FALLACIES OF OBSERVATION. 477 



-tempers the wind to the shorn lamh,' or the more sportive ailage, that 

 * the fairies take care of chihlren and tij)sy folk.' " So far, the notion 

 (■partakes of the character of a falhicy of Gonei-alization. But he con- 

 tinues, " The persuasion itself, in addition to the general rchgious 

 feeling of mankind, and the scarcely less general love of tlie marvelous, 

 may be accounted for from our tendency to exaggerate all effects, that 

 seem disproportionate to their visible cause, and all circumstances that 

 are in any way strongly contrasted with our notions of the persons 

 under them." Omitting some further explanations which would refer 

 the eiTor to mal-observation, or to the other species of non-observation 

 (that of circumstances), I take up the «iin)tation further on. " Unfore- 

 seen coincidences may have greatly helped a man, yet if they have 

 done for him only what jiossibly fi-om his own abilities he might have 

 effected for himself, his good work will excite less attention, and the 

 instances be less remembered. That clever men should attain their 

 objects seems natural, and we neglect the circumstances that perhaps 

 produced that success of themselves, without the intervention of skill 

 or foresight ; but we dwell on the fact and remember it, as something 

 strange, when the same happens to a weak or ignorant man. So too, 

 tliough the latter should fail in his undertakings from concurrences 

 that might have happened to the wisest man, yet his failure being no 

 more than might have lieen expected and accounted f':>r frt)m his folly, 

 it lays no hold on our attention, but fleets away among the other undis- 

 tinguished waves in which the stream of ordinaiy life murmurs by us, 

 and is forgotten. Had it been as true as it was notoriously false, that 

 those all-embracing discoveiies, which have shed a dawn oi science on' 

 the art of chemistiy, and give no obscure promise of some one gi-eat 

 constitutive law, in the light of which dwell dominion, and the power 

 of prophecy; if these discoveries, instead of'having been, as they really 

 were, preconcerted by meditation, and evolved out of his own intellect, 

 had occurred by a set of lucky accidents to the illusti-ious father and 

 founder of philosophic alchemy ; if they had presented themselves to 

 Professor Davy exclusively in consequence of his luck in possessing a 

 particular galvanic battery; if this battery, as far as Davy was, con- 

 cerned, had itself been an accident, and not (as in point of fact it was) 

 desired and obtained by him fur the purpose f)f insuring the testimony 

 of experience to his prhiciples, and in order to bind down material 

 nature under the inquisition of reason, and force from her, as by tor- 

 ture, unequivocal answers to ^;re/>arfrZ and preconceived questions, — 

 yet still they would not have been talked of or described as instances 

 of hick, but as the natm-al results of his admitted genius and known 

 skill. But should an accident have disci ose<l' similar discoveries to a 

 mechanic at Binningham or Sheffield, and if the man should grow rich 

 in consequence, and partly by the envy of his neighbors and partly 

 with good reason, be considere<l by them as a man heloio par in the 

 general powers of his understanding; then, 'O what a lucky fellow! 

 AVell, Fortune docs favor fools — that's for certain! — It is always so!' 

 And forthwith the exclaimer relates half a dozen similar instances. 

 Thus accumulating the one sort of facts and never collecting the other, 

 we do, as poets in their diction, and quacks of all denominations do in 

 their reasoning, put a part for the whole, and at once soothe our envy 

 and gratify our love of the marvelous, by tho sweeping proverb, 

 Fortune favors fools." 



