456 FALLACIES. 



CHAPTER III. 



FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION ; OR A PRIORI FALLACIES. 



§ 1. The tiibe of errors of which we are to treat in the first instance, 

 are those in which no actual inference takes place at all ; the proposi- 

 tion (it cannot in such cases be called a conclusion) being embraced, 

 not as proved, but as requiring no proof; as a self-evident truth ; . or 

 else as having such intrinsic verisimilitude, that external evidence not 

 in itself amounting to proof, is sufficient in aid of the antecedent pre- 

 sumption. 



An attempt to treat this subject comprehensively would be a trans- 

 gression of the bounds prescribed to this work, since it would necessi- 

 tate the inquiry which, more than any other, is the grand question of 

 transcendental metaphysics, viz., What are the propositions which may 

 reasonably be received without proof 1 That there must be some such 

 propositions all are agreed, since there cannot be an infinite series of 

 proof, a chain suspended from nothing. But to determine what these . 

 propositions are, is the opus magnum of the higher mental philosophy. 

 Two principal divisions of opinion on the subject have divided the 

 schools of philosophy from its first dawn. The one recognizes no 

 ultimate premisses but the facts of our subjective consciousness ; our 

 sensations, emotions, intellectual states of mind, and volitions. These, 

 and whatever by the strict rules of Induction can be derived fi-om these, 

 it is possible, according to this theory, for us to know ; of all else we 

 must remain in ignorance. The opposite school hold that there are other 

 existences suggested indeed to our tninds by these subjective phenom- 

 ena, but not nifen-ible from them, by any process either of deduction 

 or of induction ; which, however, w^e must by the constitution of our 

 omental nature,, recognize as realities; and realities, too, of a higher 

 order than the phenomena of our consciousness, being the efficient 

 causes and necessary substrata of all Phenomena. Among these en- 

 tities they reckon Substances, whether matter or spirit; from the 

 dust under our feet to the soul, and fi-om that to the Deity. All these 

 according to them are preternatural or supei-natural beings, having no 

 likeness in expei"ience, although experience is entirely a manifestation 

 of their agency. Their existence, together with more or less of the 

 laws to which they conform in their operations, are, on this theory, 

 apprehended and recognized as real by the mind itself, intuitively : 

 experience (whether in the form of sensation, or of mental feeling) 

 having no other part in the matter than as affording a multitude of facts, 

 which are consistent with these necessary postulates of reason, and 

 which are explained and accounted for by them. 



As it is foreign to the purpose of the present treatise to determine 

 on which side the truth lies as between these theories, we are pre- 

 cluded from inquiring into the existence, or defining the extent and 

 limits, of knowledge a priori, and from characterizing the kind of cor- 

 rect assumption (if any such there be), whicli the fallacy of incorrect 

 assumption, now under consideration, simulates. Yet since it is allowed 

 on both sides that such assumptions are occasionally made improperly, 

 we may find it practicable, without entering into the ultimate raeta- 



