FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION. 377 



able of the numerous instances by which I shall think 

 it necessary to exemplify it, will be taken from the 

 writings of recent philosophers. This is, that the 

 conditions of a phenomenon must, or at least probably 

 will, resemble the phenomenon itself. 



Conformably to what we have before remarked 

 to be of frequent occurrence, this fallacy might 

 without much impropriety have been placed in a 

 different class, among Fallacies of Generalization: 

 for experience does afford a certain degree of counte- 

 nance to the assumption. The cause does, in very 

 many cases, resemble its effect; like produces like. 

 Many phenomena have a direct tendency to perpe- 

 tuate their own existence, or to give rise to other 

 phenomena similar to themselves. Not to mention 

 forms actually moulded upon one another, as impres- 

 sions on wax and the like, in which the closest resem- 

 blance between the effect and its cause is the very 

 law of the phenomenon; all motion tends to continue 

 itself, with its own velocity, and in its own original 

 direction; and the motion of one body tends to set 

 others in motion, which is indeed the most common 

 of the modes in which the motions of bodies origi- 

 nate. We need scarcely refer to contagion, fermen- 

 tation, and the like ; or to the production of effects by 

 the growth or expansion of a germ or rudiment 

 resembling on a smaller scale the completed pheno- 

 menon as in the growth of a plant or animal from an 

 embryo, that embryo itself deriving its origin from 

 another plant or animal of the same kind. Again, the 

 thoughts, or reminiscences, which are effects of our 

 past sensations, resemble those sensations; feelings 

 produce similar feelings by way of sympathy; acts 

 produce similar acts by involuntary or voluntary imi- 

 tation. With so many appearances in its favour, no 



