FALLACIES OF OBSERVATION. 347 



his senses, is almost always such as exactly confirms the 

 opinions with which he set out. He has had eyes and ears for 

 such things only as he expected to see. Men read the sacred 

 books of their religion, and pass unobserved therein, multitudes 

 of things utterly irreconcileable with even their own notions of 

 moral excellence. With the same authorities before them, dif 

 ferent historians, alike innocent of intentional misrepresenta 

 tion, see only what is favourable to Protestants or Catholics, 

 royalists or republicans, Charles I. or Cromwell ; while others, 

 having set out with the preconception that extremes must be 

 in the wrong, are incapable of seeing truth and justice when 

 these are wholly on one side. 



The influence of a preconceived theory is well exemplified 

 in the superstitions of barbarians respecting the virtues 

 of medicaments and charms. The negroes, among whom 

 coral, as of old among ourselves, is worn as an amulet, affirm, 

 according to Dr. Paris,* that its colour &quot; is always affected by 

 the state of health of the wearer, it becoming paler in disease.&quot; 

 On a matter open to universal observation, a general pro 

 position which has not the smallest vestige of truth is 

 received as a result of experience ; the preconceived opinion 

 preventing, it would seem, any observation whatever on the 

 subject. 



4. For illustration of the first species of non-observation, 

 that of Instances, what has now been stated may suffice. 

 But there may also be non-observation of some material 

 circumstances, in instances which have not been altogether 

 overlooked nay, which may be the very instances on which 

 the whole superstructure of a theory has been founded. As, 

 in the cases hitherto examined, a general proposition was too 

 rashly adopted, on the evidence of particulars, true indeed, 

 but insufficient to support it; so in the cases to which we 

 now turn, the particulars themselves have been imperfectly 

 observed, and the singular propositions on which the generali 

 zation is grounded, or some at least of those singular proposi 

 tions, are false. 



* Pharmaeologia, p. 21. 



