484 FALLACIES. 



The universality of tlie confusion between perceptions and the infer- 

 ences drawn from them, and the rarity of the power to discriminate 

 the one from the other, ceases to surprise us when we consider that in 

 the far gieater number of instances the actual perceptions of our senses 

 are of no importance or interest to us except as marks fi-om which we 

 infer something beyond them. It is not the color and superficial exten- 

 sion perceived by the eye that are important to us, but the object, of 

 which those visible appearances testify the presence ; and v/here the 

 sensation itself is indifferent, as it generally is, we have no motive to 

 attend particularly to it, but acquire a habit of passing it over without 

 distinct consciousness, and going on at once to the inference. So that 

 to know what the sensation actually was, is a study in itself, to which 

 the painter, for example, has to train himself by special and long con- 

 tinued discipline and application. In things further removed fi-om the 

 dominion of the outward senses, no one who has not great experience 

 in psychological analysis is competent to break this intense association : 

 and when such analytic habits do not exist in the requisite degree, it is 

 hardly possible to mention any of the habitual judgments of mankind 

 on subjects of a high degree of abstraction, from the being of God and 

 the immortality of the soul dovni to the multiplication table, which are 

 not, or have not been, considered as matter of direct intuition. In 

 saying this I do not seek to prejudge the question of transcendental 

 metaphysics, how far a certain number of these habitual judgments are 

 really intuitive, or otherwise. I only point out the strength of the 

 tendency to ascribe an intuitive character to judgments which are mere 

 inferences, and often false ones. No one can doubt that many a de- 

 luded visionary has actually believed that he was directly inspired from 

 heaven, and that the Almighty had conversed with him face to face ; 

 which yet was only, on his part, a conclusion drawn from appearances 

 to his senses or feelings in his internal consciousness which were alto- 

 gether an insufficient foundation for any such belief. The caution, 

 thei"efore, which is needful against this class of errors, could not with 

 any propriety have been foregone ; though to determine whether, on 

 any of the great questions of metaphysics, such errors are actually 

 committed, belongs not to this place, but, as I have so often said, to a 

 different science. 



ideas so inseparably associated in his mind, and, balancing the specimen on his fingers, he 

 exclaimed, ' it is certainly metallic, and very po7idcrous.' " He mistook his judgment of the 

 ponderosity of the substance for a smsation of it. 



