FALLACIES OF OBSERVATION. 481 



deatli never took place after the mercury had evinced its effect upon 

 the system : all this was very true, but it funiished no proof of t!ie 

 efficaoy of that metal, since the disease in its aggravated form was so 

 rapid in its career, that it swept away its victims long before the sys- 

 tem could be brought under mercurial intluence, while in its milder 

 shape it 2>assed off etpuilly well without any assistance from art."* 



In these examples the circumstance overlooked was cognizable by 

 the senses. In other cases, it is one the knowledge of which could 

 only be an'ived at by reasoning; but the fallacy may still be classed 

 untler the head to which, for want of a more appropriate name, we 

 have given the appellation Fallacies of Non-observation. It is not the 

 natui'e of the faculties which ought to have been employed, but the non- 

 employment of them, which constitutes this natural Order of Fallacies. 

 "Wherever the error is negative, not positive ; wherever it consists 

 specially in overlooking, in being ignorant or unmindful of some fact 

 which, if known and attended to, would have made a diilbrence in the 

 conclusion arrived at ; the error is properly placed in the Class which 

 we are considering. lu this Class, there is not, as in all other falla- 

 cies there is, a positive mis-estimate of evidence actually had. The 

 conclusion would be just, if the portion which is seen of the case were 

 the whole of it ; but there is another portion overlooked, which vi- 

 tiates the result. 



For instance, there is a remarkable doctrine which has occasionally 

 found a vent in the public speeches of unwise legislators, but which 

 only in one instance that I am aware of has received the sanction of a 

 philosopher, namely M. Victor Cousin, who, in his preface to the Gorgias 

 of Plato, contending that punishment must have some other and higher 

 justification than the prevention of crime, makes use of this argument 

 — that if punishment were only for the sake of example, it would be 

 indifferent whether we punished the innocent or the guilty, since the 

 punishment, considered as an example, is equally efficacious in either 

 case. Now we must, in order to go along with M. Cousin, suppose, 

 that the person who feels himself under temptation, observing some- 

 body punished, concludes himself to be in danger of being punished 

 likewise, and is terrified accordingly. But it is forgotten that if the 

 person punished is supposed to be innocent, or even if there be any 

 doubt of his guilt, the spectator will reflect that his own danger, what- 

 ever it may be, is not contingent upon his guiltiness, but threatens him 

 equally if he remains innocent, and how therefore is he deterred from 

 guilt liy the apprehension of such pimishmcnt 1 M. Cousin supposes 

 that men will be dissuaded from guilt by whatever renders the condi- 

 tion of the guilty more perilous, forgetting that the condition of the 

 innocent (also one of the elements in the calculation) is, in the case 

 supposed, made perilous in precisely an equal degree. This is a fal- 

 lacy of overlooking; or of non-observation, within the intent of our 

 classification. 



Fallacies of this description are the great stumbling-block to just 

 views in political economy. The economical workings of society allbrd 

 innumerable cases in which the effects of a cause consist of two sets 

 of phenomena : the one immediate, concentrated, obvious to vulgar 

 eyes, and passing, in common apprehension, for the whole effect ; the 



♦ Pharmacologia, pp. 61-C2. 



3P 



