not know who rules or why and how He rules and yet they know that there is a power that certainly rules," says Gandhi as he begins his speech. It's a long sentence, isn't it? Well yes, long enough to hold two fallacies, even. First of all, it uses hasty generalization, because Gandhi is simply assuming that people don't know about their rulers. He doesn't even explain how he got to this conclusion, and yet, he generalizes on people's view of their rulers. In addition, this is definitely a many questions fallacy. Gandhi is squishing many issues into one: who rulers are, why God rules, and how He rules. He is simply treating all these questions as one, thus making this a fallacy.
Afterwards in his speech, Gandhi explains that what is governing everything "is not a blind law, for no blind law can govern conduct of living being...." But this is a fallacy of ignorance: Just because he has never heard of a blind law being able to govern "conduct of living being" does not mean that this is not possible. Just because his theory isn't disproved, he assumes it's true.
Further on in his speech, Gandhi asks "And is this power benevolent or malevolent?" referring to God's power. However, is it actually either good or bad? Couldn't it be anywhere in between? By ignoring all the other choices, Gandhi is committing a fallacy of false dilemma. He follows this sentence by saying: "I see it as purely benevolent, for I can see that in the midst of death life persists, in the mist of untruth truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists. Hence I gather that God is life, truth, light. He is love. He is supreme Good." This is definitely a wrong ending fallacy because, how does the fact that life, truth and light all persist, make Him benevolent? And how does the fact that He brings these three items automatically turn Him into these three items? Gandhi also out of nowhere adds to more items (love and Good) and pretends that they belong in his conclusion, but in all actuality he just inserted them, applying the wrong ending fallacy. And this "wrong ending" is what ends this entry, hopefully giving it a good ending and demonstrating Gandhi's hidden, ulterior techniques.
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