CHAPTER III. 



FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION; OR A PRIORI FALLACIES. 



L. THE tribe of errors of which we are to treat in the 

 first instance, are those in which no actual inference takes 

 place at all : the proposition (it cannot in such cases be called 

 a conclusion) being embraced, not as proved, but as requiring 

 no proof; as a self-evident truth ; or else as having such 

 intrinsic verisimilitude, that external evidence not in itself 

 amounting to proof, is sufficient in aid of the antecedent 

 presumption. 



An attempt to treat this subject comprehensively would be 

 a transgression of the bounds prescribed to this work, since it 

 would necessitate the inquiry which, more than any other, 

 is the grand question of what is called metaphysics, viz. 

 What are the propositions which may reasonably be received 

 without proof? That there must be some such propositions 

 all are agreed, since there cannot be an infinite series of proof, 

 a chain suspended from nothing. But to determine what these 

 propositions are, is the opus magnum of the more recondite 

 mental philosophy. Two principal divisions of opinion on the 

 subject have divided the schools of philosophy from its first 

 dawn. The one recognises no ultimate premises but the facts 

 of our subjective consciousness ; our sensations, emotions, 

 intellectual states of mind, and volitions. These, and what 

 ever by strict rules of induction can be derived from these, it 

 is possible, according to this theory, for us to know; of all 

 else we must remain in ignorance. The opposite school hold 

 that there are other existences, suggested indeed to our minds 

 by these subjective phenomena, but not inferrible from them, 

 by any process either of deduction or of induction; which, 

 however, we must, by the constitution of our mental nature 



