FALLACIES OF OBSERVATION . 353 



are blended in almost everything which is called observation, 

 and still more in every Description.* What is actually on 

 any occasion perceived by our senses being so minute in 

 amount, and generally so unimportant a portion of the state 

 of foots which we wish to ascertain or to communicate; it 

 would be absurd to say that either in our observations, or in 

 conveying their result to others, we ought not to mingle 

 inference with fact; all that can be said is, that when we do 

 so we ought to be aware of what we are doing, and to know 

 what part of the assertion rests on consciousness, and is 

 therefore indisputable, what part on inference, and is therefore 

 questionable. 



One of the most celebrated examples of an universal error 

 produced by mistaking an inference for the direct evidence of 

 the senses, was the resistance made, on the ground of common 

 sense, to the Copernican system. People fancied they saw 

 the sun rise and set, the stars revolve in circles round the pole. 

 We now know that they saw no such thing; what they really 

 saw was a set of appearances, equally reconcileable with the 

 theory they held and with a totally different one. It seems 

 strange that such an instance as this, of the testimony of the 

 senses pleaded with the most entire conviction in favour of 

 something which was a mere inference of the judgment, and, 

 as it turned out, a false inference, should not have opened the 

 eyes of the bigots of common sense, and inspired them with a 

 more modest distrust of the competency of mere ignorance to 

 judge the conclusions of cultivated thought. 



In proportion to any person s deficiency of knowledge and 

 mental cultivation, is generally his inability to discriminate 

 between his inferences and the perceptions on which they were 

 grounded. Many a marvellous tale, many a scandalous anec 

 dote, owes its origin to this incapacity. The narrator relates, 

 not what he saw or heard, but the impression which he derived 

 from what he saw or heard, and of which perhaps the greater 

 part consisted of inference, though the whole is related not as 

 inference but as matter-of-fact, The difficulty of inducing 



* Supra, p. 182. 



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