J'ALLACIES OF SIMlPtU INSPECTION. 



5^5 



farta,* affirms as an "evident truth," 

 that "the law of causality holds only 

 between, homogeneous things, i.e. 

 things having some common pro- 

 perty," and therefore " cannot extend 

 from one world into another, its op- 

 posite : " hence, as mind and matter 

 have no common property, mind can- 

 not act upon matter, nor matter upon 

 mind. What is this but the d pinori 

 fallacy of which we are speaking ? 

 The doctrine, like many others of 

 Coleridge, is taken from Spinoza, in 

 the first book of whose Ethica (De 

 Deo) it stands as the Third Proposi- 

 tion, " Quae res nihil commune inter 

 se habent, earum una alterius causa 

 esse non potest," and is there proved 

 from two so-called axioms, equally 

 gratuitous with itself ; but Spinoza, 

 ever systematically consistent, pur- 

 siied the doctrine to its inevitable 

 consequence, the materiality of God. 



The same conception of impossi- 

 bility led the ingenious and subtle 

 mind of Leibnitz to his celebrated 

 doctrine of a pre-established har- 

 mony. He, too, thought that mind 

 could not act upon matter, nor mat- 

 ter upon mind, and that the two, 

 therefore, must have been arranged 

 by their Maker like two clocks, which, 

 though unconnected with one another, 

 strike simultaneously, and always 

 point to the same hour. Malebranche's 

 equally famous theory of Occasional 

 Causes was another form of the same 

 conception : instead of supposing the 

 clocks originally arranged to strike 

 together, he held that when the one 

 strikes, God interposes, and makes 

 the other strike in correspondence 

 with it. 



Descartes, in like manner, whose 

 works are a rich mine of almost every 

 description of d priori fallacy, says 

 that the Efficient Cause must at least 

 have all the perfections of the effect, 

 and for this singular reason : "Si 

 enim ponamus aliquid in ide4 reperiri 

 quod non fuerit in ejus caus^, hoc 

 igitur habet a nihilo ; " of which it is 



• Vol. i. chap. 8. 



scarcely a parody to say, that if there 

 be pepper in the soup there must be 

 pepper in the cook who made it, since 

 otherwise the pepper would be with- 

 out a cause. A similar fallacy is com- 

 mitted by Cicero in his second book 

 De Finibus, where, speaking in his 

 own person against the Epicureans, 

 he charges them with inconsistency 

 in saying that the pleasures of the 

 mind had their origin from those of 

 the body, and yet that the former 

 were more valuable, as if the effect 

 could surpass the cause. " Animi 

 voluptas oritur propter voluptatem 

 corporis, et major est animi voluptas 

 quam corporis ? ita fit ut gratulator, 

 Isetior sit quam is cui gratulatur." 

 Even that, surely, is not an impos- 

 sibility : a person'.s good fortune has 

 often given more pleasure to others 

 than it gave to the person himself. 



Descartes, with no less readiness, 

 applies the same principle the con- 

 verse way, and infers the nature of 

 the effects from the assumption that 

 they must, in this or that property or 

 in all their properties, resemble their 

 cause. To this class belong his specu- 

 lations, and those of so many others 

 after him, tending to infer the order 

 of the universe, not from observation, 

 but by d priori reasoning from sup- 

 posed qualities of the Godhead. This 

 sort of inference was probably never 

 carried to a greater length than it 

 was in one particular instance by 

 Descartes, when, as a proof of one 

 of his physical principles, that the 

 quantity of motion in the universe 

 is invariable, he had recourse to the 

 immutability of the Divine Nature. 

 Reasoning of a very similar character 

 is, however, nearly as common now 

 as it was in his time, and does duty 

 largely as a means of fencing off dis- 

 agreeable conclusions. Writers have 

 not yet ceased to oppose the theory 

 of divine benevolence to the evidence 

 of physical facts, to the principle of 

 population, for example. And people 

 seem in general to think that they 

 have used a very powerful argument 

 when they have said, that to suppose 



