FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION. 521 



practical cautions, respecting the forms in which such unwarranted assump- 

 tions are most likely to be made. 



§ 2. In the cases in wliich, according to the thinkers of the ontological 

 school, the mind apprehends, by intuition, things, and the laws of things, 

 not cognizable by our sensitive faculty; those intuitive, or supposed intui- 

 tive, perceptions are undistinguishable from what the opposite school are 

 accustomed to call ideas of the mind. When they themselves say that they 

 perceive the things by an immediate act of a faculty given for that purpose 

 by their Creator, it would be said of them by their opponents that they 

 find an idea or conception in their own minds, and from the idea or concep- 

 tion, infer the existence of a corresponding objective reality. Nor would 

 this be an unfair statement, but a mere version into other words of the ac- 

 count given by many of themselves ; and one to which the more clear- 

 sighted of them might, and generally do, without hesitation, subscribe. 

 Since, therefore, in the cases which lay the strongest claims to be examples 

 of knowledge a priori, the mind proceeds from the idea of a thing to the 

 reality of the thing itself, we can not be surprised by finding that illicit 

 assumptions a priori consist in doing the same thing erroneously; in mis- 

 taking subjective facts for objective, laws of the percipient mind for laws 

 of the perceived object, properties of the ideas or conceptions for proper- 

 ties of the things conceived. 



Accordingly, a large proportion of the erroneous thinking which exists 

 in the world proceeds on a tacit assumption, that the same order must ob- 

 tain among the objects in nature which obtains among our ideas of them. 

 That if we always think of two things together, the two things must al- 

 ways exist together. That if one thing makes us think of another as pre- 

 ceding or following it, that other must precede it or follow it in actual 

 fact. And conversely, that w^hen we can not conceive two things togetlier 

 they can not exist together, and that their combination may, without fur- 

 ther evidence, be rejected from the list of possible occurrences. 



P'ew persons, I am inclined to think, have reflected on the great extent 

 to whicli this fallacy has prevailed, and prevails, in the actual beliefs and 

 actions of mankind. For a first illustration of it we may refer to a large 

 class of popular superstitions. If any one will examine in what circum- 

 stances most of those things agree, which in different ages and by differ- 

 ent portions of the human race have been considered as omens or prognos- 

 tics of some interesting event, whether calamitous or fortunate ; they will 

 be found very generally characterized by this peculiarity, that they cause 

 the mind to think of that, of which they are therefore supposed to forbode 

 the actual occurrence. " Talk of the devil and he will appear," has passed 

 into a proverb. Talk of the devil, that is, raise the idea, and the reality 

 will follow. In times when the appearance of that personage in a visible 

 form was thought to be no unfrequent occurrence, it has doubtless often 

 happened to persons of vivid imagination and susceptible nerves, that talk- 

 ing of the devil has caused them to fancy they saw him ; as, even in our 

 more incredulous days, listening to ghost stories predisposes us to see 

 ghosts ; and thus, as a prop to the a priori fallacy, there might come to be 

 added an auxiliary fallacy of malobservation, with one of false generaliza- 

 tion grounded on it. Fallacies of different orders often herd or cluster to- 

 gether in this fashion, one smoothing the way for another. But the origin 

 of the superstition is evidently that which Ave have assigned. In like man- 

 ner, it has been universally considered unlucky to speak of misfortune. 



