FALLACIES OF CONFUSION. 



533 



the laws of my nature. If the con- 

 ception, existing as it does in my 

 mind, had no original without, the 

 conclusion would unquestit)nably fol- 

 low that / made it ; that is, the laws 

 of my nature must have somehow 

 evolved it ; but that my will made 

 it, would not follow. Now when 

 Descartes afterwards adds that I can- 

 not unmake the conception, he means 

 that I cannot get rid of it by an act 

 of my will : which is true, but is not 

 the proposition required. I can as 

 much unmake this conception as I 

 can any other : no conception which 

 I have once had, can I ever dismiss 

 by mere volition ; but what some of 

 the laws of my nature have produced, 

 other laws, or those same laws in 

 other circumstances, may, and often 

 do, subsequently efface. 



Analogous to this are some of the 

 ambiguities in the free-will contro- 

 versy, which, as they will come 

 under special consideration in the 

 concluding Book, I only mention me- 

 moi'ice causd. In that discussion, too, 

 the word / is often shifted from one 

 meaning to another, at one time 

 standing for my volitions, at another 

 time for the actions which are the 

 consequences of them, or the mental 

 dispositions from which they proceed. 

 The latter ambiguity is exemplified 

 in an argument of Coleridge (in his 

 Aids to Reflection) in support of the 

 freedom of the will. It is not true, 

 he says, that a man is governed by 

 motives ; " the man makes the mo- 

 tive, not the motive the man ; " the 

 proof being that "what is a strong 

 motive to one man is no motive at all 

 to another." The premise is true, 

 but only amounts to this, that dif- 

 ferent persons have different degrees 

 of susceptibility to the same motive ; 

 as they have also to the same intoxi- 

 cating liquid, which, however, does not 

 prove that they are free to be drunk 

 or not drunk, whatever quantity of 

 the fluid they may drink. What is 

 proved is, that certain mental condi- 

 tions in the person himself must co- 

 operate in the production of the act, 



with the external inducement ; but 

 those mental conditions also are the 

 effect of causes ; and there is no- 

 thing in the argument to prove that 

 they can arise without a cause — that 

 a spontaneous determination of the 

 will, without any cause at all, ever 

 takes place, as the free-will doctrine 

 supposes. 



The double use, in the free-will 

 controversy, of the word Necessity, 

 which sometimes stands only for Cer- 

 tainty, at other times for Compulsion, 

 sometimes for what cannot be pre- 

 vented, at other times only for what 

 we have reason to be assured xoill 

 not, we shall have occasion hereafter 

 to pursue to some of its ulterior con- 

 sequences. 



A most important ambiguity, both 

 in common and in metaphysical lan- 

 guage, is thus pointed out by Arch- 

 bishop Whately in the Appendix to 

 his Logic : " Same (as well as One, 

 Identical, and other words derived 

 from them) is used frequently in a 

 sense very different from its primary 

 one, as applicable to a tingle object ; 

 being employed to denote great simi- 

 larity. When several objects are un- 

 distinguishably alike, one single de- 

 scription will apply equally to any of 

 them ; and thence they are said to be 

 all of one and the same nature, appear- 

 ance, &c. As, e.g., when we say ' this 

 house is built of the same stone with 

 such another,' tve only mean that the 

 stones are undistinguishable in their 

 qualities ; not that the one building 

 was pulled down, and the other con- 

 structed with the materials. Whereas 

 sameness, in the primary sense, does 

 not even necessarily imply similarity ; 

 for if we say of any man that he is 

 greatly altered since such a time, we 

 understand, and indeed imply by the 

 very expression, that he is one person, 

 though different in several qualities. 

 It is worth observing also, that Same, 

 in the secondary sense, admits, ac- 

 cording to popular usage, of degrees : 

 we speak of two things being nearly 

 the same, but not entirely : personal 

 identity does not admit of degrees. 



