49S 



FALLACIES. 



I 



correspond to our received distinc- 

 tions ; that effects which we are ac- 

 customed, in popular language, to call 

 by different names, and arrange in 

 different classes, must be of different 

 natures, and have different causes. 

 This prejudice, so evidently of the 

 same or'gin with those already treated 

 of, marks more especially the earliest 

 stage of science, when it has mjt yet 

 broken loose from the trammels of 

 everyday phraseology. The extra- 

 ordinary prevalence of the fallacy 

 among the Greek philosophers may 

 be accounted for by their generally 

 knowing no other language than their 

 own ; from w^hich it was a consequence 

 that their ideas followed the accidental 

 or arbitrary combinations of that lan- 

 guage more completely than can hap- 

 pen among the moderns to any but 

 illiterate persons. They had great 

 difficulty in distinguishing between 

 things which their language con- 

 founded, or in putting mentally to- 

 gether things which it distinguished, 

 and could hardly combine the objects 

 in nature into any classes but those 

 which were made for them by the 

 popular phrases of their own country ; 

 or at least could not help fancy- 

 ing those classes to be natural, and 

 all others arbitrary and artificial. 

 Accordingly, scientific investigation 

 among the Greek schools of specula- 

 tion and their followers in the Middle 

 Ages, was little more than a mere 

 sifting and analysing of the notions 

 attached to common language. They 

 thought that by determining the 

 meaning of words they could be- 

 come acquainted with facts. "They 

 took for granted," says Dr. Whewell,* 

 ,*' that philosophy must result from the 

 relations of those notions which are 

 involved in the common use of lan- 

 guage, and they proceeded to seek it 

 by studying such notions." In his 

 next chapte", Dr. Whewell has so 

 well illustrated and exemplified this 

 error, that I shall take the liberty 

 of quoting him at some length. 



« Hiit. Ind. Sc.y book i. chap. i. 



** The propensity to seek for prin- 

 ciples in the common usages of lan- 

 guage may be discerned at a very 

 early period. Thus we have an ex- 

 ample of it in a saying which is re- 

 ported of Thales, the founder of Greek 

 philosophy. When he was asked, 

 * What is the (greatest thing ? ' he re- 

 plied, * Place; for all other things are 

 in the world, but the world is in it.* 

 In Aristotle we have the consumma- 

 tion of this mode of speculation. The 

 usual point from which he starts in 

 his inquiries is, that we say thus or 

 thus in common language. Thus, 

 when he has to discuss the question 

 whether there be, in any part of the 

 universe, a void, or space in which 

 there is nothing, he inquires first in 

 how many senses we say that one 

 thing is in another. He enumerates 

 many of these ; we say the part is 

 in the whole, as the finger is in the 

 hand ; again we say, the species is 

 in the genus, as man is included in 

 animal ; again, the government of 

 Greece is wi the king ; and various 

 other senses are described and ex- 

 emplified, but of all these the most 

 proper is when we say a thing is in 

 a vessel, and generally in plaice. He 

 next examines what place is, and 

 comes to this conclusion, that ' if 

 about a body there be another body 

 including it, it is in place, and if not, 

 not.' A body moves when it changes 

 its place ; but he adds, that if water 

 be in a vessel, the vessel being at rest, 

 the parts of the water may still move, 

 for they are included by each other ; 

 so that while the whole does not change 

 its place, the parts may change their 

 place in a circular order. Proceeding 

 then to the question of a void, he as 

 usual examines the different senses in 

 which the term is used, and adopts as 

 the most proper, place without matter : |l 

 with no useful result. || 



•' Again, in a question concerning 

 mechanical action, he says, ' When a 

 man moves a stone by pushing it with a 

 stick, we say both that the man moves 

 the stone, and that the stick moves the 

 stone, but the latter moj'e properly. 



II 



