326 FALLACIES. 



that their ideas followed the accidental or arbitrary combina- 

 tions of that language, more completely than can happen 

 among the moderns to any but illiterate persons. They had 

 great difficulty in distinguishing between things which their 

 language confounded, or in putting mentally together things 

 which it distinguished; and could hardly combine the objects 

 in nature, into any classes but those which were made for 

 them by the popular phrases of their own country : or at least 

 could not help fancying those classes to be natural, and all 

 others arbitrary and artificial. Accordingly, scientific investi- 

 gation among the Greek schools of speculation and their 

 followers in the middle ages, was little more than a mere 

 sifting and analysing of the notions attached to common 

 language. They thought that by determining the meaning 

 of words, they could become acquainted with facts. " They 

 took for granted," says Dr. Whewell,* " that philosophy must 

 result from the relations of those notions which are involved! 

 in the common use of language, and they proceeded to seek it 

 by studying such notions." In his next chapter, Dr. Whewell 

 has so well illustrated and exemplified this error, that I shall 

 take the liberty of quoting him at some length. 



" The propensity to seek for principles in the common 

 usages of language may be discerned at a very early period. 

 Thus we have an example of it in a saying which is reported 

 of Thales, the founder of Greek philosophy. When he was 

 asked, ' What is the greatest thing ?' he replied * Place; for all 

 other things are in the world, but the world is in it.' In 

 Aristotle we have the consummation of this mode of specula- 

 tion. The usual point from which he starts in his inquiries 

 is, that we say thus or thus in common language. Thus, when 

 he has to discuss the question whether there be, in any part of 

 the universe, a void, or space in which there is nothing, he 

 inquires first in how many senses we say that one thing is in 

 another. He enumerates many of these ; we say the part is 

 in the whole, as the finger is in the hand ; again we say, the 

 species is in the genus, as man is included in animal ; again, 



* Hist. Ind. Sc. Book i. chap. i. 



