FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION. 339 



be pepper in the soup there must be pepper in the cook who 

 made it, since otherwise the pepper would be without a cause. 

 A similar fallacy is committed by Cicero in his second book 

 De Finibus, where, speaking in his own person against the 

 Epicureans, he charges them with inconsistency in saying 

 that the pleasures of the mind had their origin from those of 

 the body, and yet that the former were more valuable, as if 

 the effect could surpass the cause. " Animi voluptas oritur 

 propter voluptatem corporis, et major est animi voluptas quam 

 corporis ? ita fit ut gratulator Isetior sit quam is cui gratu- 

 latur." Even that, surely, is not an impossibility : a person's 

 good fortune has often given more pleasure to others than it 

 gave to the person himself. 



Descartes, with no less readiness, applies the same prin- 

 ciple the converse way, and infers the nature of the effects 

 from the assumption that they must, in this or that property 

 or in all their properties, resemble their cause. To this class 

 belong his speculations, and those of so many others after 

 him, tending to infer the order of the universe, not from 

 observation, but by a priori reasoning from supposed qualities 

 of the Godhead. This sort of inference was probably never 

 carried to a greater length than it was in one particular 

 instance by Descartes, when, as a proof of one of his physical 

 principles, that the quantity of motion in the universe is 

 invariable, he had recourse to the immutability of the Divine 

 Nature. Reasoning of a very similar character is however 

 nearly as common now as it was in his time, and does duty 

 largely as a means of fencing off disagreeable conclusions. 

 Writers have not yet ceased to oppose the theory of divine 

 benevolence to the evidence of physical facts, to the principle 

 of population for example. And people seem in general to 

 think that they have used a very powerful argument, when 

 they have said, that to suppose some proposition true, would 

 be a reflection on the goodness or wisdom of the Deity. Put 

 into the simplest possible terms, their argument is, " If it had 

 depended on me, I would not have made the proposition true, 

 therefore it is not true." Put into other words it stands thus : 

 " God is perfect, therefore (what I think) perfection must 



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