FALLACIES IN GENERAL. 297 



parts : whether the ratiocinative or the experimental portion of 

 it be in fault, or the fault lie in dispensing with ratiocination 

 and induction altogether. 



2. In considering the sources of unfounded inference, 

 it is unnecessary to reckon the errors which arise, not from a 

 wrong method, nor even from ignorance of the right one, but 

 from a casual lapse, through hurry or inattention, in the 

 application of the true principles of induction. Such errors, 

 like the accidental mistakes in casting up a sum, do not call 

 for philosophical analysis or classification ; theoretical con- 

 siderations can throw no light upon the means of avoiding 

 them. In the present treatise our attention is required, not 

 to mere inexpertness in performing the operation in the right 

 way, (the only remedies for which are increased attention and 

 more sedulous practice,) but to the modes of performing it 

 in a way fundamentally wrong ; the conditions under which 

 the human mind persuades itself that it has sufficient grounds 

 for a conclusion which it has not arrived at by any of the 

 legitimate methods of induction which it has not, even care- 

 lessly or overhastily, endeavoured to test by those legitimate 

 methods. 



3. There is another branch of what may be called the 

 Philosophy of Error, which must be mentioned here, though 

 only to be excluded from our subject. The sources of erro- 

 neous opinions are twofold, moral and intellectual. Of these, 

 the moral do not fall within the compass of this work. They 

 may be classed under two general heads ; Indifference to the 

 attainment of truth, and Bias : of which last the most common 

 case is that in which we are biassed by our wishes ; but the 

 liability is almost as great to the undue adoption of a conclu- 

 sion which is disagreeable to us, as of one which is agreeable, 

 if it be of a nature to bring into action any of the stronger 

 passions. Persons of timid character are the more predis- 

 posed to believe any statement, the more it is calculated to 

 alarm them. Indeed it is a psychological law, deducible from 

 the most general laws of the mental constitution of man, that 



