Chapter XII (5)

205 Not, however, as might at first sight appear, 999 times as much. A
complete analysis of the cases shows that (always assuming the
veracity of the witness to be ⁹⁄₁₀) in 10,000 drawings, the drawing
of No. 79 will occur nine times, and be announced incorrectly once;
the credibility, therefore, of the announcement of No. 79 is ⁹⁄₁₀;
while the drawing of a white ball will occur nine times, and be
announced incorrectly 999 times. The credibility, therefore, of the
announcement of white is ⁹⁄₁₀₀₈, and the ratio of the two 1008:10;
the one announcement being thus only about a hundred times more
credible than the other, instead of 999 times.

206 Supra, book iii., chap. ii., § 3, 4, 5.

207 Mr. Bailey has given the best statement of this theory. “The general
name,” he says, “raises up the image sometimes of one individual of
the class formerly seen, sometimes of another, not unfrequently of
many individuals in succession; and it sometimes suggests an image
made up of elements from several different objects, by a latent
process of which I am not conscious.” (Letters on the Philosophy of
the Human Mind, 1st series, letter 22.) But Mr. Bailey must allow
that we carry on inductions and ratiocinations respecting the class,
by means of this idea or conception of some one individual in it.
This is all I require. The name of a class calls up some idea,
through which we can, to all intents and purposes, think of the
class as such, and not solely of an individual member of it.

208 I have entered rather fully into this question in chap. xvii. of _An
Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy_, headed “The
Doctrine of Concepts or General Notions,” which contains my last
views on the subject.

209 Other examples of inappropriate conceptions are given by Dr. Whewell
(_Phil. Ind. Sc._ ii., 185) as follows: “Aristotle and his followers
endeavored in vain to account for the mechanical relation of forces
in the lever, by applying the _inappropriate_ geometrical
conceptions of the properties of the circle: they failed in
explaining the _form_ of the luminous spot made by the sun shining
through a hole, because they applied the _inappropriate_ conception
of a circular _quality_ in the sun’s light: they speculated to no
purpose about the elementary composition of bodies, because they
assumed the _inappropriate_ conception of _likeness_ between the
elements and the compound, instead of the genuine notion of elements
merely _determining_ the qualities of the compound.” But in these
cases there is more than an inappropriate conception; there is a
false conception; one which has no prototype in nature, nothing
corresponding to it in facts. This is evident in the last two
examples, and is equally true in the first; the “properties of the
circle” which were referred to, being purely fantastical. There is,
therefore, an error beyond the wrong choice of a principle of
generalization; there is a false assumption of matters of fact. The
attempt is made to resolve certain laws of nature into a more
general law, that law not being one which, though real, is
inappropriate, but one wholly imaginary.

210 Professor Bain.

211 This sentence having been erroneously understood as if I had meant
to assert that belief is nothing but an irresistible association, I
think it necessary to observe that I express no theory respecting
the ultimate analysis either of reasoning or of belief, two of the
most obscure points in analytical psychology. I am speaking not of
the powers themselves, but of the previous conditions necessary to
enable those powers to exert themselves: of which conditions I am
contending that language is not one, senses and association being
sufficient without it. The irresistible association theory of
belief, and the difficulties connected with the subject, have been
discussed at length in the notes to the new edition of Mr. James
Mill’s _Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind_.

212 Mr. Bailey agrees with me in thinking that whenever “from something
actually present to my senses, conjoined with past experience, I
feel satisfied that something has happened, or will happen, or is
happening, beyond the sphere of my personal observation,” I may with
strict propriety be said to reason: and of course to reason
inductively, for demonstrative reasoning is excluded by the
circumstances of the case. (_The Theory of Reasoning_, 2d ed., p.
27.)

_ 213 Novum Organum Renovatum_, pp. 35–37.

_ 214 Novum Organum Renovatum_, pp. 39, 40.

215 P. 217, 4to edition.

216 “E, ex, extra, extraneus, étranger, stranger.”

Another etymological example sometimes cited is the derivation of
the English _uncle_ from the Latin _avus_. It is scarcely possible
for two words to bear fewer outward marks of relationship, yet there
is but one step between them, _avus_, _avunculus_, _uncle_. So
_pilgrim_, from _ager_: _per agrum_, _peragrinus_, _peregrinus_,
_pellegrino_, _pilgrim_. Professor Bain gives some apt examples of
these transitions of meaning. “The word ‘damp’ primarily signified
moist, humid, wet. But the property is often accompanied with the
feeling of cold or chilliness, and hence the idea of cold is
strongly suggested by the word. This is not all. Proceeding upon the
superadded meaning, we speak of damping a man’s ardor, a metaphor
where the cooling is the only circumstance concerned; we go on still
further to designate the iron slide that shuts off the draft of a
stove, ‘the damper,’ the primary meaning being now entirely dropped.
‘Dry,’ in like manner, through signifying the absence of moisture,
water, or liquidity, is applied to sulphuric acid containing water,
although not thereby ceasing to be a moist, wet, or liquid
substance.” So in the phrases, dry sherry, or Champagne.

“‘Street,’ originally a paved way, with or without houses, has been
extended to roads lined with houses, whether paved or unpaved.
‘Impertinent’ signified at first irrelevant, alien to the purpose in
hand: through which it has come to mean, meddling, intrusive,
unmannerly, insolent.” (_Logic_, ii., 173, 174.)

217 Pp. 226, 227.

_ 218 Essays_, p. 214.

_ 219 Essays_, p. 215.

220 Though no such evil consequences as take place in these instances
are likely to arise from the modern freak of writing _sanatory_
instead of sanitary, it deserves notice as a charming specimen of
pedantry ingrafted upon ignorance. Those who thus undertake to
correct the spelling of the classical English writers, are not aware
that the meaning of _sanatory_, if there were such a word in the
language, would have reference not to the preservation of health,
but to the cure of disease.

_ 221 Historical Introduction_, vol. i., pp. 66–68.

_ 222 History of Scientific Ideas_, ii., 110, 111.

_ 223 History of Scientific Ideas_, ii., 111–113.

_ 224 Nov. Org. Renov._, pp. 286, 287.

_ 225 History of Scientific Ideas_, ii., 120–122.

_ 226 Nov. Org. Renov._, p. 274.

_ 227 Hist. Sc. Id._, i. 133.

228 Dr. Whewell, in his reply (_Philosophy of Discovery_, p. 270) says
that he “stopped short of, or rather passed by, the doctrine of a
series of organized beings,” because he “thought it bad and narrow
philosophy.” If he did, it was evidently without understanding this
form of the doctrine; for he proceeds to quote a passage from his
“History,” in which the doctrine he condemns is designated as that
of “a mere linear progression in nature, which would place each
genus in contact only with the preceding and succeeding ones.” Now
the series treated of in the text agrees with this linear
progression in nothing whatever but in being a progression.

229 Supra, p. 137.

_ 230 Vulgar Errors_, book v., chap. 21.

_ 231 Pharmacologia_, Historical Introduction, p. 16.

232 The author of one of the Bridgewater Treatises has fallen, as it
seems to me, into a similar fallacy when, after arguing in rather a
curious way to prove that matter may exist without any of the known
properties of matter, and may therefore be changeable, he concludes
that it can not be eternal, because “eternal (passive) existence
necessarily involves incapability of change.” I believe it would be
difficult to point out any other connection between the facts of
eternity and unchangeableness, than a strong association between the
two ideas. Most of the _a priori_ arguments, both religious and
anti-religious, on the origin of things, are fallacies drawn from
the same source.

233 Supra, book ii., chap. v., § 6, and chap. vii., § 1, 2, 3, 4. See
also _Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy_, chap. vi.
and elsewhere.

234 It seems that this doctrine was, before the time I have mentioned,
disputed by some thinkers. Dr. Ward mentions Scotus, Vasquez, Biel,
Francis Lugo, and Valentia.

235 I quote this passage from Playfair’s celebrated _Dissertation on the
Progress of Mathematical and Physical Science_.

236 This statement I must now correct, as too unqualified. The maxim in
question was maintained with full conviction by no less an authority
than Sir William Hamilton. See my _Examination_, chap. xxiv.

_ 237 Nouveaux Essais sur l’Entendement Humain—Avant-propos._ (Œuvres,
Paris ed., 1842, vol. i., p. 19.)

238 This doctrine also was accepted as true, and conclusions were
grounded on it, by Sir William Hamilton. See _Examination_, chap.
xxiv.

239 Not that of Leibnitz, but the principle commonly appealed to under
that name by mathematicians.

_ 240 Dissertation_, p. 27.

_ 241 Hist. Ind. Sc._, Book i., chap. i.

_ 242 Novum Organum_, Aph. 75.

243 Supra, book iii., chap. vii., § 4.

244 It is hardly needful to remark that nothing is here intended to be
said against the possibility at some future period of making gold—by
first discovering it to be a compound, and putting together its
different elements or ingredients. But this is a totally different
idea from that of the seekers of the grand arcanum.

_ 245 Pharmacologia_, pp. 43–45.

246 Vol. i., chap. 8.

_ 247 Nov. Org._, Aph. 46.

248 Playfair’s _Dissertation_, sect. 4.

_ 249 Nov. Org. Renov._, p. 61.

_ 250 Pharmacologia_, p. 21.

_ 251 Pharmacologia_, pp. 23, 24.

252 Ibid., p. 28.

253 Ibid., p. 62.

254 Ibid., pp. 61, 62.

_ 255 Supra_, p. 450.

_ 256 Elements of the Philosophy of the Mind_, vol. ii., chap. 4, sect.
5.

257 “Thus Fourcroy,” says Dr. Paris, “explained the operation of mercury
by its specific gravity, and the advocates of this doctrine favored
the general introduction of the preparations of iron, especially in
scirrhus of the spleen or liver, upon the same hypothetical
principle; for, say they, whatever is most forcible in removing the
obstruction must be the most proper instrument of cure: such is
steel, which, besides the attenuating power with which it is
furnished, has still a greater force in this case from the gravity
of its particles, which, being seven times specifically heavier than
any vegetable, acts in proportion with a stronger impulse, and
therefore is a more powerful deobstruent. This may be taken as a
specimen of the style in which these mechanical physicians reasoned
and practiced.”—_Pharmacologia_, pp. 38, 39.

_ 258 Pharmacologia_, pp. 39, 40.

259 I quote from Dr. Whewell’s _Hist. Ind. Sc._, 3d ed., i., 129.

_ 260 Hist. Ind. Sc._, i., 52.

_ 261 Nov. Org._, Aph. 60.

262 “An advocate,” says Mr. De Morgan (_Formal Logic_, p. 270), “is
sometimes guilty of the argument _à dicto secundum quid ad dictum
simpliciter_: it is his business to do for his client all that his
client might _honestly_ do for himself. Is not the word in italics
frequently omitted? _Might_ any man honestly try to do for himself
all that counsel frequently try to do for him? We are often reminded
of the two men who stole the leg of mutton; one could swear he had
not got it, the other that he had not taken it. The counsel is doing
his duty by his client, the client has left the matter to his
counsel. Between the unexecuted intention of the client, and the
unintended execution of the counsel, there may be a wrong done, and,
if we are to believe the usual maxims, no wrong-doer.”

The same writer justly remarks (p. 251) that there is a converse
fallacy, _à dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid_, called by
the scholastic logicians _fallacia accidentis_; and another which
may be called _à dicto secundum quid ad dictum secundum alterum
quid_ (p. 265). For apt instances of both, I must refer the reader
to Mr. De Morgan’s able chapter on Fallacies.

263 An example of this fallacy is the popular error that _strong_ drink
must be a cause of _strength_. There is here fallacy within fallacy;
for granting that the words “strong” and “strength” were not (as
they are) applied in a totally different sense to fermented liquors
and to the human body, there would still be involved the error of
supposing that an effect must be like its cause; that the conditions
of a phenomenon are likely to resemble the phenomenon itself; which
we have already treated of as an _a priori_ fallacy of the first
rank. As well might it be supposed that a strong poison will make
the person who takes it strong.

264 In his later editions, Archbishop Whately confines the name of
Petitio Principii “to those cases in which one of the premises
either is manifestly the same in sense with the conclusion, or is
actually proved from it, or is such as the persons you are
addressing are not likely to know, or to admit, except as an
inference from the conclusion; as, _e.g._, if any one should infer
the authenticity of a certain history, from its recording such and
such facts, the reality of which rests on the evidence of that
history.”

265 No longer even a probable hypothesis, since the establishment of the
atomic theory; it being now certain that the integral particles of
different substances gravitate unequally. It is true that these
particles, though real _minima_ for the purposes of chemical
combination, may not be the ultimate particles of the substance; and
this doubt alone renders the hypothesis admissible, even as an
hypothesis.

_ 266 Hist. Ind. Sc._, i., 34.

267 “And coxcombs vanquish Berkeley with a grin.”

268 Some arguments and explanations, supplementary to those in the text,
will be found in _An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s
Philosophy_, chap. xxvi.

_ 269 Supra_, p. 424.

270 When this chapter was written, Professor Bain had not yet published
even the first part (“The Senses and the Intellect”) of his profound
Treatise on the Mind. In this the laws of association have been more
comprehensively stated and more largely exemplified than by any
previous writer; and the work, having been completed by the
publication of “The Emotions and the Will,” may now be referred to
as incomparably the most complete analytical exposition of the
mental phenomena, on the basis of a legitimate Induction, which has
yet been produced. More recently still, Mr. Bain has joined with me
in appending to a new edition of the “Analysis,” notes intended to
bring up the analytic science of Mind to its latest improvements.

Many striking applications of the laws of association to the
explanation of complex mental phenomena are also to be found in Mr.
Herbert Spencer’s “Principles of Psychology.”

271 In the case of the moral sentiments the place of direct experiment
is to a considerable extent supplied by historical experience, and
we are able to trace with a tolerable approach to certainty the
particular associations by which those sentiments are engendered.
This has been attempted, so far as respects the sentiment of
justice, in a little work by the present author, entitled
_Utilitarianism_.

272 The most favorable cases for making such approximate generalizations
are what may be termed collective instances; where we are
fortunately enabled to see the whole class respecting which we are
inquiring in action at once, and, from the qualities displayed by
the collective body, are able to judge what must be the qualities of
the majority of the individuals composing it. Thus the character of
a nation is shown in its acts as a nation; not so much in the acts
of its government, for those are much influenced by other causes;
but in the current popular maxims, and other marks of the general
direction of public opinion; in the character of the persons or
writings that are held in permanent esteem or admiration; in laws
and institutions, so far as they are the work of the nation itself,
or are acknowledged and supported by it; and so forth. But even here
there is a large margin of doubt and uncertainty. These things are
liable to be influenced by many circumstances; they are partially
determined by the distinctive qualities of that nation or body of
persons, but partly also by external causes which would influence
any other body of persons in the same manner. In order, therefore,
to make the experiment really complete, we ought to be able to try
it without variation upon other nations: to try how Englishmen would
act or feel if placed in the same circumstances in which we have
supposed Frenchmen to be placed; to apply, in short, the Method of
Differences as well as that of Agreement. Now these experiments we
can not try, nor even approximate to.

273 “To which,” says Dr. Whewell, “we may add, that it is certain, from
the history of the subject, that in that case the hypothesis would
never have been framed at all.”

Dr. Whewell (_Philosophy of Discovery_, pp. 277–282) defends Bacon’s
rule against the preceding strictures. But his defense consists only
in asserting and exemplifying a proposition which I had myself
stated, viz., that though the largest generalizations may be the
earliest made, they are not at first seen in their entire
generality, but acquire it by degrees, as they are found to explain
one class after another of phenomena. The laws of motion, for
example, were not known to extend to the celestial regions, until
the motions of the celestial bodies had been deduced from them.
This, however, does not in any way affect the fact, that the middle
principles of astronomy, the central force, for example, and the law
of the inverse square, could not have been discovered, if the laws
of motion, which are so much more universal, had not been known
first. On Bacon’s system of step-by-step generalization, it would be
impossible in any science to ascend higher than the empirical laws;
a remark which Dr. Whewell’s own Inductive Tables, referred to by
him in support of his argument, amply bear out.

_ 274 Supra_, page 317 to the end of the chapter.

_ 275 Biographia Literaria_, i., 214.

_ 276 Supra_, p. 321.

_ 277 Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy_, pp.
137–140.

278 The quotations in this paragraph are from a paper written by the
author, and published in a periodical in 1834.

_ 279 Cours de Philosophie Positive_, iv., 325–29.

280 Since reprinted entire in _Dissertations and Discussions_, as the
concluding paper of the first volume.

281 Written and first published in 1840.

282 This great generalization is often unfavorably criticised (as by Dr.
Whewell, for instance) under a misapprehension of its real import.
The doctrine, that the theological explanation of phenomena belongs
only to the infancy of our knowledge of them, ought not to be
construed as if it was equivalent to the assertion, that mankind, as
their knowledge advances, will necessarily cease to believe in any
kind of theology. This was M. Comte’s opinion; but it is by no means
implied in his fundamental theorem. All that is implied is, that in
an advanced state of human knowledge, no other Ruler of the World
will be acknowledged than one who rules by universal laws, and does
not at all, or does not unless in very peculiar cases, produce
events by special interpositions. Originally all natural events were
ascribed to such interpositions. At present every educated person
rejects this explanation in regard to all classes of phenomena of
which the laws have been fully ascertained; though some have not yet
reached the point of referring all phenomena to the idea of Law, but
believe that rain and sunshine, famine and pestilence, victory and
defeat, death and life, are issues which the Creator does not leave
to the operation of his general laws, but reserves to be decided by
express acts of volition. M. Comte’s theory is the negation of this
doctrine.

Dr. Whewell equally misunderstands M. Comte’s doctrine respecting
the second or metaphysical stage of speculation. M. Comte did not
mean that “discussions concerning ideas” are limited to an early
stage of inquiry, and cease when science enters into the positive
stage. (_Philosophy of Discovery_, pp. 226 et seq.) In all M.
Comte’s speculations as much stress is laid on the process of
clearing up our conceptions as on the ascertainment of facts. When
M. Comte speaks of the metaphysical stage of speculation, he means
the stage in which men speak of “Nature” and other abstractions as
if they were active forces, producing effects; when Nature is said
to do this, or forbid that; when Nature’s horror of a vacuum,
Nature’s non-admission of a break, Nature’s _vis medicatrix_, were
offered as explanations of phenomena; when the qualities of things
were mistaken for real entities dwelling in the things; when the
phenomena of living bodies were thought to be accounted for by being
referred to a “vital force;” when, in short, the abstract names of
phenomena were mistaken for the causes of their existence. In this
sense of the word it can not be reasonably denied that the
metaphysical explanation of phenomena, equally with the theological,
gives way before the advance of real science.

That the final, or positive stage, as conceived by M. Comte, has
been equally misunderstood, and that, notwithstanding some
expressions open to just criticism, M. Comte never dreamed of
denying the legitimacy of inquiry into all causes which are
accessible to human investigation, I have pointed out in a former
place.

283 Buckle’s _History of Civilization_, i., 30.

284 I have been assured by an intimate friend of Mr. Buckle that he
would not have withheld his assent from these remarks, and that he
never intended to affirm or imply that mankind are not progressive
in their moral as well as in their intellectual qualities. “In
dealing with his problem, he availed himself of the artifice
resorted to by the Political Economist, who leaves out of
consideration the generous and benevolent sentiments, and founds his
science on the proposition that mankind are actuated by acquisitive
propensities alone,” not because such is the fact, but because it is
necessary to begin by treating the principal influence as if it was
the sole one, and make the due corrections afterward. “He desired to
make abstraction of the intellect as the determining and dynamical
element of the progression, eliminating the more dependent set of
conditions, and treating the more active one as if it were an
entirely independent variable.”

The same friend of Mr. Buckle states that when he used expressions
which seemed to exaggerate the influence of general at the expense
of special causes, and especially at the expense of the influence of
individual minds, Mr. Buckle really intended no more than to affirm
emphatically that the greatest men can not effect great changes in
human affairs unless the general mind has been in some considerable
degree prepared for them by the general circumstances of the age; a
truth which, of course, no one thinks of denying. And there
certainly are passages in Mr. Buckle’s writings which speak of the
influence exercised by great individual intellects in as strong
terms as could be desired.

285 Essay on Dryden, in Miscellaneous Writings, i., 186.

286 In the _Cornhill Magazine_ for June and July, 1861.

287 It is almost superfluous to observe, that there is another meaning
of the word Art, in which it may be said to denote the poetical
department or aspect of things in general, in contradistinction to
the scientific. In the text, the word is used in its older, and I
hope, not yet obsolete sense.

288 Professor Bain and others call the selection from the truths of
science made for the purposes of an art, a Practical Science, and
confine the name Art to the actual rules.

289 The word Teleology is also, but inconveniently and improperly,
employed by some writers as a name for the attempt to explain the
phenomena of the universe from final causes.

290 For an express discussion and vindication of this principle, see the
little volume entitled “Utilitarianism.”