310 



FALLACIES. 



recognise as realities ; and realities, too, of a higher order 

 than the phenomena of our consciousness, being the efficient 

 causes and necessary substrata of all Phenomena. Among 

 these entities they reckon Substances, whether matter or 

 spirit; from the dust under our feet to the soul, and from that 

 to Deity. All these, according to them, are preternatural or 

 supernatural beings, having no likeness in experience, though 

 experience is entirely a manifestation of their agency. Their 

 existence, together with more or less of the laws to which 

 they conform in their operations, are, on this theory, appre- 

 hended and recognised as real by the mind itself intuitively : 

 experience (whether in the form of sensation or of mental 

 feeling) having no other part in the matter than as affording 

 facts which are consistent with these necessary postulates 

 of reason, and which are explained and accounted for by 

 them. 



As it is foreign to the purpose of the present treatise to 

 decide between these conflicting theories, we are precluded 

 from inquiring into the existence, or defining the extent and 

 limits, of knowledge a priori, and from characterizing the 

 kind of correct assumption which the fallacy of incorrect as- 

 sumption, now under consideration, simulates. Yet since it is 

 allowed on both sides that such assumptions are often made 

 improperly, we may find it practicable, without entering into 

 the ultimate metaphysical grounds of the discussion, to state 

 some speculative propositions, and suggest some practical 

 cautions, respecting the forms in which such unwarranted 

 assumptions are most likely to be made. 



2. In the cases in which, according to the thinkers of 

 the ontological school, the mind apprehends, by intuition, 

 things, and the laws of things, not cognizable by our sensitive 

 faculty; those intuitive, or supposed intuitive, perceptions are 

 undistinguishable from what the opposite school are accus- 

 tomed to call ideas of the mind. When they themselves say 

 th at they perceive the things by an immediate act of a faculty 

 given for that purpose by their Creator, it would be said of 

 th em by their opponents that they find an idea or conception 



