FALLACIES IN GENERAL. 



483 



posed to believe any statement, the 

 more it is calculated to alarm them. 

 Indeed it is a ps^'chological law de- 

 ducible from the most general laws of 

 the mental constitution of man, that 

 any strong passion rendei's us credu- 

 lous as to the existence of objects suit- 

 able to excite it. 



But the moral causes of opinions, 

 though with most persons the most 

 })owerful of all, are but remote causes : 

 they do not act directly, but by means 

 ()f the intellectual causes ; to which 

 they bear the same relation that the 

 (arcumstances called, in the theory of 

 medicine, predisposing causes, bear to 

 t'xcitimj causes. Indifference to truth 

 cannot, in and by itself, produce 

 erroneous belief ; it operates by pre- 

 venting the mind from collecting the 

 jn'oper evidences, or from applying to 

 them the te.st of a legitimate and 

 rigid induction ; by which omission 

 it is exposed improtected to the in- 

 fluence of any species of apparent 

 evidence which offers itself spontano- 

 ously, or which is elicited by that 

 smaller quantity of trouble which the 

 mind may be willing to take. As 

 little is Bias a direct source of wrong 

 conclusions. We cannot believe a 

 proposition only by wishing, or only 

 by dreading, to believe it. The most 

 violent inclinations to find a set of 

 propositions true will not enable the 

 weakest of mankind to believe them 

 without a vestige of intellectual 

 grounds — without any, even ap- 

 parent, evidence. It acts indirectly, 

 by placing the intellectual grounds 

 <tf belief in an incomplete or distorted 

 .shape before his eyes. It makes him 

 shrink from the irksome labour of a 

 rigorous induction, when he has a 

 misgiving that its results may be dis- 

 agreeable ; and in such examination 

 as he does institute, it makes him 

 exert that which is in a certain 

 measure voluntary, his attention, un- 

 fairly, giving a larger share of it to 

 the evidence which seems favourable 

 to the desired conclusion, a smaller to 

 that which seems unfavourable, it 

 operates, too, by making him look out 



eagerly for reasons, or apparent rea- 

 sons, to support opinions which are 

 conformable, or resist those which are 

 repugnant, to his interests or feelings ; 

 and when the interests or feelings are 

 common to great numbers of pex'sons, 

 reasons ai-e accepted and pass current, 

 which would not for a moment be 

 listened to in that character if the 

 conclusion had notjjing more power- 

 ful than its reasons to speak in its 

 behalf. The natural or acquired 

 partialities of mankind are con- 

 tinually throwing up philosophical 

 theories, the sole recommendati<m of 

 which consists in the premises they 

 afford for proving cherished doc- 

 trines, or justifying favourite feel- 

 ings ; and when any one of these 

 theories has been so thoroughly 

 discredited as no longer to serve 

 the purpose, another is always ready 

 to take its place. This propensity, 

 when exercised in favour of any 

 widely-spread persuasion or senti- 

 ment, is often decorated with com- 

 plimentary epithets ; and the contrary 

 habit of keeping the judgment in 

 complete subordination to evidence 

 is stigmatised by various hard names, 

 as scepticism, immorality, coldness, 

 hard-heartedness, and similar ex- 

 pressions, according to the nature of 

 the case. But though the opinions 

 of the generality of mankind, when 

 not dependent on mere habit and 

 inculcation, have their root much 

 more in the inclinations than in the 

 intellect, it is a necessary condition 

 to the triumph of the moral bias 

 that it should first pervert the under- 

 standing. Every erroneous inference, 

 though originating in moral causes, 

 involves the intellectual operation of 

 admitting insufficient evidence as 

 sufficient ; and whoever was on his 

 guard against all kinds of incon- 

 clusive evidence which can be mis- 

 taken for conclusive, would be in no 

 danger of being led into error even 

 by the strongest bias. There are 

 minds so strongly fortified on the 

 intellectual side that they could not 

 blind themselves to the light of truth, 



