506 FALLACIES. 



too, the word I is often shifted from one moaning to another, at one 

 time standing for my vohtions, at another time for the actions which ai-e 

 the consequences of them, or the mental dispositions from which they 

 proceed. The latter ambiguity is exemplified in an argument of Cole- 

 rid"-e (in his Aids to Reflection), in support of the freedom of the will. 

 It is not true, he says, that man is governed by motives ; " the man 

 makes the motive, not the motive the man;" the proof being that 

 " what is a strong motive to one man is no motive at all to another." 

 The premiss is true, but only amounts to this, that different persona 

 have different degrees of susceptibility to the same motive ; as they 

 have also to the same intoxicating liquid, which however does not prove 

 that they are free fo be drunk or not drunk, whatever quantity they may 

 drink. What is proved is, that certain mental conditions in the man 

 himself, must cooperate, in the production of the act, with the external 

 inducement : but those mental conditions also are the effect of causes ; 

 and there is nothing in the argument to prove that they can arise with- 

 out a cause — that a spontaneous determination of the man's will, with- 

 out any cause at all, ever takes place, as the free-will doctrine supposes. 



The double use, in the free-will controversy, of the word Necessity, 

 which sometimes stands only for Certainty, at other times for Compul- 

 sion ; sometimes for what cannot be prevented, at other times only for 

 what we have reason to be assured 7vill not ; has been pointed out 

 by Archbishop Whately, and we shall have occasion hereafter to pur- 

 sue it to some of its ulterior consequences. 



A most important ambiguity, both in common and in metaphysical 

 language, is thus pointed out by Archbishop Whately in the Appendix 

 to his Logic : " Same (as well as One, Identical, and other words de- 

 rived from them) is used frequently in a sense very different from its 

 primary one, as applicable to a single object ; being employed to de- 

 note great similarity. When several objects are undistinguishably 

 alike, one single description will apply equally to any of them : and 

 thence they are said to be all of one and the same nature, appearance, 

 &c. As, e.g., when we say, ' this house is built of the saine stone with 

 such another,' we only mean that the stones are undistinguishable in 

 their qualities ; not that the one building was pulled down, and the 

 other constructed with the materials. Whereas sa?nencss, in the pri- 

 mary sense, does not even necessarily imply similarity ; for if we say 

 of any man that he is greatly altered since such a time, we understand, 

 and indeed imply by the very expression, that he is one iierson, though 

 different in several qualities. It is worth observing also, that Same, in 

 the secondary sense, admits, according to popular usage, of degrees : 

 we speak of two things being nearly the same, but not entirely : per- 

 sonal identity does not admit of degrees. Nothing, perhaps, has con- 

 tributed more to the error of Realism than inattention to this ambiguity. 

 When several persons are said to have one and the same opinion, 

 thought, or idea, men, overlooking the true, simple statement of the 

 case, which is, that they are all thinking alike,\odk for something more 

 abstruse and mystical, and imagine there must be some Otic Thing, in 

 the primai-y sense, though not an individual, which is present at once 

 in the mind of each of these persons ; and thence readily sprung Plato's 

 theory of Ideas, each of which was, according to him, one real, eternal 

 object, existing entire and complete in each of the individual objects 

 that are known by one name." 



