312 FALLACIES. 



idea, and the reality will follow. In times when the appear- 

 ance of that personage in a visible form was thought to be no 

 unfrequent occurrence, it has doubtless often happened to per- 

 sons of vivid imagination and susceptible nerves, that talking 

 of the devil has caused them to fancy they saw him ; as, even 

 in our more incredulous days, listening to ghost stories pre- 

 disposes us to see ghosts ; and thus, as a prop to the a priori 

 fallacy, there might come to be added an auxiliary fallacy of 

 mal-observation, with one of false generalization grounded on 

 it. Fallacies of different orders often herd or cluster together 

 in this fashion, one smoothing the way for another. But the 

 origin of the superstition is evidently that which we have 

 assigned. In like manner it has been universally considered 

 unlucky to speak of misfortune. The day on which any 

 calamity happened has been considered an unfortunate day, 

 and there has been a feeling everywhere, and in some nations 

 a religious obligation, against transacting any important busi 

 ness on that day. For on such a day our thoughts are likely 

 to be of misfortune. For a similar reason, any untoward 

 occurrence in commencing an undertaking has been considered 

 ominous of failure ; and often, doubtless, has really contributed 

 to it, by putting the persons engaged in the enterprise more 

 or less out of spirits : but the belief has equally prevailed 

 where the disagreeable circumstance was, independently of 

 superstition, too insignificant to depress the spirits by any 

 influence of its own. All know the story of Csesar's acciden- 

 tally stumbling in the act of landing on the African coast ; 

 and the presence of mind with which he converted the direful 

 presage into a favourable one by exclaiming, "Africa, I em- 

 brace thee." Such omens, it is true, were often conceived as 

 warnings of the future, given by a friendly or a hostile deity ; 

 but this very superstition grew out of a pre-existing tendency ; 

 the god was supposed to send, as an indication of what was to 

 come, something which people were already disposed to con- 

 sider in that light. So in the case of lucky or unlucky names. 

 Herodotus tells us how the Greeks, on the way to Mycale, 

 were encouraged in their enterprise by the arrival of a deputa- 



