468 FALLACIES. 



Of the manner in which, fi-om premisses obtained in this Way, the 

 ancients attempted to deduce laws of nature, one example is given by- 

 Mr. Whewell a few pages further on. "Aristotle decides that there is 

 no void, on such arguments as this. In a void there could be no dif- 

 -ference of up and down ; for as in nothing there are no differences, so 

 there are none in a privation or negation ; but a void is merely a priva- 

 tion or negation of matter ; therefore, in a void, bodies could not move 

 up and down, which it is in their nature to do. It is easily seen" (Mr. 

 Whewell very justly adds) " that such a mode of reasoning elevates 

 the familiar forms of language, and the intellectual connexions of tenns, 

 to a supremacy over facts ; making truth depend upon whether terms 

 are or are not privative, and whether we say that bodies fall naUirally" 



The propensity to assume that the same relations obtain between 

 objects themselves, which obtain between our ideas of them, is here 

 seen in the extreme stage of its development. For the mode of phi- 

 losophizing, exemplified in the foregoing instances, assumes no less 

 than that the proper way of arriving at knowledge of nature, is to 

 study nature herself subjectively ; to apply our observation and anal- 

 ysis not to the facts, but to the common notions entertained of those 

 facts. 



Many other equally striking examples may be given of the tendency 

 to assume that things which for the convenience of common life are 

 placed in different classes, must differ in every respect. Of this nature 

 was the universal and deeply-rooted prejudice of antiquity and the mid- 

 dle ages, that celestial and ten^estrial phenomena must be essentially 

 different, and could in no manner or degree depend upon the same 

 laws. Of the same kind, also, was the prejudice against which Bacon 

 contended, that nothing produced by nature could be successfully 

 imitated by man: " Calorem solis et ignis toto genere differre ; ne 

 scilicet homines putent se per opera ignis, aliquid simile iis qua3 in 

 Natura fiunt, educere et formare posse :" and again, " Compositionem 

 tantum opus Hominis, Mistionem vero opus, solius Naturee esse : ne 

 scilicet homines sperent aliquam ex arte Corporum naturalium genera- 

 tionem aut transformationem." * The grand distinction in the ancient 

 philosophy, between natural and violent motions, though not without 

 a plausible foundation in the appearances themselves, was doubtless 

 greatly recommended to adoption by its conformity to this prejudice. 



§ 7. From the fundamental error of the scientific inquirers of anti- 

 quity, we p^ss, by a natural association, to a scarcely less fundamental 

 one of their gi-eat rival and successor, Bacon. It has excited the 

 surprise of philosophers that the detailed system of inductive logic, 

 which this extraordinary man labored to construct, has been turned to 

 so little direct use by subsequent inquirers, having neither continued, 

 except in a few of its generalities, to be recognized as a theory, nor 

 having conducted in practice to any great scientific results. But this, 

 though not unfrequently remarked, has scarcely received any plausible 

 explanation ; and some, indeed, have prefeiTed to assert that all rules 

 of induction are useless, rather than suppose that Bacon's rules are 

 gi-ounded upon an insufficient analysis of the inductive process. Such, 

 however, will be seen to be the fact, as soon as it is considered, that 



* Nomm Organum, Aph. 75. 



