FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION. 



495 



ceive with the greatest ease is likeliest 

 to be true. It was long an admitted 

 axiom, and is not yet entirely dis- 

 credited, that *' nature always acts by 

 the simplest means," i.e. by those 

 which are most easily conceivable.* 

 A large proportion of all the errors 

 ever committed in the investigation 

 of the laws of nature have arisen 

 from the assumption that the most 

 familiar explanation or hypothesis 

 must be the truest. One of the most 

 instructive facts in scientific history 

 18 the pertinacity with which the 

 human mind clung to the belief that 

 the heavenly bodies must move in 

 circles, or be carried round by tbe 

 revolution of spheres, merely because 

 those were in themselves the simplest 

 suppositions ; though, to make them 

 accord with the facts which were 

 ever contradicting them more and 

 more, it became necessary to add 

 sphere to sphere and circle to circle, 

 tmtil the original simplicity was con- 

 verted into almost inextricable com- 

 plication. 



§ 4. We pass to another a priori 

 fallacy or natural prejudice, allied 

 to the former, and originating, as 

 that does,- in the tendency to presume 

 an exact correspondence between the 

 laws of the mind and those of things 

 external to it. The fallacy may be 

 enunciated in this general form — 

 Whatever can be thought of apart 

 exists apart ; and its most remark- 

 able manifestation consists in the 

 personification of abstractions. Man- 

 kind in all ages have had a strong 

 propensity to conclude that wherever 

 there is a name there must be a dis- 

 tinguishable separate entity corre- 

 sponding to the name ; and every 

 complex idea which the mind has 

 formed for itself by operating upon 

 its conceptions of individual things, 

 was considered to have an outward 

 objective reality answering to it. 



♦ This doctrine also was accepted as true, 

 .•md conclusions were gro\inded on it, bj' 

 ISir William Hamiltou. See L'xamination, 

 uliup. xxiv 



Fate, Chance, Nature, Time, Space, 

 were real beings, nay, even gods. If 

 the analysis of qualities in the earlier 

 part of this work be correct, names 

 of qualities and names of substances 

 stand for the very same sets of facts 

 or phenomena ; whiteness and a white 

 thimj are only different phrases, re- 

 quired by convenience for speaking of 

 the same external fact under different 

 relations. Not such, however, was 

 the notion which this verbal distinc- 

 tion suggested of old, either to tht* 

 vulgar or to the scientific. Whiteness 

 was an entity inhering or sticking in 

 the white substance ; and so of all 

 other qualities. So far was this car- 

 ried, that even concrete general terms 

 were supposed to be, not names of 

 indefinite numbers of individual sub- 

 stances, but names of a peculiar kind 

 of entities termed Universal Sub- 

 stances. Because we can think and 

 speak of man in general, that is, of 

 uU persons in so far as possessing the 

 common attributes of the species, 

 without fastening our thoughts per- 

 manently on some one individual 

 person : therefore man in general was 

 supposed to be, not an aggregate of 

 individual persons, but an abstract 

 or universal man, distinct from these. 

 It may be imagined what havoc 

 metaphysicians trained in these ha- 

 bits made with philosophy when 

 they came to the largest generalisa- 

 tions of all. Substantice Secundce of 

 any kind were bad enough, but such 

 Substantiae Secundse as to 6v, for ex- 

 ample, and TO tv, standing for pecu- 

 liar entities supposed to be inherent 

 in all things which exist, or in all 

 which are said to be one, were enough 

 to put an end to all intelligible dis- 

 cussion ; especially since, with a just 

 perception that the truths which philo- 

 sophy pursues are general truths, it 

 was soon laid do^vn that these gene- 

 ral substances were the only subjects 

 of science, being immutable, while 

 individual substances cognisable by 

 the senses, being in a perpetual flux, 

 could not be the subject of real know- 

 ledge. This misapprehension of the 



