FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION. 371 



One or as Many things. They tried to determine 

 how far we may, or must, combine with these con- 

 ceptions that of a whole, of parts, of number, of 

 limits, of place, of beginning or end, of full or void, 

 of rest or motion, of cause and effect, and the like. 

 The analysis of such conceptions with such a view, 

 occupies, for instance, almost the whole of Aristotle's 

 Treatise on the Heavens." 



The following paragraph merits particular atten- 

 tion: "Another mode of reasoning, very widely 

 applied in these attempts, was the doctrine of contra- 

 rieties, in which it was assumed, that adjectives or 

 substantives which are in common language, or in 

 some abstract mode of conception, opposed to each 

 other, must point at some fundamental antithesis in 

 nature, which it is important to study. Thus Aris- 

 totle says, that the Pythagoreans, from the contrasts 

 which number suggests, collected ten principles 

 Limited and Unlimited, Odd and Even, One and 

 Many, Right and Left, Male and Female, Rest and 

 Motion, Straight and Curved, Light and Darkness, 

 Good and Evil, Square and Oblong . . . Aristotle 

 himself deduced the doctrine of four elements and 

 other dogmas by oppositions of the same kind." 



Of the manner in which, from premisses obtained 

 in this way, the ancients attempted to deduce laws of 

 nature, one example is given by Mr. Whewell a few 

 pages further on. "Aristotle decides that there is no 

 void, on such arguments as this. In a void there 

 could be no difference of up and down; for as in 

 nothing there are no differences, so there are none in 

 a privation or negation ; but a void is merely a priva- 

 tion or negation of matter; therefore, in a void, bodies 

 could not move up and down, which it is in their 



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