354 FALLACIES. 



witnesses to restrain within any moderate limits the inter- 

 mixture of their inferences with the narrative of their percep- 

 tions, is well known to experienced cross-examiners ; and still 

 more is this the case when ignorant persons attempt to describe 

 any natural phenomenon. " The simplest narrative," says 

 Dugald Stewart,* " of the most illiterate observer involves 

 more or less of hypothesis ; nay, in general, it will be found 

 that, in proportion to his ignorance, the greater is the number 

 of conjectural principles involved in his statements. A village 

 apothecary (and, if possible, in a still greater degree, an expe- 

 rienced nurse) is seldom able to describe the plainest case, 

 without employing a phraseology of which every word is a 

 theory: whereas a simple and genuine specification of the 

 phenomena which mark a particular disease ; a specification 

 unsophisticated by fancy, or by preconceived opinions, may 

 be regarded as unequivocal evidence of a mind trained by long 

 and successful study to the most difficult of all arts, that of 

 the faithful interpretation of nature." 



The universality of the confusion between perceptions and 

 the inferences drawn from them, and the rarity of the power 

 to discriminate the one from the other, ceases to surprise us 

 when we consider that in the far greater number of instances 

 the actual perceptions of our senses are of no importance or 

 interest to us except as marks from which we infer something 

 beyond them. It is not the colour and superficial extension 

 perceived by the eye that are important to us, but the object, 

 of which those visible appearances testify the presence ; and 

 where the sensation itself is indifferent, as it generally is, we 

 have no motive to attend particularly to it, but acquire a habit 

 of passing it over without distinct consciousness, and going 

 on at once to the inference. So that to know what the sensa- 

 tion actually was, is a study in itself, to which painters, for 

 example, have to train themselves by special and long-con- 

 tinued discipline and application. In things further removed 

 from the dominion of the outward senses, no one who has not 

 great experience in psychological analysis is competent to 



* Elements of the Philosophy of the Mind, vol. ii. cb. 4, sect. 5. 



