376 FALLACIES. 



actionum, quee nullam constantiam aut reductionem patiuntur. 

 Significat enim, et quod circa aliud corpus facile se circum- 

 fundit ; et quod in se est indeterminabile, nee consistere 

 potest ; et quod facile cedit undique ; et quod facile se dividit 

 et dispergit ; et quod facile se unit et colligit ; et quod facile 

 fluit, et in motu ponitur ; et quod alteri corpori facile adhseret, 

 idque madefacit; et quod facile reducitur in liquidum, sive 

 colliquatur, cum antea consisteret. Itaque quum ad hujus 

 nominis praedicationem et impositionem ventum sit; si alia 

 accipias, flamma humida est ; si alia accipias, aer humidus non 

 est ; si alia, pulvis ininutus humidus est ; si alia, vitrum 

 humidum est: ut facile appareat, istam notionem ex aqua 

 tantum, et communibus et vulgaribus liquoribus, absque ulla 

 debita verificatione, temere abstractam esse." 



Bacon himself is not exempt from a similar accusation 

 when inquiring into the nature of heat : where he occasionally 

 proceeds like one who seeking for the cause of hardness, after 

 examining that quality in iron, flintj and diamond, should 

 expect to find that it is something which can be traced also in 

 hard water, a hard knot, and a hard heart. 



The word Kivnais in the Greek philosophy, and the words 

 Generation and Corruption both then and long afterwards, 

 denoted such a multitude of heterogeneous phenomena, that 

 any attempt at philosophizing in which those words were 

 used was almost as necessarily abortive as if the word hard 

 had been taken to denote a class including all the things 

 mentioned above. Kivrjo-te, for instance, which properly 

 signified motion, was taken to denote not only all motion 

 but even all change : aXXoiwatc being recognised as one of 

 the modes of Ktvjcrte. The effect was, to connect with every 

 form of aXAoiw<ne or change, ideas drawn from motion in the 

 proper and literal sense, and which had no real connexion 

 with any other kind of Kivv\aig than that. Aristotle and Plato 

 laboured under a continual embarrassment from this misuse 

 of terms. But if we proceed further in this direction we shall 

 encroach upon the Fallacy of Ambiguity, which belongs to a 

 different class, the last in order of our classification, Fallacies 

 of Confusion. 



