FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION. 311 



in their own minds, and from the idea or conception, infer the 

 existence of a corresponding objective reality. Nor would 

 this be an unfair statement, but a mere version into other 

 words of the account given by many of themselves ; and one 

 to which the more clear-sighted of them might, and generally 

 do, without hesitation, subscribe. Since, therefore, in the 

 cases which lay the strongest claims to be examples of know- 

 ledge a priori, the mind proceeds from the idea of a thing to 

 the reality of the thing itself, we cannot be surprised by find- 

 ing that illicit assumptions a priori consist in doing the same 

 thing erroneously: in mistaking subjective facts for objective, 

 laws of the percipient mind for laws of the perceived object, 

 properties of the ideas or conceptions for properties of the 

 things conceived. 



Accordingly, a large proportion of the erroneous thinking 

 which exists in the world proceeds on a tacit assumption, that 

 the same order must obtain among the objects in nature 

 which obtains among our ideas of them. That if we always 

 think of two things together, the two things must always 

 exist together. That if one thing makes us think of another 

 as preceding or following it, that other must precede it or 

 follow it in actual fact. And conversely, that when we cannot 

 conceive two things together they cannot exist together, and 

 that their combination may, without further evidence, be re- 

 jected from the list of possible occurrences. 



Few persons, I am inclined to think, have reflected on the 

 great extent to which this fallacy has prevailed, and prevails, 

 in the actual beliefs and actions of mankind. For a first illus- 

 tration of it, we may refer to a large class of popular super- 

 stitions. If any one will examine in what circumstances most 

 of those things agree, which in different ages and by different 

 portions of the human race have been considered as omens or 

 prognostics of some interesting event, whether calamitous or 

 fortunate ; they will be found very generally characterized by 

 this peculiarity, that they cause the mind to think of that, of 

 which they are therefore supposed to forebode the actual 

 occurrence. " Talk of the devil, and he will appear," has 

 passed into a proverb. Talk of the devil , that is, raise the 



