361 FALLACIES. 



past to times still to come, holds equally true of similar 

 generalizations from present times to times past ; when per 

 sons whose acquaintance with moral and social facts is con 

 fined to their own age, take the men and the things of that age 

 for the type of men and things in general, and apply without 

 scruple to the interpretation of the events of history, the 

 empirical laws which represent sufficiently for daily guidance 

 the common phenomena of human nature at that time and in 

 that particular state of society. If examples are wanted, 

 almost every historical work, until a very recent period, 

 abounded in them. The same may he said of those who 

 generalize empirically from the people of their own country to 

 the people of other countries, as if human heings felt, judged, 

 and acted, everywhere in the same manner. 



5. In the foregoing instances, the distinction is con 

 founded between empirical laws, which express merely the 

 customary order of the succession of effects, and the laws of 

 causation on which the effects depend. There may, however, 

 be incorrect generalization when this mistake is not com 

 mitted ; when the investigation takes its proper direction, that 

 of causes, and the result erroneously obtained purports to be 

 a really causal law. 



The most vulgar form of this fallacy is that which is com 

 monly c&lleApost hoc, ergo propter hoc, or, cum hoc, ergo propter 

 hoc. As when it was inferred that England owed her industrial 

 pre-eminence to her restrictions on commerce : as when the 

 old school of financiers, and some speculative writers, main 

 tained that the national debt was one of the causes of national 

 prosperity : as when the excellence of the Church, of the 

 Houses of Lords and Commons, of the procedure of the law 

 courts, &c., were inferred from the mere fact that the country 

 had prospered under them. In such cases as these, if it 

 can be rendered probable by other evidence that the supposed 

 causes have some tendency to produce the effect ascribed to 

 them, the fact of its having been produced, though only in 

 one instance, is of some value as a verification by specific 

 experience : but in itself it goes scarcely any way at all 



