364 FALLACIES. 



It may be imagined what havoc metaphysicians 

 trained in these habits made with philosophy, when 

 they came to the largest generalizations of all. Sub- 

 stantive Secundfs of any kind were bad enough, but 

 such Substantise Secundse as TO ov, for example, and 

 TO evy standing for peculiar entities supposed to be 

 inherent in all things which exist, or which are said 

 to be one, were enough to put an end to all intelligible 

 discussion; especially since, with a just perception 

 that the truths which philosophy pursues are general \ 

 truths, it was soon laid down that these general sub- 

 stances were the only objects of science, being immu- 

 table, while individual substances cognizable by the 

 senses, being in a perpetual flux, could not be the sub- 

 ject of real knowledge. This misapprehension of the 

 import of general language constitutes Mysticism, 

 a word so much oftener written and spoken than un- 

 derstood. Whether in the.Vedas, in the Plato nists, 

 or in the Hegelians, mysticism is neither more nor 

 less than ascribing objective existence to the subjective 

 creations of the mind's own faculties, to mere ideas of 

 the intellect; and believing that by watching and con- 

 templating these ideas of its own making, it can read 

 in them what takes place in the world without. 



5. Proceeding with the enumeration of a priori 

 fallacies, and endeavouring to arrange them with as 

 much reference as possible to their natural affinities, 

 we come to another, which is also nearly allied to the 

 fallacy preceding the last, standing in the same rela- 

 tion to one variety of it as the fallacy last mentioned 

 does to the other. This, too, represents nature as 

 bound to conform herself to the incapacities of our 

 intellect; but instead of only asserting that nature 

 cannot do a thing because we cannot conceive it done, 



