384 FALLACIES. 



that " the law of causality holds only between homo- 

 geneous things, i. e., things having some common pro- 

 perty/' and therefore, "cannot extend from one 

 world into another, its opposite :" hence, as mind and 

 matter have no common property, mind cannot act 

 upon matter nor matter upon mind. What is this but 

 the a priori fallacy of which we are speaking? The 

 doctrine, like many others of Coleridge, is taken from 

 Spinosa, in the first book of whose Etkica (De Deo) 

 it stands as the Third Proposition: " Quse res nihil 

 commune inter se habent, earum una alterius causa 

 esse non potest," and is there proved from two so- 

 called axioms, equally gratuitous with itself; but 

 Spinosa, ever systematically consistent, pursued the 

 doctrine to its inevitable consequence, the materiality 

 of God. 



The same conception of impossibility led the inge- 

 nious and subtle mind of Leibnitz to his celebrated doc- 

 trine of a pre-established harmony. He, too, thought 

 that mind could not act upon matter, nor especially 

 matter upon mind, and that the two, therefore, must 

 have been arranged by their Maker like two clocks, 

 which, though unconnected with one another, strike 

 simultaneously, and always point to the same hour. 

 Malebranche's equally famous theory of Occasional 

 Causes was a further refinement upon this conception : 

 instead of supposing the clocks originally arranged to 

 strike together, he held that when the one strikes, God 

 interposes, and makes the other strike in correspon- 

 dence with it. 



1 Descartes, in like manner, whose works are a rich 

 mine of almost every description of a priori fallacy, says 

 that the Efficient Cause must at least have all the perfec- 

 tions of the effect, and for this singular reason : " Si enim 

 ponamus aliquid in idea reperiri quod non fuerit in 



