FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION. 463 



noniona, accordinu^ to liim, must bo susceptible of bcinp; accounli-J for 

 d J)/ tori. Tlio «)nly facts of whicb no explanation could be given but 

 the will of God, "were miracles jiropeily so called. " Je reconnais," 

 says he,* " qu'il n'est pas permis do nier ce «pi'ou n'entend j)as ; inais 

 j'ajoute qu'ou a droit de nier (au moins dans I'ordre naturel) ce qui 



absolument n'est point intelligible ni explicable. Je soutiens aussi 



qu'entin la conception dcs creatures n'est pas la mcsurc du pouvoir de 

 Dieu, mais que leur conceptivite, ou force do conccvoii*, est la mesuro 

 du pouvoir de le nature, tout co qui est conforme a I'ordro naturel 

 pouvant etre con^u ou entendu par cjuelque creature." 



Not content with assuming that nothing can be true which wc are 

 unable to conceive, philosophers have frequently given a still further 

 extension to the doctrhie, and contended that, even of things not alto- 

 gether inconceivable, that which wc can conceive with the greatest 

 ease is likeliest to be true. It was long an admitted axiom, and is not 

 yet entirely discredited, that " nature always acts by the simplest 

 means," i. c. by those which arc most easily conceivable. A large pro- 

 portion of all the eiTors ever committed in the investigation of the 

 laws of nature, have arisen fix)m the assumption that the most familiar 

 explanation or hypothesis must be the truest. One of the most in- 

 structive facts in scientific history is the pertinacity with which the 

 human mind clung to the belief that the heavenly bodies must move 

 in circles, or be carried round by the revolution of spheres ; merely 

 because those were in themselves the simplest- suppositions : although, 

 to make them accord witU the facts which were ever contradicting 

 them more and more, it became necessary to add sphere to sphere and 

 circle to circle, until the original simplicity was converted into almost 

 inextricable complication. 



§ 4. We pass to another d priori fallacy or natural prejudice, allied 

 to the former, and originating as that does, hi the tendency to pre- 

 sume an exact correspondence between the laws of the mind and those 

 of things external to it. The fallacy may be enunciated in this general 

 form — Whatever can be thought of apart exists apart: and its most 

 remarkable manifestaticm consists in the personification of abstractions. 

 Mankind in all agos have had a strong propensity to conclude that 

 wherever there is a name, there must be a distinguishable separate 

 entity corresponding to tlie name ; and every complex idea which the 

 mind has fonned for itself by operating upon its conceptions of indi- 

 vidual things, was considered to have an outward objective reality 

 answering to it. Fate, Chance, Nature, Time, Space, were real 

 beings, nay, even gods. If the analysis of qualities in the earlier j)art 

 of tliis work be con-ect, names of qualities and names of substances 

 stand for the very same sets of facts or phenomena; whiteness and a 

 white thing are only different phrases, required by convenienco ftr 

 speaking, under different circumstances, of the same external fact. 

 Not such, however, was the notion which this verbal distinction sug- 

 gested of old, either to the vulgar or to philo8oj)hers. Whiteness was 

 an entity, inhering or sticking in the white substance : and so of all 

 other qualities. So far was this cairicd, tliat even concrete gi^neral 

 terms were supposed to be, not names of indefinite numbers of indi- 



* Nouvea-nx Essais sur F Entendcmerti JIumain — Avanlpropos. ((Euvrcs, Paris cd. 1842, 

 voL i., p. 19.) 



