FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION. 385 



ejus causd, hoc igitur habet a nihilo ;" of which it is 

 scarcely a parody to say, that if there be pepper in the 

 soup there must be pepper in the cook who made it, 

 since otherwise the pepper would be without a cause. 

 A similar fallacy is committed by Cicero in his second 

 book De Finibus, where, speaking in his own person 

 against the Epicureans,, he charges them with incon- 

 sistency in saying that the pleasures of the mind had 

 their origin from those of the body, and yet that the 

 former were more valuable, as if the effect could sur- 

 pass the cause. tl Animi voluptas oritur propter 

 voluptatem corporis, et major est animi voluptas quam 

 corporis ? ita fit ut gratulator laetior sit quam is, cui 

 gratulatur." Even that, surely, is no absolute impos- 

 sibility: a man's good fortune has been known to 

 give more pleasure to others than it gave to the man 

 himself. 



Descartes, with no less readiness, applies the same 

 principle the converse way, and infers the nature of 

 the effects from the assumption that they must, in this 

 or that property or in all their properties, resemble 

 their cause. To this class belong his speculations, 

 and those of so many others after him, tending to 

 infer the order of the universe, not from observation, 

 but from the notion we think ourselves able to form of 

 the qualities of the Godhead. This sort of inference 

 was probably never carried to a greater length than it 

 was in one particular instance by Descartes, when, as 

 a proof of one of his physical principles, that the 

 quantity of motion in the universe is invariable, he 

 had recourse to the immutability of the Divine Nature. 

 Optimism, in all its shapes, is an example of the same 

 species of fallacy : God is perfect, therefore what we 

 think perfection must obtain in nature. Even in our 

 own time men do not cease to oppose the divine bene- 



VOL. II. 2 C 



