FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION. 349 



in ignorance. The opposite school hold that there 

 are other existences, suggested indeed to our minds 

 by these subjective phenomena, but not inferrible 

 from them, by any process either of deduction or of 

 induction; which, however, we must, by the constitu- 

 tion of our mental nature, recognise as realities ; and 

 realities, too, of a higher order than the phenomena 

 of our consciousness, being the efficient causes and 

 necessary substrata of all Phenomena. Among these 

 entities they reckon Substances, whether matter or 

 spirit; from the dust under our feet to the soul, and 

 from that to the Deity. All these according to them 

 are preternatural or supernatural beings, having no 

 likeness in experience, although experience is entirely 

 a manifestation of their agency. Their existence, 

 together with more or less of the laws to which 

 they conform in their operations, are, on this theory, 

 apprehended and recognised as real by the mind itself, 

 intuitively: experience (whether in the form of sensa- 

 tion, or of mental feeling) having no other part in the 

 matter than as affording a multitude of facts, which 

 are consistent with these necessary postulates of 

 reason, and which are explained and accounted for by 

 them. 



As it is foreign to the purpose of the present 

 treatise to determine on which side the truth lies as 

 between these theories, we are precluded from inquir- 

 ing into the existence, or defining the extent and 

 limits, of knowledge a priori, and from characterizing 

 the kind of correct assumption (if any such there be), 

 which the fallacy of incorrect assumption, now under 

 consideration, simulates. Yet since it is allowed on 

 both sides that such assumptions are occasionally 

 made improperly, we may find it practicable, without 

 entering into the ultimate metaphysical grounds of the 



