372 FALLACIES. 



nature to do. It is easily seen" (Mr. Whewell very 

 justly adds) " that such a mode of reasoning elevates 

 the familiar forms of language, and the intellectual 

 connexions of terms, to a supremacy over facts; 

 making truth depend upon whether terms are or are 

 not privative, and whether we say that bodies fall 

 naturally." 



The propensity to assume that the same relations 

 obtain between objects themselves, which obtain 

 between our ideas of them, is here seen in the ex- 

 treme stage of its developement. For the mode of 

 philosophizing, exemplified in the foregoing instances, 

 assumes no less than that the proper way of arriving 

 at knowledge of nature, is to study nature herself sub- 

 jectively; to apply our observation and analysis not 

 to the facts, but to the common notions entertained 

 of those facts. 



Many other equally striking examples may be 

 given of the tendency to assume that things which 

 for the convenience of common life are placed in 

 different classes, must differ in every respect. Of this 

 nature was the universal and deeply-rooted prejudice 

 of antiquity and the middle ages, that celestial and 

 terrestrial phenomena must be essentially different, 

 and could in no manner or degree depend upon the 

 same laws. Of the same kind, also, was the preju- 

 dice against which Bacon contended, that nothing 

 produced by nature could be successfully imitated by 

 man: " Calorem solis et ignis to to genere differre; ne 

 scilicet homines putent se per opera ignis, aliquid 

 simile iis quse in Natura fiunt, educere et formare 

 posse:" and again, " Compositionem tantum opus 

 Hominis, Mistionem vero opus solius Naturae esse : ne 

 scilicet homines sperent aliquam ex arte Corporum 



