5M 



FALLACIES. 



thing beyond them. It is not the 

 colour and superficial extension per- 

 ceived by the eye that are important 

 to us, but the object of which those 

 visible appearances testify the pre- 

 sence ; and where the sensation itself 

 is indifferent, as it generally is, we 

 have no motive to attend particularly 

 to it, but acquire a habit of passing it 

 over without distinct consciousness, 

 and going on at once to the inference. 

 So that to know what the sensation 

 actually was is a study in itself, to 

 which painters, for example, have to 

 train themselves by special and long- 

 continued discipline and application. 

 In things further removed from the 

 dominion of the outward senses, no 

 one who has not great experience in 

 psychological analysis is competent to 

 break this intense association ; and 

 when such analytic habits do not 

 exist in the requisite degree, it is 

 hardly possible to mention any of the 

 habitual judgments of mankind on 

 subjects of a high degree of abstrac- 

 tion, from the being of a God and the 

 immortality of the soul down to the 

 multiplication table, which are not, 

 or have not been, considered as mat- 

 ter of direct intuition. So strong is 

 the tendency to ascribe an intuitive 

 chaiacter to judgments which are 

 mere inferences, and often false ones. 

 No one can doubt that many a de- 

 luded visionary has actually believed 

 that he was directly inspired from 

 Heaven, and that the Almighty had 

 conversed with him face to face ; 

 which yet was only, on his part, a 

 conclusion drawn from appearances 

 to his senses, or feelings in his inter- 

 nal consciousness, which afforded no 

 warrant for any such belief. A cau- 

 tion, therefore, against this class of 

 errors is not only needful but indis- 

 pensable ; though to determine whe- 

 ther, on any of the great questions of 

 metaphysics, such errors are actually 

 committed, belongs not to this place, 

 but, as I have so often said, to a dif- 

 ferent science. 



CHAPTER V. 



FALLACIES OF GENERALISATION. 



§ I. The class of Fallacies of which 

 we are now to speak is the most ex- 

 tensive of all; embracing a greater 

 number and variety of unfounded in- 

 ferences than any of the other classes, 

 and which it is even more difficult to 

 reduce to sub-classes or species. If 

 the attempt made in the preceding 

 Books to define the principles of well- 

 grounded generalisation has been suc- 

 cessful, all generalisations not con- 

 formable to those principles might, in 

 a certain sense, be brought under the 

 present class : when, however, the 

 rules are known and kept in view, but 

 a casual lapse committed in the appli- 

 cation of them, this is a blunder, not 

 a fallacy. To entitle an error of gene- 

 ralisation to the latter epithet, it must 

 be committed on principle; there must 

 lie in it some erroneoxis general con- 

 ception of the inductive process ; the 

 legitimate mode of drawing conclu- 

 sions from observation and experi- 

 ment must be fundamentally miscon- 

 ceived. 



Withoxit attempting anything so 

 chimerical as an exhaustive classifica- 

 tion of all the misconceptions which 

 can exist on the subject,, let us con- 

 tent ourselves with noting, among the 

 cautions which might be suggested, a 

 few of the most useful and needful. 



§ 2. In the first place, there are cer- 

 tain kinds of generalisation which, 

 if the principles already laid down be 

 correct, must be groundless : experi- 

 ence cannot afford the necessary con- 

 ditions for establishing them by a cor- 

 rect induction. Such, for instance, 

 are all inferences from the order of 

 nature existing on the earth, or in 

 the solar system, to that which may 

 exist in remote parts of the universe ; 

 where the phenomena, for aught we 

 know, may be entirely different, or 

 may succeed one another according to 

 different laws, or even according to no 

 fixed Jaw ^t all. Such, again, in mat- 



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