FALLACIES OF GENERALIZATION. 



well established. Let it be shown, for instance, that the 

 most complex series of physical causes and effects succeed 

 one another in the eye and in the brain to produce a sensa- 

 tion of colour ; rays falling on the eye, refracted, converging, 

 crossing one another, making an inverted image on the 

 retina, and after this a motion let it be a vibration, or a 

 rush of nervous fluid, or whatever else you are pleased to 

 suppose, along the optic nerve a propagation of this motion 

 to the brain itself, and as many more different motions as 

 you choose; still, at the end of these motions, there is 

 something which is not motion, there is a feeling or sensation 

 of colour. Whatever number of motions we may be able to 

 interpolate, and whether they be real or imaginary, we shall 

 still find, at the end of the series, a motion antecedent and a 

 colour consequent. The mode in which any one of the 

 motions produces the next, might possibly be susceptible of 

 explanation by some general law of motion ; but the mode in 

 which the last motion produces the sensation of colour, cannot 

 be explained by any law of motion ; it is the law of colour : 

 which is, and must always remain, a peculiar thing. Where 

 our consciousness recognises between two phenomena an 

 inherent distinction; where we are sensible of a difference 

 which is not merely of degree, and feel that no adding 

 one of the phenomena to itself would produce the other; 

 any theory which attempts to bring either under the laws 

 of the other must be false; though a theory which merely 

 treats the one as a cause or condition of the other, may pos- 

 sibly be true. 



4. Among the remaining forms of erroneous generali- 

 zation, several of those most worthy of and most requiring 

 notice have fallen under our examination in former places, 

 where, in investigating the rules of correct induction, we have 

 had occasion to advert to the distinction between it and some 

 common mode of the incorrect. In this number is what I 

 have formerly called the natural Induction of uninquiring 

 minds, the Induction of the ancients, which proceeds per 



