FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION. 



591 



the former purpose may only end, as 

 Bacon's physical inquiries did, in no 

 result at all. Was it that his eager- 

 ness to acquire the power of produc- 

 ing for man's benefit eflfects of practi- 

 cal importance to human life render- 

 ing him impatient of pursuing that 

 end by a circuitous route, made even 

 him, the champion of experiment, pre- 

 fer the direct mode, though one of 

 mere observation, to the indirect, in 

 which alone experiment was pos- 

 sible? Or had even Bacon not en- 

 tirely cleared his mind from the 

 notion of the ancients, that "rerum 

 cognoscere caiisas " was the sole ob- 

 ject of philosophy, and that to inquire 

 into the effects of things belonged to 

 servile and mechanical arts ? 



It is worth remarking that, while 

 the only efficient mode of cultivating 

 speculative science was missed from 

 an undue contempt of manual opera 

 tions, the false speculative views thus 

 engendered gave in their turn a false 

 direction to such practical and me- 

 chanical aims as were suffered to exist. 

 The assumption xiniversal among the 

 ancients and in the Middle Ages, that 

 there were principles of heat and cold, 

 dryness and moisture, &c., led directly 

 to a belief in alchemy ; in a trans- 

 mutation of substances, a change from 

 one Kind into another. Why should 

 it not be possible to make goM? Each 

 of the characteristic properties of gold 

 has its fcmna, its essence, its set of 

 conditions, which if we could discover, 

 and learn how to realise, we could 

 superinduce that particular property 

 upon any other substance, upon wood, 

 or iron, or lime, or clay. If, then, 

 we could effect this with respect to 

 every one of the essential properties 

 of the precious metal, we should have 

 converted the other substance into 

 gold. Nor did this, if once the pre- 

 mises were granted, appear to trans- 

 cend the real powers of mankind. For 

 daily experience showed that almost 

 every one of the distinctive sensible 

 properties of any object, its conaist- 

 ence, its colour, its taste, its smell, 

 its shape, admitted of being totally 



changed by fire, or water, or some 

 other chemical agent. The formce of 

 all those qualities seeming, therefore, 

 to be within human power either to 

 produce or to annihilate, not only did 

 the transmutation of substances ap- 

 pear abstractedly possible, but the em- 

 ployment of the power, at our choice, 

 for practical ends, seemed by no means 

 hopeless.* 



A prejudice, universal in the ancient 

 world, and from which Bacon was so 

 far from being free, that it pervaded 

 and vitiated the whole practical part 

 of his system of logic, may with good 

 reason be ranked high in the order of 

 fallacies of which we are now treating. 



§ 8. There remains one a priori 

 fallacy or natural prejudice, the most 

 deeply-rooted, perhaps, of all which 

 we have enumerated : one which not 

 only reigned supreme in the ancient 

 world, but still possesses almost un- 

 disputed dominion over many of the 

 most cultivated minds ; and some of 

 the most remarkable of the numerous 

 instances by which I shall think it 

 necessary to exemplify it will be 

 taken from recent thinkers. This is, 

 that the conditions of a phenomenon 

 must, or at least probably will, re- 

 semble the phenomenon itself. 



Conformably to what we have before 

 remarked to be of frequent occurrence, 

 this fallacy might without much im- 

 propriety have been placed in a dif- 

 ferent class, among Fallacies of Gene- 

 ralisation ; for experience docs afford 

 a certain degree of countenance to the 

 assumption. The cause does, in very 

 many cases, resemble its effect ; like 

 produces like. Many phenomena have 

 a direct tendency to perpetuate their 

 own existence, or to give rise to other 

 phenomena similar to themselves. Not 

 to mention forms actually moulded 



' • It is hardly needful to remark that 

 nothitiR i.s here intended to be said against 

 the possibility at some future period of 

 niaking gold, by first discovering it to be 

 a compound, and putting together its dif- 

 ferent elonients or ingredients. But this 

 ig a totally different idea from that of tha 

 seekers of the grand arcanum. 



