Analogous to this are some of the ambiguities in the free-will

controversy; which, as they will come under special consideration in the

concluding Book, I only mention _memoriæ causâ_. In that discussion, too,

the word _I_ 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

motive, 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 different persons have different degrees of

susceptibility to the same motive; as they have also to the same

intoxicating 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 conditions 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

nothing 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 Certainty, at other times for Compulsion;

sometimes for what _can not_ be prevented, at other times only for what we

have reason to be assured _will_ not; we shall have occasion hereafter to

pursue to some of its ulterior consequences.

A most important ambiguity, both in common and in metaphysical language,

is thus pointed out by Archbishop 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 _single_ object; being employed to denote great

_similarity_. When several objects are undistinguishably alike, _one

single description_ will apply equally to any of them; and thence they are

said to be all of _one and the same_ nature, appearance, etc. As, _e.g._,

when we say ‘this house is built of the _same_ stone with such another,’

we only mean that the stones are undistinguishable in their qualities; not

that the one building was pulled down, and the other constructed 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, according to popular usage, of degrees: we speak of two things

being _nearly_ the same, but not entirely: personal identity does not

admit of degrees. Nothing, perhaps, has contributed more to the error of

Realism than inattention to this ambiguity. When several persons are said

to have _one and the same_ opinion, thought, or idea, many men,

overlooking the true simple statement of the case, which is, that they are

_all thinking alike_, look for something more abstruse and mystical, and

imagine there must be some _One Thing_, in the primary sense, though not

an individual which is present at once in the mind of each of these

persons; and thence readily sprung Plato’s theory of Ideas, each of which

was, according to him, one real, eternal object, existing entire and

complete in each of the individual objects that are known by one name.”

It is, indeed, not a matter of inference, but of authentic history, that

Plato’s doctrine of Ideas, and the Aristotelian doctrine (in this respect

similar to the Platonic) of substantial forms and second substances, grew

up in the precise way here pointed out; from the supposed necessity of

finding, in things which were said to have the _same_ nature, or the

_same_ qualities, something which was the _same_ in the very sense in

which a man is the same as himself. All the idle speculations respecting

τὸ ὄν, τὸ ἕν, τὸ ὅμοιον, and similar abstractions, so common in the

ancient and in some modern schools of thought, sprang from the same

source. The Aristotelian logicians saw, however, one case of the

ambiguity, and provided against it with their peculiar felicity in the

invention of technical language, when they distinguished things which

differed both _specie_ and _numero_, from those which differed _numero

tantum_, that is, which were exactly alike (in some particular respect at

least) but were distinct individuals. An extension of this distinction to

the two meanings of the word Same, namely, things which are the same

_specie tantum_, and a thing which is the same _numero_ as well as

_specie_, would have prevented the confusion which has been a source of so

much darkness and such an abundance of positive error in metaphysical

philosophy.

One of the most singular examples of the length to which a thinker of

eminence may be led away by an ambiguity of language, is afforded by this

very case. I refer to the famous argument by which Bishop Berkeley

flattered himself that he had forever put an end to “skepticism, atheism,

and irreligion.” It is briefly as follows: I thought of a thing yesterday;

I ceased to think of it; I think of it again to-day. I had, therefore, in

my mind yesterday an _idea_ of the object; I have also an idea of it

to-day; this idea is evidently not another, but the very same idea. Yet an

intervening time elapsed in which I had it not. Where was the idea during

this interval? It must have been somewhere; it did not cease to exist;

otherwise the idea I had yesterday could not be the _same_ idea; no more

than the man I see alive to-day can be the same whom I saw yesterday if

the man has died in the mean while. Now an idea can not be conceived to

exist anywhere except in a mind; and hence there must exist a Universal

Mind, in which all ideas have their permanent residence during the

intervals of their conscious presence in our own minds.

It is evident that Berkeley here confounded sameness _numero_ with

sameness _specie_, that is, with exact resemblance, and assumed the former

where there was only the latter; not perceiving that when we say we have

the same thought to-day which we had yesterday, we do not mean the same

individual thought, but a thought exactly similar: as we say that we have

the same illness which we had last year, meaning only the same sort of

illness.

In one remarkable instance the scientific world was divided into two

furiously hostile parties by an ambiguity of language affecting a branch

of science which, more completely than most others, enjoys the advantage

of a precise and well-defined terminology. I refer to the famous dispute

respecting the vis viva, the history of which is given at large in

Professor Playfair’s Dissertation. The question was, whether the _force_

of a moving body was proportional (its mass being given) to its velocity

simply, or to the square of its velocity: and the ambiguity was in the

word Force. “One of the effects,” says Playfair, “produced by a moving

body is proportional to the square of the velocity, while another is

proportional to the velocity simply:” from whence clearer thinkers were

subsequently led to establish a double measure of the efficiency of a

moving power, one being called _vis viva_, and the other _momentum_. About

the facts, both parties were from the first agreed: the only question was,

with which of the two effects the term _force_ should be, or could most

conveniently be, associated. But the disputants were by no means aware

that this was all; they thought that force was one thing, the production

of effects another; and the question, by which set of effects the force

which produced both the one and the other should be measured, was supposed

to be a question not of terminology, but of fact.

The ambiguity of the word Infinite is the real fallacy in the amusing

logical puzzle of Achilles and the Tortoise, a puzzle which has been too

hard for the ingenuity or patience of many philosophers, and which no less

a thinker than Sir William Hamilton considered as insoluble; as a sound

argument, though leading to a palpable falsehood. The fallacy, as Hobbes

hinted, lies in the tacit assumption that whatever is infinitely divisible

is infinite; but the following solution (to the invention of which I have

no claim) is more precise and satisfactory.

The argument is, let Achilles run ten times as fast as the tortoise, yet

if the tortoise has the start, Achilles will never overtake him. For

suppose them to be at first separated by an interval of a thousand feet:

when Achilles has run these thousand feet, the tortoise will have got on a

hundred; when Achilles has run those hundred, the tortoise will have run

ten, and so on forever: therefore Achilles may run forever without

overtaking the tortoise.

Now the “forever,” in the conclusion, means, for any length of time that

can be supposed; but in the premises, “ever” does not mean any _length_ of

time; it means any _number of subdivisions_ of time. It means that we may

divide a thousand feet by ten, and that quotient again by ten, and so on

as often as we please; that there never needs be an end to the

subdivisions of the distance, nor consequently to those of the time in

which it is performed. But an unlimited number of subdivisions may be made

of that which is itself limited. The argument proves no other infinity of

duration than may be embraced within five minutes. As long as the five

minutes are not expired, what remains of them may be divided by ten, and

again by ten, as often as we like, which is perfectly compatible with

their being only five minutes altogether. It proves, in short, that to

pass through this finite space requires a time which is infinitely

divisible, but not an infinite time; the confounding of which distinction

Hobbes had already seen to be the gist of the fallacy.

The following ambiguities of the word _right_ (in addition to the obvious

and familiar one of _a_ right and the _adjective_ right) are extracted

from a forgotten paper of my own, in a periodical:

“Speaking morally, you are said to have a right to do a thing, if all

persons are morally bound not to hinder you from doing it. But, in another

sense, to have a right to do a thing is the opposite of having _no_ right

to do it, _i.e._, of being under a moral obligation to forbear doing it.

In this sense, to say that you have a right to do a thing, means that you

may do it without any breach of duty on your part; that other persons not

only ought not to hinder you, but have no cause to think worse of you for

doing it. This is a perfectly distinct proposition from the preceding. The

right which you have by virtue of a duty incumbent upon other persons, is

obviously quite a different thing from a right consisting in the absence

of any duty incumbent upon yourself. Yet the two things are perpetually

confounded. Thus, a man will say he has a right to publish his opinions;

which may be true in this sense, that it would be a breach of duty in any

other person to interfere and prevent the publication: but he assumes

thereupon that, in publishing his opinions, he himself violates no duty;

which may either be true or false, depending, as it does, on his having

taken due pains to satisfy himself, first, that the opinions are true, and

next, that their publication in this manner, and at this particular

juncture, will probably be beneficial to the interests of truth on the

whole.

“The second ambiguity is that of confounding a right of any kind, with a

right to enforce that right by resisting or punishing a violation of it.

People will say, for example, that they have a right to good government,

which is undeniably true, it being the moral duty of their governors to

govern them well. But in granting this, you are supposed to have admitted

their right or liberty to turn out their governors, and perhaps to punish

them, for having failed in the performance of this duty; which, far from

being the same thing, is by no means universally true, but depends on an

immense number of varying circumstances,” requiring to be conscientiously

weighed before adopting or acting on such a resolution. This last example

is (like others which have been cited) a case of fallacy within fallacy;

it involves not only the second of the two ambiguities pointed out, but

the first likewise.

One not unusual form of the Fallacy of Ambiguous Terms is known

technically as the Fallacy of Composition and Division; when the same term

is collective in the premises, distributive in the conclusion, or _vicè __

versa_; or when the middle term is collective in one premise, distributive

in the other. As if one were to say (I quote from Archbishop Whately),

“All the angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles: A B C is an

angle of a triangle; therefore A B C is equal to two right angles....

There is no fallacy more common, or more likely to deceive, than the one

now before us. The form in which it is most usually employed is to

establish some truth, separately, concerning _each single_ member of a

certain class, and thence to infer the same of the _whole collectively_.”

As in the argument one sometimes hears, to prove that the world could do

without great men. If Columbus (it is said) had never lived, America would

still have been discovered, at most only a few years later; if Newton had

never lived, some other person would have discovered the law of

gravitation; and so forth. Most true: these things would have been done,

but in all probability not till some one had again been found with the

qualities of Columbus or Newton. Because any one great man might have had

his place supplied by other great men, the argument concludes that all

great men could have been dispensed with. The term “great men” is

distributive in the premises and collective in the conclusion.

“Such also is the fallacy which probably operates on most adventurers in

lotteries; _e.g._, ‘the gaining of a high prize is no uncommon occurrence;

and what is no uncommon occurrence may reasonably be expected; therefore

the gaining of a high prize may reasonably be expected;’ the conclusion,

when applied to the individual (as in practice it is), must be understood

in the sense of ‘reasonably expected _by a certain individual_;’ therefore

for the major premise to be true, the middle term must be understood to

mean, ‘no uncommon occurrence to some one _particular_ person;’ whereas

for the minor (which has been placed first) to be true, you must

understand it of ‘no uncommon occurrence to _some one or other_;’ and thus

you will have the Fallacy of Composition.

“This is a Fallacy with which men are extremely apt to deceive

_themselves_; for when a multitude of particulars are presented to the

mind, many are too weak or too indolent to take a comprehensive view of

them, but confine their attention to each single point, by turns; and then

decide, infer, and act accordingly; _e.g._, the imprudent spendthrift,

finding that he is able to afford this, _or_ that, _or_ the other expense,

forgets that _all of them together_ will ruin him.” The debauchee destroys

his health by successive acts of intemperance, because no _one_ of those

acts would be of itself sufficient to do him any serious harm. A sick

person reasons with himself, “one, and another, and another, of my

symptoms do not prove that I have a fatal disease;” and practically

concludes that all taken together do not prove it.

§ 2. We have now sufficiently exemplified one of the principal Genera in

this Order of Fallacies; where, the source of error being the ambiguity of

terms, the premises are verbally what is required to support the

conclusion, but not really so. In the second great Fallacy of Confusion

they are neither verbally nor really sufficient, though, from their

multiplicity and confused arrangement, and still oftener from defect of

memory, they are not seen to be what they are. The fallacy I mean is that

of Petitio Principii, or begging the question; including the more complex

and not uncommon variety of it, which is termed Reasoning in a Circle.

Petitio Principii, as defined by Archbishop Whately, is the fallacy “in

which the premise either appears manifestly to be the same as the

conclusion, or is actually proved from the conclusion, or is such as would

naturally and properly so be proved.” By the last clause I presume is

meant, that it is not susceptible of any other proof; for otherwise, there

would be no fallacy. To deduce from a proposition propositions from which

it would itself more naturally be deduced, is often an allowable deviation

from the usual didactic order; or at most, what, by an adaptation of a

phrase familiar to mathematicians, may be called a logical

_inelegance_.(264)

The employment of a proposition to prove that on which it is itself

dependent for proof, by no means implies the degree of mental imbecility

which might at first be supposed. The difficulty of comprehending how this

fallacy could possibly be committed, disappears when we reflect that all

persons, even the instructed, hold a great number of opinions without

exactly recollecting how they came by them. Believing that they have at

some former time verified them by sufficient evidence, but having

forgotten what the evidence was, they may easily be betrayed into deducing

from them the very propositions which are alone capable of serving as

premises for their establishment. “As if,” says Archbishop Whately, “one

should attempt to prove the being of a God from the authority of Holy

Writ;” which might easily happen to one with whom both doctrines, as

fundamental tenets of his religious creed, stand on the same ground of

familiar and traditional belief.

Arguing in a circle, however, is a stronger case of the fallacy, and

implies more than the mere passive reception of a premise by one who does

not remember how it is to be proved. It implies an actual attempt to prove

two propositions reciprocally from one another; and is seldom resorted to,

at least in express terms, by any person in his own speculations, but is

committed by those who, being hard pressed by an adversary, are forced

into giving reasons for an opinion of which, when they began to argue,

they had not sufficiently considered the grounds. As in the following

example from Archbishop Whately: “Some mechanicians attempt to prove (what

they ought to lay down as a probable but doubtful hypothesis)(265) that

every particle of matter gravitates equally: ‘why?’ ‘because those bodies

which contain more particles ever gravitate more strongly, _i.e._, are

heavier:’ ‘but (it may be urged) those which are heaviest are not always

more bulky;’ ‘no, but they contain more particles, though more closely

condensed:’ ‘how do you know that?’ ‘because they are heavier:’ ‘how does

that prove it?’ ‘because all particles of matter gravitating equally, that

mass which is specifically the heavier must needs have the more of them in

the same space.’” It appears to me that the fallacious reasoner, in his

private thoughts, would not be likely to proceed beyond the first step. He

would acquiesce in the sufficiency of the reason first given, “bodies

which contain more particles are heavier.” It is when he finds this

questioned, and is called upon to prove it, without knowing how, that he

tries to establish his premise by supposing proved what he is attempting

to prove by it. The most effectual way, in fact, of exposing a petitio

principii, when circumstances allow of it, is by challenging the reasoner

to prove his premises; which if he attempts to do, he is necessarily

driven into arguing in a circle.

It is not uncommon, however, for thinkers, and those not of the lowest

description, to be led even in their own thoughts, not indeed into

formally proving each of two propositions from the other, but into

admitting propositions which can only be so proved. In the preceding

example the two together form a complete and consistent, though

hypothetical, explanation of the facts concerned. And the tendency to

mistake mutual coherency for truth—to trust one’s safety to a strong chain

though it has no point of support—is at the bottom of much which, when

reduced to the strict forms of argumentation, can exhibit itself no

otherwise than as reasoning in a circle. All experience bears testimony to

the enthralling effect of neat concatenation in a system of doctrines, and

the difficulty with which people admit the persuasion that any thing which

holds so well together can possibly fall.

Since every case where a conclusion which can only be proved from certain

premises is used for the proof of those premises, is a case of _petitio

principii_, that fallacy includes a very great proportion of all incorrect

reasoning. It is necessary, for completing our view of the fallacy, to

exemplify some of the disguises under which it is accustomed to mask

itself, and to escape exposure.

A proposition would not be admitted by any person in his senses as a

corollary from itself, unless it were expressed in language which made it

seem different. One of the commonest modes of so expressing it, is to

present the proposition itself in abstract terms, as a proof of the same

proposition expressed in concrete language. This is a very frequent mode,

not only of pretended proof, but of pretended explanation; and is parodied

when Molière (_Le Malade Imaginaire_) makes one of his absurd physicians

say,

Mihi a docto doctore,

Demandatur causam et rationem quare

Opium facit dormire.

A quoi respondeo,

Quia est in eo

Virtus dormitiva,

Cujus est natura

Sensus assoupire.

The words Nature and Essence are grand instruments of this mode of begging

the question, as in the well-known argument of the scholastic theologians,

that the mind thinks always, because the _essence_ of the mind is to

think. Locke had to point out, that if by essence is here meant some

property which must manifest itself by actual exercise at all times, the

premise is a direct assumption of the conclusion; while if it only means

that to think is the distinctive property of a mind, there is no

connection between the premise and the conclusion, since it is not

necessary that a distinctive property should be perpetually in action.

The following is one of the modes in which these abstract terms, Nature

and Essence, are used as instruments of this fallacy. Some particular

properties of a thing are selected, more or less arbitrarily, to be termed

its nature or essence; and when this has been done, these properties are

supposed to be invested with a kind of indefeasibleness; to have become

paramount to all the other properties of the thing, and incapable of being

prevailed over or counteracted by them. As when Aristotle, in a passage

already cited, “decides that there is no void on such arguments as this:

in a void there could be no difference of up and down; for as in nothing

there are no differences, so there are none in a privation or negation;

but a void is merely a privation or negation of matter; therefore, in a

void, bodies could not move up and down, which it is in their _nature_ to

do.”(266) In other words, it is in the _nature_ of bodies to move up and

down, _ergo_ any physical fact which supposes them not so to move, can not

be authentic. This mode of reasoning, by which a bad generalization is

made to overrule all facts which contradict it, is Petitio Principii in

one of its most palpable forms.

None of the modes of assuming what should be proved are in more frequent

use than what are termed by Bentham “question-begging appellatives;” names

which beg the question under the disguise of stating it. The most potent

of these are such as have a laudatory or vituperative character. For

instance, in politics, the word Innovation. The dictionary meaning of this

term being merely “a change to something new,” it is difficult for the

defenders even of the most salutary improvement to deny that it is an

innovation; yet the word having acquired in common usage a vituperative

connotation in addition to its dictionary meaning, the admission is always

construed as a large concession to the disadvantage of the thing proposed.

The following passage from the argument in refutation of the Epicureans,

in the second book of Cicero, “De Finibus,” affords a fine example of this

sort of fallacy: “Et quidem illud ipsum non nimium probo (et tantum

patior) philosophum loqui de cupiditatibus finiendis. An potest cupiditas

finiri? tollenda est, atque extrahenda radicitus. Quis est enim, in quo

sit cupiditas, quin recte cupidus dici possit? Ergo et avarus erit, sed

finite: adulter, verum habebit modum: et luxuriosus eodem modo. Qualis

ista philosophia est, quæ non interitum afferat pravitatis, sed sit

contenta mediocritate vitiorum?” The question was, whether certain

desires, when kept within bounds, are vices or not; and the argument

decides the point by applying to them a word (_cupiditas_) which _implies_

vice. It is shown, however, in the remarks which follow, that Cicero did

not intend this as a serious argument, but as a criticism on what he

deemed an inappropriate expression. “Rem ipsam prorsus probo: elegantiam

desidero. Appellet hæc _desideria naturæ_; cupiditatis nomen servet alio,”

etc. But many persons, both ancient and modern, have employed this, or

something equivalent to it, as a real and conclusive argument. We may

remark that the passage respecting _cupiditas_ and _cupidus_ is also an

example of another fallacy already noticed, that of Paronymous Terms.

Many more of the arguments of the ancient moralists, and especially of the

Stoics, fall within the definition of Petitio Principii. In the “De

Finibus,” for example, which I continue to quote as being probably the

best extant exemplification at once of the doctrines and the methods of

the schools of philosophy existing at that time; of what value as

arguments are such pleas as those of Cato in the third book: That if

virtue were not happiness, it could not be a thing to _boast_ of: That if

death or pain were evils, it would be impossible not to fear them, and it

could not, therefore, be laudable to despise them, etc. In one way of

viewing these arguments, they may be regarded as appeals to the authority

of the general sentiment of mankind which had stamped its approval upon

certain actions and characters by the phrases referred to; but that such

could have been the meaning intended is very unlikely, considering the

contempt of the ancient philosophers for vulgar opinion. In any other

sense they are clear cases of Petitio Principii, since the word laudable,

and the idea of boasting, imply principles of conduct; and practical

maxims can only be proved from speculative truths, namely, from the

properties of the subject-matter, and can not, therefore, be employed to

prove those properties. As well might it be argued that a government is

good because we ought to support it, or that there is a God because it is

our duty to pray to him.

It is assumed by all the disputants in the “De Finibus” as the foundation

of the inquiry into the _summum bonum_, that “sapiens semper beatus est.”

Not simply that wisdom gives the best chance of happiness, or that wisdom

consists in knowing what happiness is, and by what things it is promoted;

these propositions would not have been enough for them; but that the sage

always is, and must of necessity be, happy. The idea that wisdom could be

consistent with unhappiness, was always rejected as inadmissible: the

reason assigned by one of the interlocutors, near the beginning of the

third book, being, that if the wise could be unhappy, there was little use

in pursuing wisdom. But by unhappiness they did not mean pain or

suffering; to that it was granted that the wisest person was liable in

common with others: he was happy, because in possessing wisdom he had the

most valuable of all possessions, the most to be sought and prized of all

things, and to possess the most valuable thing was to be the most happy.

By laying it down, therefore, at the commencement of the inquiry, that the

sage must be happy, the disputed question respecting the _summum bonum_

was in fact begged; with the further assumption, that pain and suffering,

so far as they can co-exist with wisdom, are not unhappiness, and are no

evil.

The following are additional instances of Petitio Principii, under more or

less of disguise.

Plato, in the _Sophistes_, attempts to prove that things may exist which

are incorporeal, by the argument that justice and wisdom are incorporeal,

and justice and wisdom must be something. Here, if by _something_ be

meant, as Plato did in fact mean, a thing capable of existing in and by

itself, and not as a quality of some other thing, he begs the question in

asserting that justice and wisdom must be something; if he means any thing

else, his conclusion is not proved. This fallacy might also be classed

under ambiguous middle-term; _something_, in the one premise, meaning some

substance, in the other merely some object of thought, whether substance

or attribute.

It was formerly an argument employed in proof of what is now no longer a

popular doctrine, the infinite divisibility of matter, that every portion

of matter however small, must at least have an upper and an under surface.

Those who used this argument did not see that it assumed the very point in

dispute, the impossibility of arriving at a minimum of thickness; for if

there be a minimum, its upper and under surface will of course be one; it

will be itself a surface, and no more. The argument owes its very

considerable plausibility to this, that the premise does actually seem

more obvious than the conclusion, though really identical with it. As

expressed in the premise, the proposition appeals directly and in concrete

language to the incapacity of the human imagination for conceiving a

minimum. Viewed in this light, it becomes a case of the _a priori_ fallacy

or natural prejudice, that whatever can not be conceived can not exist.

Every fallacy of Confusion (it is almost unnecessary to repeat) will, if

cleared up, become a fallacy of some other sort; and it will be found of

deductive or ratiocinative fallacies generally, that when they mislead,

there is mostly, as in this case, a fallacy of some other description

lurking under them, by virtue of which chiefly it is that the verbal

juggle, which is the outside or body of this kind of fallacy, passes

undetected.

Euler’s Algebra, a book otherwise of great merit, but full, to

overflowing, of logical errors in respect to the foundation of the

science, contains the following argument to prove that _minus_ multiplied

by _minus_ gives _plus_, a doctrine the opprobrium of all mere

mathematicians, and which Euler had not a glimpse of the true method of

proving. He says _minus_ multiplied by _minus_ can not give _minus_; for

_minus_ multiplied by _plus_ gives _minus_, and _minus_ multiplied by

_minus_ can not give the same product as _minus_ multiplied by _plus_. Now

one is obliged to ask, why minus multiplied by minus must give any product

at all? and if it does, why its product can not be the same as that of

minus multiplied by plus? for this would seem, at the first glance, not

more absurd than that minus by minus should give the same as plus by plus,

the proposition which Euler prefers to it. The premise requires proof, as

much as the conclusion; nor can it be proved, except by that more

comprehensive view of the nature of multiplication, and of algebraic

processes in general, which would also supply a far better proof of the

mysterious doctrine which Euler is here endeavoring to demonstrate.

A striking instance of reasoning in a circle is that of some ethical

writers, who first take for their standard of moral truth what, being the

general, they deem to be the natural or instinctive sentiments and

perceptions of mankind, and then explain away the numerous instances of

divergence from their assumed standard, by representing them as cases in

which the perceptions are unhealthy. Some particular mode of conduct or

feeling is affirmed to be _unnatural_; why? because it is abhorrent to the

universal and natural sentiments of mankind. Finding no such sentiment in

yourself, you question the fact; and the answer is (if your antagonist is

polite), that you are an exception, a peculiar case. But neither (say you)

do I find in the people of some other country, or of some former age, any

such feeling of abhorrence; “ay, but their feelings were sophisticated and

unhealthy.”

One of the most notable specimens of reasoning in a circle is the doctrine

of Hobbes, Rousseau, and others, which rests the obligations by which

human beings are bound as members of society, on a supposed social

compact. I waive the consideration of the fictitious nature of the compact

itself; but when Hobbes, through the whole Leviathan, elaborately deduces

the obligation of obeying the sovereign, not from the necessity or utility

of doing so, but from a promise supposed to have been made by our

ancestors, on renouncing savage life and agreeing to establish political

society, it is impossible not to retort by the question, Why are we bound

to keep a promise made for us by others? or why bound to keep a promise at

all? No satisfactory ground can be assigned for the obligation, except the

mischievous consequences of the absence of faith and mutual confidence

among mankind. We are, therefore, brought round to the interests of

society, as the ultimate ground of the obligation of a promise; and yet

those interests are not admitted to be a sufficient justification for the

existence of government and law. Without a promise it is thought that we

should not be bound to that which is implied in all modes of living in

society, namely, to yield a general obedience to the laws therein

established; and so necessary is the promise deemed, that if none has

actually been made, some additional safety is supposed to be given to the

foundations of society by feigning one.

§ 3. Two principal subdivisions of the class of Fallacies of Confusion

having been disposed of; there remains a third, in which the confusion is

not, as in the Fallacy of Ambiguity, in misconceiving the import of the

premises, nor, as in Petitio Principii, in forgetting what the premises

are, but in mistaking the conclusion which is to be proved. This is the

fallacy of Ignoratio Elenchi, in the widest sense of the phrase; also

called by Archbishop Whately the Fallacy of Irrelevant Conclusion. His

examples and remarks are highly worthy of citation.

“Various kinds of propositions are, according to the occasion, substituted

for the one of which proof is required; sometimes the particular for the

universal; sometimes a proposition with different terms; and various are

the contrivances employed to effect and to conceal this substitution, and

to make the conclusion which the sophist has drawn, answer practically the

same purpose as the one he ought to have established. We say, ‘practically

the same purpose,’ because it will very often happen that some _emotion_

will be excited, some sentiment impressed on the mind (by a dexterous

employment of this fallacy), such as shall bring men into the

_disposition_ requisite for your purpose; though they may not have

assented to, or even stated distinctly in their own minds, the

_proposition_ which it was your business to establish. Thus if a sophist

has to defend one who has been guilty of some _serious_ offense, which he

wishes to extenuate, though he is unable distinctly to prove that it is

not such, yet if he can succeed in _making the audience laugh_ at some

casual matter, he has gained practically the same point. So also if any

one has pointed out the extenuating circumstances in some particular case

of offense, so as to show that it differs widely from the generality of

the same class, the sophist, if he finds himself unable to disprove these

circumstances, may do away the force of them, by simply _referring the

action to that very class_, which no one can deny that it belongs to, and

the very name of which will excite a feeling of disgust sufficient to

counteract the extenuation; _e.g._, let it be a case of peculation, and

that many _mitigating_ circumstances have been brought forward which can

not be denied; the sophistical opponent will reply, ‘Well, but after all,

the man is a _rogue_, and there is an end of it;’ now in reality this was

(by hypothesis) never the question; and the mere assertion of what was

never denied _ought_ not, in fairness, to be regarded as decisive; but,

practically, the odiousness of the word, arising in great measure from the

association of those very circumstances which belong to most of the class,

but which we have supposed to be _absent_ in _this particular_ instance,

excites precisely that feeling of disgust which, in effect, destroys the

force of the defense. In like manner we may refer to this head all cases

of improper appeal to the passions, and every thing else which is

mentioned by Aristotle as extraneous to the matter in hand (ἔξω τοῦ

πράγματος).”

Again, “instead of proving that ‘this prisoner has committed an atrocious

fraud,’ you prove that the fraud he is accused of is atrocious; instead of

proving (as in the well-known tale of Cyrus and the two coats) that the

taller boy had a right to force the other boy to exchange coats with him,

you prove that the exchange would have been advantageous to both; instead

of proving that the poor ought to be relieved in this way rather than in

that, you prove that the poor ought to be relieved; instead of proving

that the irrational agent—whether a brute or a madman—can never be

deterred from any act by apprehension of punishment (as, for instance, a

dog from sheep-biting, by fear of being beaten), you prove that the

beating of one dog does not operate as an _example_ to _other_ dogs, etc.

“It is evident that Ignoratio Elenchi may be employed as well for the

apparent refutation of your opponent’s proposition, as for the apparent

establishment of your own; for it is substantially the same thing, to

prove what was not denied or to disprove what was not asserted. The latter

practice is not less common, and it is more offensive, because it

frequently amounts to a personal affront, in attributing to a person

opinions, etc., which he perhaps holds in abhorrence. Thus, when in a

discussion one party vindicates, on the ground of general expediency, a

particular instance of resistance to government in a case of intolerable

oppression, the opponent may gravely maintain, ‘that we ought not to do

evil that good may come;’ a proposition which of course had never been

denied, the point in dispute being, ‘whether resistance in this particular

case _were_ doing evil or not.’ Or again, by way of disproving the

assertion of the right of private judgment in religion, one may hear a

grave argument to prove that ‘it is impossible every one can be _right in

his judgment_.’”

The works of controversial writers are seldom free from this fallacy. The

attempts, for instance, to disprove the population doctrines of Malthus,

have been mostly cases of _ignoratio elenchi_. Malthus has been supposed

to be refuted if it could be shown that in some countries or ages

population has been nearly stationary; as if he had asserted that

population always increases in a given ratio, or had not expressly

declared that it increases only in so far as it is not restrained by

prudence, or kept down by poverty and disease. Or, perhaps, a collection

of facts is produced to prove that in some one country the people are

better off with a dense population than they are in another country with a

thin one; or that the people have become more numerous and better off at

the same time. As if the assertion were that a dense population could not

possibly be well off; as if it were not part of the very doctrine, and

essential to it, that where there is a more abundant production there may

be a greater population without any increase of poverty, or even with a

diminution of it.

The favorite argument against Berkeley’s theory of the non-existence of

matter, and the most popularly effective, next to a “grin”(267)—an

argument, moreover, which is not confined to “coxcombs,” nor to men like

Samuel Johnson, whose greatly overrated ability certainly did not lie in

the direction of metaphysical speculation, but is the stock argument of

the Scotch school of metaphysicians—is a palpable Ignoratio Elenchi. The

argument is perhaps as frequently expressed by gesture as by words, and

one of its commonest forms consists in knocking a stick against the

ground. This short and easy confutation overlooks the fact, that in

denying matter, Berkeley did not deny any thing to which our senses bear

witness, and therefore can not be answered by any appeal to them. His

skepticism related to the supposed substratum, or hidden cause of the

appearances perceived by our senses; the evidence of which, whatever may

be thought of its conclusiveness, is certainly not the evidence of sense.

And it will always remain a signal proof of the want of metaphysical

profundity of Reid, Stewart, and, I am sorry to add, of Brown, that they

should have persisted in asserting that Berkeley, if he believed his own

doctrine, was bound to walk into the kennel, or run his head against a

post. As if persons who do not recognize an occult cause of their

sensations could not possibly believe that a fixed order subsists among

the sensations themselves. Such a want of comprehension of the distinction

between a thing and its sensible manifestation, or, in metaphysical

language, between the noumenon and the phenomenon, would be impossible to

even the dullest disciple of Kant or Coleridge.

It would be easy to add a greater number of examples of this fallacy, as

well as of the others which I have attempted to characterize. But a more

copious exemplification does not seem to be necessary; and the intelligent

reader will have little difficulty in adding to the catalogue from his own

reading and experience. We shall, therefore, here close our exposition of

the general principles of logic, and proceed to the supplementary inquiry

which is necessary to complete our design.

Book VI.

ON THE LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES.

“Si l’homme peut prédire, avec une assurance presque entière, les

phénomènes dont il connaît les lois; si lors même qu’elles lui

sont inconnues, il peut, d’après l’expérience, prévoir avec une

grande probabilité les événements de l’avenir; pourquoi

regarderait-on comme une entreprise chimérique, celle de tracer

avec quelque vraisemblance le tableau des destinées futures de

l’espèce humaine, d’après les résultats de son histoire? Le seul

fondement de croyance dans les sciences naturelles, est cette

idée, que les lois générales, connues ou ignorées, qui règlent les

phénomènes de l’univers, sont nécessaires et constantes; et par

quelle raison ce principe serait-il moins vrai pour le

développement des facultés intellectuelles et morales de l’homme,

que pour les autres opérations de la nature? Enfin, puisque des

opinions formées d’après l’expérience ... sont la seule règle de

la conduite des hommes les plus sages, pourquoi interdirait-on au

philosophe d’appuyer ses conjectures sur cette même base, pourvu

qu’il ne leur attribue pas une certitude supérieure à celle qui

peut naître du nombre, de la constance, de l’exactitude des

observations?”—CONDORCET, _Esquisse d’un Tableau Historique des

Progrès de l’Esprit Humain_.

Chapter I.

Introductory Remarks.

§ 1. Principles of Evidence and Theories of Method are not to be

constructed _a priori_. The laws of our rational faculty, like those of

every other natural agency, are only learned by seeing the agent at work.

The earlier achievements of science were made without the conscious

observance of any Scientific Method; and we should never have known by

what process truth is to be ascertained, if we had not previously

ascertained many truths. But it was only the easier problems which could

be thus resolved: natural sagacity, when it tried its strength against the

more difficult ones, either failed altogether, or, if it succeeded here

and there in obtaining a solution, had no sure means of convincing others

that its solution was correct. In scientific investigation, as in all

other works of human skill, the way of obtaining the end is seen as it

were instinctively by superior minds in some comparatively simple case,

and is then, by judicious generalization, adapted to the variety of

complex cases. We learn to do a thing in difficult circumstances, by

attending to the manner in which we have spontaneously done the same thing

in easier ones.

This truth is exemplified by the history of the various branches of

knowledge which have successively, in the ascending order of their

complication, assumed the character of sciences; and will doubtless

receive fresh confirmation from those of which the final scientific

constitution is yet to come, and which are still abandoned to the

uncertainties of vague and popular discussion. Although several other

sciences have emerged from this state at a comparatively recent date, none

now remain in it except those which relate to man himself, the most

complex and most difficult subject of study on which the human mind can be

engaged.

Concerning the physical nature of man, as an organized being—though there

is still much uncertainty and much controversy, which can only be

terminated by the general acknowledgment and employment of stricter rules

of induction than are commonly recognized—there is, however, a

considerable body of truths which all who have attended to the subject

consider to be fully established; nor is there now any radical

imperfection in the method observed in the department of science by its

most distinguished modern teachers. But the laws of Mind, and, in even a

greater degree, those of Society, are so far from having attained a

similar state of even partial recognition, that it is still a controversy

whether they are capable of becoming subjects of science in the strict

sense of the term: and among those who are agreed on this point, there

reigns the most irreconcilable diversity on almost every other. Here,

therefore, if anywhere, the principles laid down in the preceding Books

may be expected to be useful.

If on matters so much the most important with which human intellect can

occupy itself a more general agreement is ever to exist among thinkers; if

what has been pronounced “the proper study of mankind” is not destined to

remain the only subject which Philosophy can not succeed in rescuing from

Empiricism; the same process through which the laws of many simpler

phenomena have by general acknowledgment been placed beyond dispute, must

be consciously and deliberately applied to those more difficult inquiries.

If there are some subjects on which the results obtained have finally

received the unanimous assent of all who have attended to the proof, and

others on which mankind have not yet been equally successful; on which the

most sagacious minds have occupied themselves from the earliest date, and

have never succeeded in establishing any considerable body of truths, so

as to be beyond denial or doubt; it is by generalizing the methods

successfully followed in the former inquiries, and adapting them to the

latter, that we may hope to remove this blot on the face of science. The

remaining chapters are an endeavor to facilitate this most desirable

object.

§ 2. In attempting this, I am not unmindful how little can be done toward

it in a mere treatise on Logic, or how vague and unsatisfactory all

precepts of Method must necessarily appear when not practically

exemplified in the establishment of a body of doctrine. Doubtless, the

most effectual mode of showing how the sciences of Ethics and Politics may

be constructed would be to construct them: a task which, it needs scarcely

be said, I am not about to undertake. But even if there were no other

examples, the memorable one of Bacon would be sufficient to demonstrate,

that it is sometimes both possible and useful to point out the way, though

without being one’s self prepared to adventure far into it. And if more

were to be attempted, this at least is not a proper place for the attempt.

In substance, whatever can be done in a work like this for the Logic of

the Moral Sciences, has been or ought to have been accomplished in the

five preceding Books; to which the present can be only a kind of

supplement or appendix, since the methods of investigation applicable to

moral and social science must have been already described, if I have

succeeded in enumerating and characterizing those of science in general.

It remains, however, to examine which of those methods are more especially

suited to the various branches of moral inquiry; under what peculiar

facilities or difficulties they are there employed; how far the

unsatisfactory state of those inquiries is owing to a wrong choice of

methods, how far to want of skill in the application of right ones; and

what degree of ultimate success may be attained or hoped for by a better

choice or more careful employment of logical processes appropriate to the

case. In other words, whether moral sciences exist, or can exist; to what

degree of perfection they are susceptible of being carried; and by what

selection or adaptation of the methods brought to view in the previous

part of this work that degree of perfection is attainable.

At the threshold of this inquiry we are met by an objection, which, if not

removed, would be fatal to the attempt to treat human conduct as a subject

of science. Are the actions of human beings, like all other natural

events, subject to invariable laws? Does that constancy of causation,

which is the foundation of every scientific theory of successive

phenomena, really obtain among them? This is often denied; and for the

sake of systematic completeness, if not from any very urgent practical

necessity, the question should receive a deliberate answer in this place.

We shall devote to the subject a chapter apart.

Chapter II.

Of Liberty And Necessity.

§ 1. The question, whether the law of causality applies in the same strict

sense to human actions as to other phenomena, is the celebrated

controversy concerning the freedom of the will; which, from at least as

far back as the time of Pelagius, has divided both the philosophical and

the religious world. The affirmative opinion is commonly called the

doctrine of Necessity, as asserting human volitions and actions to be

necessary and inevitable. The negative maintains that the will is not

determined, like other phenomena, by antecedents, but determines itself;

that our volitions are not, properly speaking, the effects of causes, or

at least have no causes which they uniformly and implicitly obey.

I have already made it sufficiently apparent that the former of these

opinions is that which I consider the true one; but the misleading terms

in which it is often expressed, and the indistinct manner in which it is

usually apprehended, have both obstructed its reception, and perverted its

influence when received. The metaphysical theory of free-will, as held by

philosophers (for the practical feeling of it, common in a greater or less

degree to all mankind, is in no way inconsistent with the contrary

theory), was invented because the supposed alternative of admitting human

actions to be _necessary_ was deemed inconsistent with every one’s

instinctive consciousness, as well as humiliating to the pride and even

degrading to the moral nature of man. Nor do I deny that the doctrine, as

sometimes held, is open to these imputations; for the misapprehension in

which I shall be able to show that they originate, unfortunately is not

confined to the opponents of the doctrine, but is participated in by many,

perhaps we might say by most, of its supporters.

§ 2. Correctly conceived, the doctrine called Philosophical Necessity is

simply this: that, given the motives which are present to an individual’s

mind, and given likewise the character and disposition of the individual,

the manner in which he will act might be unerringly inferred; that if we

knew the person thoroughly, and knew all the inducements which are acting

upon him, we could foretell his conduct with as much certainty as we can

predict any physical event. This proposition I take to be a mere

interpretation of universal experience, a statement in words of what every

one is internally convinced of. No one who believed that he knew

thoroughly the circumstances of any case, and the characters of the

different persons concerned, would hesitate to foretell how all of them

would act. Whatever degree of doubt he may in fact feel, arises from the

uncertainty whether he really knows the circumstances, or the character of

some one or other of the persons, with the degree of accuracy required;

but by no means from thinking that if he did know these things, there

could be any uncertainty what the conduct would be. Nor does this full

assurance conflict in the smallest degree with what is called our feeling

of freedom. We do not feel ourselves the less free, because those to whom

we are intimately known are well assured how we shall will to act in a

particular case. We often, on the contrary, regard the doubt what our

conduct will be, as a mark of ignorance of our character, and sometimes

even resent it as an imputation. The religious metaphysicians who have

asserted the freedom of the will, have always maintained it to be

consistent with divine foreknowledge of our actions: and if with divine,

then with any other foreknowledge. We may be free, and yet another may

have reason to be perfectly certain what use we shall make of our freedom.

It is not, therefore, the doctrine that our volitions and actions are

invariable consequents of our antecedent states of mind, that is either

contradicted by our consciousness, or felt to be degrading.

But the doctrine of causation, when considered as obtaining between our

volitions and their antecedents, is almost universally conceived as

involving more than this. Many do not believe, and very few practically

feel, that there is nothing in causation but invariable, certain, and

unconditional sequence. There are few to whom mere constancy of succession

appears a sufficiently stringent bond of union for so peculiar a relation

as that of cause and effect. Even if the reason repudiates, the

imagination retains, the feeling of some more intimate connection, of some

peculiar tie, or mysterious constraint exercised by the antecedent over

the consequent. Now this it is which, considered as applying to the human

will, conflicts with our consciousness, and revolts our feelings. We are

certain that, in the case of our volitions, there is not this mysterious

constraint. We know that we are not compelled, as by a magical spell, to

obey any particular motive. We feel, that if we wished to prove that we

have the power of resisting the motive, we could do so (that wish being,

it needs scarcely be observed, a _new antecedent_); and it would be

humiliating to our pride, and (what is of more importance) paralyzing to

our desire of excellence, if we thought otherwise. But neither is any such

mysterious compulsion now supposed, by the best philosophical authorities,

to be exercised by any other cause over its effect. Those who think that

causes draw their effects after them by a mystical tie, are right in

believing that the relation between volitions and their antecedents is of

another nature. But they should go farther, and admit that this is also

true of all other effects and their antecedents. If such a tie is

considered to be involved in the word Necessity, the doctrine is not true

of human actions; but neither is it then true of inanimate objects. It

would be more correct to say that matter is not bound by necessity, than

that mind is so.

That the free-will metaphysicians, being mostly of the school which

rejects Hume’s and Brown’s analysis of Cause and Effect, should miss their

way for want of the light which that analysis affords, can not surprise

us. The wonder is, that the necessitarians, who usually admit that

philosophical theory, should in practice equally lose sight of it. The

very same misconception of the doctrine called Philosophical Necessity,

which prevents the opposite party from recognizing its truth, I believe to

exist more or less obscurely in the minds of most necessitarians, however

they may in words disavow it. I am much mistaken if they habitually feel

that the necessity which they recognize in actions is but uniformity of

order, and capability of being predicted. They have a feeling as if there

were at bottom a stronger tie between the volitions and their causes; as

if, when they asserted that the will is governed by the balance of

motives, they meant something more cogent than if they had only said, that

whoever knew the motives, and our habitual susceptibilities to them, could

predict how we should will to act. They commit, in opposition to their own

scientific system, the very same mistake which their adversaries commit in

obedience to theirs; and in consequence do really in some instances suffer

those depressing consequences which their opponents erroneously impute to

the doctrine itself.

§ 3. I am inclined to think that this error is almost wholly an effect of

the associations with a word, and that it would be prevented, by

forbearing to employ, for the expression of the simple fact of causation,

so extremely inappropriate a term as Necessity. That word, in its other

acceptations, involves much more than mere uniformity of sequence: it

implies irresistibleness. Applied to the will, it only means that, the

given cause will be followed by the effect, subject to all possibilities

of counteraction by other causes; but in common use it stands for the

operation of those causes exclusively which are supposed too powerful to

be counteracted at all. When we say that all human actions take place of

necessity, we only mean that they will certainly happen if nothing

prevents; when we say that dying of want, to those who can not get food,

is a necessity, we mean that it will certainly happen whatever may be done

to prevent it. The application of the same term to the agencies on which

human actions depend, as is used to express those agencies of nature which

are really uncontrollable, can not fail, when habitual, to create a

feeling of uncontrollableness in the former also. This, however, is a mere

illusion. There are physical sequences which we call necessary, as death

for want of food or air; there are others which, though as much cases of

causation as the former, are not said to be necessary, as death from

poison, which an antidote, or the use of the stomach-pump, will sometimes

avert. It is apt to be forgotten by people’s feelings, even if remembered

by their understandings, that human actions are in this last predicament:

they are never (except in some cases of mania) ruled by any one motive

with such absolute sway that there is no room for the influence of any

other. The causes, therefore, on which action depends, are never

uncontrollable; and any given effect is only necessary provided that the

causes tending to produce it are not controlled. That whatever happens,

could not have happened otherwise, unless something had taken place which

was capable of preventing it, no one surely needs hesitate to admit. But

to call this by the name Necessity is to use the term in a sense so

different from its primitive and familiar meaning, from that which it

bears in the common occasions of life, as to amount almost to a play upon

words. The associations derived from the ordinary sense of the term will

adhere to it in spite of all we can do; and though the doctrine of

Necessity, as stated by most who hold it, is very remote from fatalism, it

is probable that most necessitarians are fatalists, more or less, in their

feelings.

A fatalist believes, or half believes (for nobody is a consistent

fatalist), not only that whatever is about to happen will be the

infallible result of the causes which produce it (which is the true

necessitarian doctrine), but moreover that there is no use in struggling

against it; that it will happen, however we may strive to prevent it. Now,

a necessitarian, believing that our actions follow from our characters,

and that our characters follow from our organization, our education, and

our circumstances, is apt to be, with more or less of consciousness on his

part, a fatalist as to his own actions, and to believe that his nature is

such, or that his education and circumstances have so moulded his

character, that nothing can now prevent him from feeling and acting in a

particular way, or at least that no effort of his own can hinder it. In

the words of the sect which in our own day has most perseveringly

inculcated and most perversely misunderstood this great doctrine, his

character is formed _for_ him, and not _by_ him; therefore his wishing

that it had been formed differently is of no use; he has no power to alter

it. But this is a grand error. He has, to a certain extent, a power to

alter his character. Its being, in the ultimate resort, formed for him, is

not inconsistent with its being, in part, formed _by_ him as one of the

intermediate agents. His character is formed by his circumstances

(including among these his particular organization); but his own desire to

mould it in a particular way, is one of those circumstances, and by no

means one of the least influential. We can not, indeed, directly will to

be different from what we are. But neither did those who are supposed to

have formed our characters directly will that we should be what we are.

Their will had no direct power except over their own actions. They made us

what they did make us, by willing, not the end, but the requisite means;

and we, when our habits are not too inveterate, can, by similarly willing

the requisite means, make ourselves different. If they could place us

under the influence of certain circumstances, we, in like manner, can

place ourselves under the influence of other circumstances. We are exactly

as capable of making our own character, _if we will_, as others are of

making it for us.

Yes (answers the Owenite), but these words, “if we will,” surrender the

whole point: since the will to alter our own character is given us, not by

any efforts of ours, but by circumstances which we can not help, it comes

to us either from external causes, or not at all. Most true: if the

Owenite stops here, he is in a position from which nothing can expel him.

Our character is formed by us as well as for us; but the wish which

induces us to attempt to form it is formed for us; and how? Not, in

general, by our organization, nor wholly by our education, but by our

experience; experience of the painful consequences of the character we

previously had; or by some strong feeling of admiration or aspiration,

accidentally aroused. But to think that we have no power of altering our

character, and to think that we shall not use our power unless we desire

to use it, are very different things, and have a very different effect on

the mind. A person who does not wish to alter his character, can not be

the person who is supposed to feel discouraged or paralyzed by thinking

himself unable to do it. The depressing effect of the fatalist doctrine

can only be felt where there _is_ a wish to do what that doctrine

represents as impossible. It is of no consequence what we think forms our

character, when we have no desire of our own about forming it; but it is

of great consequence that we should not be prevented from forming such a

desire by thinking the attainment impracticable, and that if we have the

desire, we should know that the work is not so irrevocably done as to be

incapable of being altered.

And indeed, if we examine closely, we shall find that this feeling, of our

being able to modify our own character _if we wish_, is itself the feeling

of moral freedom which we are conscious of. A person feels morally free

who feels that his habits or his temptations are not his masters, but he

theirs; who, even in yielding to them, knows that he could resist; that

were he desirous of altogether throwing them off, there would not be

required for that purpose a stronger desire than he knows himself to be

capable of feeling. It is of course necessary, to render our consciousness

of freedom complete, that we should have succeeded in making our character

all we have hitherto attempted to make it; for if we have wished and not

attained, we have, to that extent, not power over our own character; we

are not free. Or at least, we must feel that our wish, if not strong

enough to alter our character, is strong enough to conquer our character

when the two are brought into conflict in any particular case of conduct.

And hence it is said with truth, that none but a person of confirmed

virtue is completely free.

The application of so improper a term as Necessity to the doctrine of

cause and effect in the matter of human character, seems to me one of the

most signal instances in philosophy of the abuse of terms, and its

practical consequences one of the most striking examples of the power of

language over our associations. The subject will never be generally

understood until that objectionable term is dropped. The free-will

doctrine, by keeping in view precisely that portion of the truth which the

word Necessity puts out of sight, namely the power of the mind to

co-operate in the formation of its own character, has given to its

adherents a practical feeling much nearer to the truth than has generally

(I believe) existed in the minds of necessitarians. The latter may have

had a stronger sense of the importance of what human beings can do to

shape the characters of one another; but the free-will doctrine has, I

believe, fostered in its supporters a much stronger spirit of

self-culture.

§ 4. There is still one fact which requires to be noticed (in addition to

the existence of a power of self-formation) before the doctrine of the

causation of human actions can be freed from the confusion and

misapprehensions which surround it in many minds. When the will is said to

be determined by motives, a motive does not mean always, or solely, the

anticipation of a pleasure or of a pain. I shall not here inquire whether

it be true that, in the commencement, all our voluntary actions are mere

means consciously employed to obtain some pleasure or avoid some pain. It

is at least certain that we gradually, through the influence of

association, come to desire the means without thinking of the end; the

action itself becomes an object of desire, and is performed without

reference to any motive beyond itself. Thus far, it may still be objected

that, the action having through association become pleasurable, we are, as

much as before, moved to act by the anticipation of a pleasure, namely,

the pleasure of the action itself. But granting this, the matter does not

end here. As we proceed in the formation of habits, and become accustomed

to will a particular act or a particular course of conduct because it is

pleasurable, we at last continue to will it without any reference to its

being pleasurable. Although, from some change in us or in our

circumstances, we have ceased to find any pleasure in the action, or

perhaps to anticipate any pleasure as the consequence of it, we still

continue to desire the action, and consequently to do it. In this manner

it is that habits of hurtful excess continue to be practiced although they

have ceased to be pleasurable; and in this manner also it is that the

habit of willing to persevere in the course which he has chosen, does not

desert the moral hero, even when the reward, however real, which he

doubtless receives from the consciousness of well-doing, is any thing but

an equivalent for the sufferings he undergoes, or the wishes which he may

have to renounce.

A habit of willing is commonly called a purpose; and among the causes of

our volitions, and of the actions which flow from them, must be reckoned

not only likings and aversions, but also purposes. It is only when our

purposes have become independent of the feelings of pain or pleasure from

which they originally took their rise, that we are said to have a

confirmed character. “A character,” says Novalis, “is a completely

fashioned will:” and the will, once so fashioned, may be steady and

constant, when the passive susceptibilities of pleasure and pain are

greatly weakened or materially changed.

With the corrections and explanations now given, the doctrine of the

causation of our volitions by motives, and of motives by the desirable

objects offered to us, combined with our particular susceptibilities of

desire, may be considered, I hope, as sufficiently established for the

purposes of this treatise.(268)

Chapter III.

That There Is, Or May Be, A Science Of Human Nature.

§ 1. It is a common notion, or at least it is implied in many common modes

of speech, that the thoughts, feelings, and actions of sentient beings are

not a subject of science, in the same strict sense in which this is true

of the objects of outward nature. This notion seems to involve some

confusion of ideas, which it is necessary to begin by clearing up.

Any facts are fitted, in themselves, to be a subject of science which

follow one another according to constant laws, although those laws may not

have been discovered, nor even be discoverable by our existing resources.

Take, for instance, the most familiar class of meteorological phenomena,

those of rain and sunshine. Scientific inquiry has not yet succeeded in

ascertaining the order of antecedence and consequence among these

phenomena, so as to be able, at least in our regions of the earth, to

predict them with certainty, or even with any high degree of probability.

Yet no one doubts that the phenomena depend on laws, and that these must

be derivative laws resulting from known ultimate laws, those of heat,

electricity, vaporization, and elastic fluids. Nor can it be doubted that

if we were acquainted with all the antecedent circumstances, we could,

even from those more general laws, predict (saving difficulties of

calculation) the state of the weather at any future time. Meteorology,

therefore, not only has in itself every natural requisite for being, but

actually is, a science; though, from the difficulty of observing the facts

on which the phenomena depend (a difficulty inherent in the peculiar

nature of those phenomena), the science is extremely imperfect; and were

it perfect, might probably be of little avail in practice, since the data

requisite for applying its principles to particular instances would rarely

be procurable.

A case may be conceived, of an intermediate character, between the

perfection of science and this its extreme imperfection. It may happen

that the greater causes, those on which the principal part of the

phenomena depends, are within the reach of observation and measurement; so

that if no other causes intervened, a complete explanation could be given

not only of the phenomena in general, but of all the variations and

modifications which it admits of. But inasmuch as other, perhaps many

other causes, separately insignificant in their effects, co-operate or

conflict in many or in all cases with those greater causes, the effect,

accordingly, presents more or less of aberration from what would be

produced by the greater causes alone. Now if these minor causes are not so

constantly accessible, or not accessible at all, to accurate observation,

the principal mass of the effect may still, as before, be accounted for,

and even predicted; but there will be variations and modifications which

we shall not be competent to explain thoroughly, and our predictions will

not be fulfilled accurately, but only approximately.

It is thus, for example, with the theory of the tides. No one doubts that

Tidology (as Dr. Whewell proposes to call it) is really a science. As much

of the phenomena as depends on the attraction of the sun and moon is

completely understood, and may, in any, even unknown, part of the earth’s

surface, be foretold with certainty; and the far greater part of the

phenomena depends on those causes. But circumstances of a local or casual

nature, such as the configuration of the bottom of the ocean, the degree

of confinement from shores, the direction of the wind, etc., influence, in

many or in all places, the height and time of the tide; and a portion of

these circumstances being either not accurately knowable, not precisely

measurable, or not capable of being certainly foreseen, the tide in known

places commonly varies from the calculated result of general principles by

some difference that we can not explain, and in unknown ones may vary from

it by a difference that we are not able to foresee or conjecture.

Nevertheless, not only is it certain that these variations depend on

causes, and follow their causes by laws of unerring uniformity; not only,

therefore, is tidology a science, like meteorology, but it is, what

hitherto at least meteorology is not, a science largely available in

practice. General laws may be laid down respecting the tides, predictions

may be founded on those laws, and the result will in the main, though

often not with complete accuracy, correspond to the predictions.

And this is what is or ought to be meant by those who speak of sciences

which are not _exact_ sciences. Astronomy was once a science, without

being an exact science. It could not become exact until not only the

general course of the planetary motions, but the perturbations also, were

accounted for, and referred to their causes. It has become an exact

science, because its phenomena have been brought under laws comprehending

the whole of the causes by which the phenomena are influenced, whether in

a great or only in a trifling degree, whether in all or only in some

cases, and assigning to each of those causes the share of effect which

really belongs to it. But in the theory of the tides the only laws as yet

accurately ascertained are those of the causes which affect the phenomenon

in all cases, and in a considerable degree; while others which affect it

in some cases only, or, if in all, only in a slight degree, have not been

sufficiently ascertained and studied to enable us to lay down their laws;

still less to deduce the completed law of the phenomenon, by compounding

the effects of the greater with those of the minor causes. Tidology,

therefore, is not yet an exact science; not from any inherent incapacity

of being so, but from the difficulty of ascertaining with complete

precision the real derivative uniformities. By combining, however, the

exact laws of the greater causes, and of such of the minor ones as are

sufficiently known, with such empirical laws or such approximate

generalizations respecting the miscellaneous variations as can be obtained

by specific observation, we can lay down general propositions which will

be true in the main, and on which, with allowance for the degree of their

probable inaccuracy, we may safely ground our expectations and our

conduct.

§ 2. The science of human nature is of this description. It falls far

short of the standard of exactness now realized in Astronomy; but there is

no reason that it should not be as much a science as Tidology is, or as

Astronomy was when its calculations had only mastered the main phenomena,

but not the perturbations.

The phenomena with which this science is conversant being the thoughts,

feelings, and actions of human beings, it would have attained the ideal

perfection of a science if it enabled us to foretell how an individual

would think, feel, or act throughout life, with the same certainty with

which astronomy enables us to predict the places and the occultations of

the heavenly bodies. It needs scarcely be stated that nothing approaching

to this can be done. The actions of individuals could not be predicted

with scientific accuracy, were it only because we can not foresee the

whole of the circumstances in which those individuals will be placed. But

further, even in any given combination of (present) circumstances, no

assertion, which is both precise and universally true, can be made

respecting the manner in which human beings will think, feel, or act. This

is not, however, because every person’s modes of thinking, feeling, and

acting do not depend on causes; nor can we doubt that if, in the case of

any individual, our data could be complete, we even now know enough of the

ultimate laws by which mental phenomena are determined, to enable us in

many cases to predict, with tolerable certainty, what, in the greater

number of supposable combinations of circumstances, his conduct or

sentiments would be. But the impressions and actions of human beings are

not solely the result of their present circumstances, but the joint result

of those circumstances and of the characters of the individuals; and the

agencies which determine human character are so numerous and diversified

(nothing which has happened to the person throughout life being without

its portion of influence), that in the aggregate they are never in any two

cases exactly similar. Hence, even if our science of human nature were

theoretically perfect, that is, if we could calculate any character as we

can calculate the orbit of any planet, _from given data_; still, as the

data are never all given, nor ever precisely alike in different cases, we

could neither make positive predictions, nor lay down universal

propositions.

Inasmuch, however, as many of those effects which it is of most importance

to render amenable to human foresight and control are determined, like the

tides, in an incomparably greater degree by general causes, than by all

partial causes taken together; depending in the main on those

circumstances and qualities which are common to all mankind, or at least

to large bodies of them, and only in a small degree on the idiosyncrasies

of organization or the peculiar history of individuals; it is evidently

possible with regard to all such effects, to make predictions which will

_almost_ always be verified, and general propositions which are almost

always true. And whenever it is sufficient to know how the great majority

of the human race, or of some nation or class of persons, will think,

feel, and act, these propositions are equivalent to universal ones. For

the purposes of political and social science this _is_ sufficient. As we

formerly remarked,(269) an approximate generalization is, in social

inquiries, for most practical purposes equivalent to an exact one; that

which is only probable when asserted of individual human beings

indiscriminately selected, being certain when affirmed of the character

and collective conduct of masses.

It is no disparagement, therefore, to the science of Human Nature, that

those of its general propositions which descend sufficiently into detail

to serve as a foundation for predicting phenomena in the concrete, are for

the most part only approximately true. But in order to give a genuinely

scientific character to the study, it is indispensable that these

approximate generalizations, which in themselves would amount only to the

lowest kind of empirical laws, should be connected deductively with the

laws of nature from which they result; should be resolved into the

properties of the causes on which the phenomena depend. In other words,

the science of Human Nature may be said to exist in proportion as the

approximate truths, which compose a practical knowledge of mankind, can be

exhibited as corollaries from the universal laws of human nature on which

they rest; whereby the proper limits of those approximate truths would be

shown, and we should be enabled to deduce others for any new state of

circumstances, in anticipation of specific experience.

The proposition now stated is the text on which the two succeeding

chapters will furnish the comment.

Chapter IV.

Of The Laws Of Mind.

§ 1. What the Mind is, as well as what Matter is, or any other question

respecting Things in themselves, as distinguished from their sensible

manifestations, it would be foreign to the purposes of this treatise to

consider. Here, as throughout our inquiry, we shall keep clear of all

speculations respecting the mind’s own nature, and shall understand by the

laws of mind those of mental Phenomena; of the various feelings or states

of consciousness of sentient beings. These, according to the

classification we have uniformly followed, consist of Thoughts, Emotions,

Volitions, and Sensations; the last being as truly states of Mind as the

three former. It is usual, indeed, to speak of sensations as states of

body, not of mind. But this is the common confusion, of giving one and the

same name to a phenomenon and to the approximate cause or conditions of

the phenomenon. The immediate antecedent of a sensation is a state of

body, but the sensation itself is a state of mind. If the word Mind means

any thing, it means that which feels. Whatever opinion we hold respecting

the fundamental identity or diversity of matter and mind, in any case the

distinction between mental and physical facts, between the internal and

the external world, will always remain, as a matter of classification; and

in that classification, sensations, like all other feelings, must be

ranked as mental phenomena. The mechanism of their production, both in the

body itself and in what is called outward nature, is all that can with any

propriety be classed as physical.

The phenomena of mind, then, are the various feelings of our nature, both

those improperly called physical and those peculiarly designated as

mental; and by the laws of mind, I mean the laws according to which those

feelings generate one another.

§ 2. All states of mind are immediately caused either by other states of

mind, or by states of body. When a state of mind is produced by a state of

mind, I call the law concerned in the case a law of Mind. When a state of

mind is produced directly by a state of body, the law is a law of Body,

and belongs to physical science.

With regard to those states of mind which are called sensations, all are

agreed that these have for their immediate antecedents, states of body.

Every sensation has for its proximate cause some affection of the portion

of our frame called the nervous system, whether this affection originates

in the action of some external object, or in some pathological condition

of the nervous organization itself. The laws of this portion of our

nature—the varieties of our sensations, and the physical conditions on

which they proximately depend—manifestly belong to the province of

Physiology.

Whether the remainder of our mental states are similarly dependent on

physical conditions, is one of the _vexatæ questiones_ in the science of

human nature. It is still disputed whether our thoughts, emotions, and

volitions are generated through the intervention of material mechanism;

whether we have organs of thought and of emotion, in the same sense in

which we have organs of sensation. Many eminent physiologists hold the

affirmative. These contend that a thought (for example) is as much the

result of nervous agency, as a sensation; that some particular state of

our nervous system, in particular of that central portion of it called the

brain, invariably precedes, and is presupposed by, every state of our

consciousness. According to this theory, one state of mind is never really

produced by another: all are produced by states of body. When one thought

seems to call up another by association, it is not really a thought which

recalls a thought; the association did not exist between the two thoughts,

but between the two states of the brain or nerves which preceded the

thoughts: one of those states recalls the other, each being attended in

its passage by the particular state of consciousness which is consequent

on it. On this theory the uniformities of succession among states of mind

would be mere derivative uniformities, resulting from the laws of

succession of the bodily states which cause them. There would be no

original mental laws, no Laws of Mind in the sense in which I use the

term, at all; and mental science would be a mere branch, though the

highest and most recondite branch, of the science of physiology. M. Comte,

accordingly, claims the scientific cognizance of moral and intellectual

phenomena exclusively for physiologists; and not only denies to

Psychology, or Mental Philosophy properly so called, the character of a

science, but places it, in the chimerical nature of its objects and

pretensions, almost on a par with astrology.

But, after all has been said which can be said, it remains incontestable

that there exist uniformities of succession among states of mind, and that

these can be ascertained by observation and experiment. Further, that

every mental state has a nervous state for its immediate antecedent and

proximate cause, though extremely probable, can not hitherto be said to be

proved, in the conclusive manner in which this can be proved of

sensations; and even were it certain, yet every one must admit that we are

wholly ignorant of the characteristics of these nervous states; we know

not, and at present have no means of knowing, in what respect one of them

differs from another; and our only mode of studying their successions or

co-existences must be by observing the successions and co-existences of

the mental states, of which they are supposed to be the generators or

causes. The successions, therefore, which obtain among mental phenomena,

do not admit of being deduced from the physiological laws of our nervous

organization; and all real knowledge of them must continue, for a long

time at least, if not always, to be sought in the direct study, by

observation and experiment, of the mental successions themselves. Since,

therefore, the order of our mental phenomena must be studied in those

phenomena, and not inferred from the laws of any phenomena more general,

there is a distinct and separate Science of Mind.

The relations, indeed, of that science to the science of physiology must

never be overlooked or undervalued. It must by no means be forgotten that

the laws of mind may be derivative laws resulting from laws of animal

life, and that their truth, therefore, may ultimately depend on physical

conditions; and the influence of physiological states or physiological

changes in altering or counteracting the mental successions, is one of the

most important departments of psychological study. But, on the other hand,

to reject the resource of psychological analysis, and construct the theory

of the mind solely on such data as physiology at present affords, seems to

me as great an error in principle, and an even more serious one in

practice. Imperfect as is the science of mind, I do not scruple to affirm

that it is in a considerably more advanced state than the portion of

physiology which corresponds to it; and to discard the former for the

latter appears, to me an infringement of the true canons of inductive

philosophy, which must produce, and which does produce, erroneous

conclusions in some very important departments of the science of human

nature.

§ 3. The subject, then, of Psychology is the uniformities of succession,

the laws, whether ultimate or derivative, according to which one mental

state succeeds another; is caused by, or at least, is caused to follow,

another. Of these laws some are general, others more special. The

following are examples of the most general laws:

First. Whenever any state of consciousness has once been excited in us, no

matter by what cause, an inferior degree of the same state of

consciousness, a state of consciousness resembling the former, but

inferior in intensity, is capable of being reproduced in us, without the

presence of any such cause as excited it at first. Thus, if we have once

seen or touched an object, we can afterward think of the object though it

be absent from our sight or from our touch. If we have been joyful or

grieved at some event, we can think of or remember our past joy or grief,

though no new event of a happy or painful nature has taken place. When a

poet has put together a mental picture of an imaginary object, a Castle of

Indolence, a Una, or a Hamlet, he can afterward think of the ideal object

he has created, without any fresh act of intellectual combination. This

law is expressed by saying, in the language of Hume, that every mental

_impression_ has its _idea_.

Secondly. These ideas, or secondary mental states, are excited by our

impressions, or by other ideas, according to certain laws which are called

Laws of Association. Of these laws the first is, that similar ideas tend

to excite one another. The second is, that when two impressions have been

frequently experienced (or even thought of) either simultaneously or in

immediate succession, then whenever one of these impressions, or the idea

of it, recurs, it tends to excite the idea of the other. The third law is,

that greater intensity in either or both of the impressions is equivalent,

in rendering them excitable by one another, to a greater frequency of

conjunction. These are the laws of ideas, on which I shall not enlarge in

this place, but refer the reader to works professedly psychological, in

particular to Mr. James Mill’s _Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human

Mind_, where the principal laws of association, along with many of their

applications, are copiously exemplified, and with a masterly hand.(270)

These simple or elementary Laws of Mind have been ascertained by the

ordinary methods of experimental inquiry; nor could they have been

ascertained in any other manner. But a certain number of elementary laws

having thus been obtained, it is a fair subject of scientific inquiry how

far those laws can be made to go in explaining the actual phenomena. It is

obvious that complex laws of thought and feeling not only may, but must,

be generated from these simple laws. And it is to be remarked, that the

case is not always one of Composition of Causes: the effect of concurring

causes is not always precisely the sum of the effects of those causes when

separate, nor even always an effect of the same kind with them. Reverting

to the distinction which occupies so prominent a place in the theory of

induction, the laws of the phenomena of mind are sometimes analogous to

mechanical, but sometimes also to chemical laws. When many impressions or

ideas are operating in the mind together, there sometimes takes place a

process of a similar kind to chemical combination. When impressions have

been so often experienced in conjunction, that each of them calls up

readily and instantaneously the ideas of the whole group, those ideas

sometimes melt and coalesce into one another, and appear not several

ideas, but one; in the same manner as, when the seven prismatic colors are

presented to the eye in rapid succession, the sensation produced is that

of white. But as in this last case it is correct to say that the seven

colors when they rapidly follow one another _generate_ white, but not that

they actually _are_ white; so it appears to me that the Complex Idea,

formed by the blending together of several simpler ones, should, when it

really appears simple (that is, when the separate elements are not

consciously distinguishable in it), be said to _result from_, or _be

generated by_, the simple ideas, not to _consist_ of them. Our idea of an

orange really _consists_ of the simple ideas of a certain color, a certain

form, a certain taste and smell, etc., because we can, by interrogating

our consciousness, perceive all these elements in the idea. But we can not

perceive, in so apparently simple a feeling as our perception of the shape

of an object by the eye, all that multitude of ideas derived from other

senses, without which it is well ascertained that no such visual

perception would ever have had existence; nor, in our idea of Extension,

can we discover those elementary ideas of resistance, derived from our

muscular frame, in which it has been conclusively shown that the idea

originates. These, therefore, are cases of mental chemistry; in which it

is proper to say that the simple ideas generate, rather than that they

compose, the complex ones.

With respect to all the other constituents of the mind, its beliefs, its

abstruser conceptions, its sentiments, emotions, and volitions, there are

some (among whom are Hartley and the author of the _Analysis_) who think

that the whole of these are generated from simple ideas of sensation, by a

chemistry similar to that which we have just exemplified. These

philosophers have made out a great part of their case, but I am not

satisfied that they have established the whole of it. They have shown that

there is such a thing as mental chemistry; that the heterogeneous nature

of a feeling A, considered in relation to B and C, is no conclusive

argument against its being generated from B and C. Having proved this,

they proceed to show, that where A is found, B and C were, or may have

been present, and why, therefore, they ask, should not A have been

generated from B and C? But even if this evidence were carried to the

highest degree of completeness which it admits of; if it were shown (which

hitherto it has not, in all cases, been) that certain groups of associated

ideas not only might have been, but actually were, present whenever the

more recondite mental feeling was experienced; this would amount only to

the Method of Agreement, and could not prove causation until confirmed by

the more conclusive evidence of the Method of Difference. If the question

be whether Belief is a mere case of close association of ideas, it would

be necessary to examine experimentally if it be true that any ideas

whatever, provided they are associated with the required degree of

closeness, give rise to belief. If the inquiry be into the origin of moral

feelings, the feeling for example of moral reprobation, it is necessary to

compare all the varieties of actions or states of mind which are ever

morally disapproved, and see whether in all these cases it can be shown,

or reasonably surmised, that the action or state of mind had become

connected by association, in the disapproving mind, with some particular

class of hateful or disgusting ideas; and the method employed is, thus

far, that of Agreement. But this is not enough. Supposing this proved, we

must try further by the Method of Difference, whether this particular kind

of hateful or disgusting ideas, when it becomes associated with an action

previously indifferent, will render that action a subject of moral

disapproval. If this question can be answered in the affirmative, it is

shown to be a law of the human mind, that an association of that

particular description is the generating cause of moral reprobation. That

all this is the case has been rendered extremely probable, but the

experiments have not been tried with the degree of precision necessary for

a complete and absolutely conclusive induction.(271)

It is further to be remembered, that even if all which this theory of

mental phenomena contends for could be proved, we should not be the more

enabled to resolve the laws of the more complex feelings into those of the

simpler ones. The generation of one class of mental phenomena from

another, whenever it can be made out, is a highly interesting fact in

psychological chemistry; but it no more supersedes the necessity of an

experimental study of the generated phenomenon, than a knowledge of the

properties of oxygen and sulphur enables us to deduce those of sulphuric

acid without specific observation and experiment. Whatever, therefore, may

be the final issue of the attempt to account for the origin of our

judgments, our desires, or our volitions, from simpler mental phenomena,

it is not the less imperative to ascertain the sequences of the complex

phenomena themselves, by special study in conformity to the canons of

Induction. Thus, in respect to Belief, psychologists will always have to

inquire what beliefs we have by direct consciousness, and according to

what laws one belief produces another; what are the laws in virtue of

which one thing is recognized by the mind, either rightly or erroneously,

as evidence of another thing. In regard to Desire, they will have to

examine what objects we desire naturally, and by what causes we are made

to desire things originally indifferent, or even disagreeable to us; and

so forth. It may be remarked that the general laws of association prevail

among these more intricate states of mind, in the same manner as among the

simpler ones. A desire, an emotion, an idea of the higher order of

abstraction, even our judgments and volitions, when they have become

habitual, are called up by association, according to precisely the same

laws as our simple ideas.

§ 4. In the course of these inquiries, it will be natural and necessary to

examine how far the production of one state of mind by another is

influenced by any assignable state of body. The commonest observation

shows that different minds are susceptible in very different degrees to

the action of the same psychological causes. The idea, for example, of a

given desirable object will excite in different minds very different

degrees of intensity of desire. The same subject of meditation, presented

to different minds, will excite in them very unequal degrees of

intellectual action. These differences of mental susceptibility in

different individuals may be, first, original and ultimate facts; or,

secondly, they may be consequences of the previous mental history of those

individuals; or, thirdly and lastly, they may depend on varieties of

physical organization. That the previous mental history of the individuals

must have some share in producing or in modifying the whole of their

mental character, is an inevitable consequence of the laws of mind; but

that differences of bodily structure also co-operate, is the opinion of

all physiologists, confirmed by common experience. It is to be regretted

that hitherto this experience, being accepted in the gross, without due

analysis, has been made the groundwork of empirical generalizations most

detrimental to the progress of real knowledge.

It is certain that the natural differences which really exist in the

mental predispositions or susceptibilities of different persons are often

not unconnected with diversities in their organic constitution. But it

does not therefore follow that these organic differences must in all cases

influence the mental phenomena directly and immediately. They often affect

them through the medium of their psychological causes. For example, the

idea of some particular pleasure may excite in different persons, even

independently of habit or education, very different strengths of desire,

and this may be the effect of their different degrees or kinds of nervous

susceptibility; but these organic differences, we must remember, will

render the pleasurable sensation itself more intense in one of these

persons than in the other; so that the idea of the pleasure will also be

an intenser feeling, and will, by the operation of mere mental laws,

excite an intenser desire, without its being necessary to suppose that the

desire itself is directly influenced by the physical peculiarity. As in

this, so in many cases, such differences in the kind or in the intensity

of the physical sensations as must necessarily result from differences of

bodily organization, will of themselves account for many differences not

only in the degree, but even in the kind, of the other mental phenomena.

So true is this, that even different _qualities_ of mind, different types

of mental character, will naturally be produced by mere differences of

intensity in the sensations generally; as is well pointed out in the able

essay on Dr. Priestley, by Mr. Martineau, mentioned in a former chapter:

“The sensations which form the elements of all knowledge are received

either simultaneously or successively: when several are received

simultaneously, as the smell, the taste, the color, the form, etc., of a

fruit, their association together constitutes our idea of an _object_;

when received successively, their association makes up the idea of an

_event_. Any thing, then, which favors the associations of synchronous

ideas will tend to produce a knowledge of objects, a perception of

qualities; while any thing which favors association in the successive

order, will tend to produce a knowledge of events, of the order of

occurrences, and of the connection of cause and effect: in other words, in

the one case a perceptive mind, with a discriminate feeling of the

pleasurable and painful properties of things, a sense of the grand and the

beautiful will be the result: in the other, a mind attentive to the

movements and phenomena, a ratiocinative and philosophic intellect. Now it

is an acknowledged principle, that all sensations experienced during the

presence of any vivid impression become strongly associated with it, and

with each other; and does it not follow that the synchronous feelings of a

sensitive constitution (_i.e._, the one which has vivid impressions) will

be more intimately blended than in a differently formed mind? If this

suggestion has any foundation in truth, it leads to an inference not

unimportant; that where nature has endowed an individual with great

original susceptibility, he will probably be distinguished by fondness for

natural history, a relish for the beautiful and great, and moral

enthusiasm; where there is but a mediocrity of sensibility, a love of

science, of abstract truth, with a deficiency of taste and of fervor, is

likely to be the result.”

We see from this example, that when the general laws of mind are more

accurately known, and, above all, more skillfully applied to the detailed

explanation of mental peculiarities, they will account for many more of

those peculiarities than is ordinarily supposed. Unfortunately the

reaction of the last and present generation against the philosophy of the

eighteenth century has produced a very general neglect of this great

department of analytical inquiry; of which, consequently, the recent

progress has been by no means proportional to its early promise. The

majority of those who speculate on human nature prefer dogmatically to

assume that the mental differences which they perceive, or think they

perceive, among human beings, are ultimate facts, incapable of being

either explained or altered, rather than take the trouble of fitting

themselves, by the requisite processes of thought, for referring those

mental differences to the outward causes by which they are for the most

part produced, and on the removal of which they would cease to exist. The

German school of metaphysical speculation, which has not yet lost its

temporary predominance in European thought, has had this among many other

injurious influences; and at the opposite extreme of the psychological

scale, no writer, either of early or of recent date, is chargeable in a

higher degree with this aberration from the true scientific spirit, than

M. Comte.

It is certain that, in human beings at least, differences in education and

in outward circumstances are capable of affording an adequate explanation

of by far the greatest portion of character; and that the remainder may be

in great part accounted for by physical differences in the sensations

produced in different individuals by the same external or internal cause.

There are, however, some mental facts which do not seem to admit of these

modes of explanation. Such, to take the strongest case, are the various

instincts of animals, and the portion of human nature which corresponds to

those instincts. No mode has been suggested, even by way of hypothesis, in

which these can receive any satisfactory, or even plausible, explanation

from psychological causes alone; and there is great reason to think that

they have as positive, and even as direct and immediate, a connection with

physical conditions of the brain and nerves as any of our mere sensations

have. A supposition which (it is perhaps not superfluous to add) in no way

conflicts with the indisputable fact that these instincts may be modified

to any extent, or entirely conquered, in human beings, and to no

inconsiderable extent even in some of the domesticated animals, by other

mental influences, and by education.

Whether organic causes exercise a direct influence over any other classes

of mental phenomena, is hitherto as far from being ascertained as is the

precise nature of the organic conditions even in the case of instincts.

The physiology, however, of the brain and nervous system is in a state of

such rapid advance, and is continually bringing forth such new and

interesting results, that if there be really a connection between mental

peculiarities and any varieties cognizable by our senses in the structure

of the cerebral and nervous apparatus, the nature of that connection is

now in a fair way of being found out. The latest discoveries in cerebral

physiology appear to have proved that any such connection which may exist

is of a radically different character from that contended for by Gall and

his followers, and that, whatever may hereafter be found to be the true

theory of the subject, phrenology at least is untenable.

Chapter V.

Of Ethology, Or The Science Of The Formation Of Character.

§ 1. The laws of mind as characterized in the preceding chapter, compose

the universal or abstract portion of the philosophy of human nature; and

all the truths of common experience, constituting a practical knowledge of

mankind, must, to the extent to which they are truths, be results or

consequences of these. Such familiar maxims, when collected _a posteriori_

from observation of life, occupy among the truths of the science the place

of what, in our analysis of Induction, have so often been spoken of under

the title of Empirical Laws.

An Empirical Law (it will be remembered) is a uniformity, whether of

succession or of co-existence, which holds true in all instances within

our limits of observation, but is not of a nature to afford any assurance

that it would hold beyond those limits; either because the consequent is

not really the effect of the antecedent, but forms part along with it of a

chain of effects flowing from prior causes not yet ascertained, or because

there is ground to believe that the sequence (though a case of causation)

is resolvable into simpler sequences, and, depending therefore on a

concurrence of several natural agencies, is exposed to an unknown

multitude of possibilities of counteraction. In other words, an empirical

law is a generalization, of which, not content with finding it true, we

are obliged to ask, why is it true? knowing that its truth is not

absolute, but dependent on some more general conditions, and that it can

only be relied on in so far as there is ground of assurance that those

conditions are realized.

Now, the observations concerning human affairs collected from common

experience are precisely of this nature. Even if they were universally and

exactly true within the bounds of experience, which they never are, still

they are not the ultimate laws of human action; they are not the

principles of human nature, but results of those principles under the

circumstances in which mankind have happened to be placed. When the

Psalmist “said in his haste that all men are liars,” he enunciated what in

some ages and countries is borne out by ample experience; but it is not a

law of man’s nature to lie; though it is one of the consequences of the

laws of human nature, that lying is nearly universal when certain external

circumstances exist universally, especially circumstances productive of

habitual distrust and fear. When the character of the old is asserted to

be cautious, and of the young impetuous, this, again, is but an empirical

law; for it is not because of their youth that the young are impetuous,

nor because of their age that the old are cautious. It is chiefly, if not

wholly, because the old, during their many years of life, have generally

had much experience of its various evils, and having suffered or seen

others suffer much from incautious exposure to them, have acquired

associations favorable to circumspection; while the young, as well from

the absence of similar experience as from the greater strength of the

inclinations which urge them to enterprise, engage themselves in it more

readily. Here, then, is the _explanation_ of the empirical law; here are

the conditions which ultimately determine whether the law holds good or

not. If an old man has not been oftener than most young men in contact

with danger and difficulty, he will be equally incautious; if a youth has

not stronger inclinations than an old man, he probably will be as little

enterprising. The empirical law derives whatever truth it has from the

causal laws of which it is a consequence. If we know those laws, we know

what are the limits to the derivative law; while, if we have not yet

accounted for the empirical law—if it rests only on observation—there is

no safety in applying it far beyond the limits of time, place, and

circumstance in which the observations were made.

The really scientific truths, then, are not these empirical laws, but the

causal laws which explain them. The empirical laws of those phenomena

which depend on known causes, and of which a general theory can therefore

be constructed, have, whatever may be their value in practice, no other

function in science than that of verifying the conclusions of theory.

Still more must this be the case when most of the empirical laws amount,

even within the limits of observation, only to approximate

generalizations.

§ 2. This, however, is not, so much as is sometimes supposed, a

peculiarity of the sciences called moral. It is only in the simplest

branches of science that empirical laws are ever exactly true; and not

always in those. Astronomy, for example, is the simplest of all the

sciences which explain, in the concrete, the actual course of natural

events. The causes or forces on which astronomical phenomena depend, are

fewer in number than those which determine any other of the great

phenomena of nature. Accordingly, as each effect results from the conflict

of but few causes, a great degree of regularity and uniformity might be

expected to exist among the effects; and such is really the case: they

have a fixed order, and return in cycles. But propositions which should

express, with absolute correctness, all the successive positions of a

planet until the cycle is completed, would be of almost unmanageable

complexity, and could be obtained from theory alone. The generalizations

which can be collected on the subject from direct observation, even such

as Kepler’s law, are mere approximations; the planets, owing to their

perturbations by one another, do not move in exact ellipses. Thus even in

astronomy, perfect exactness in the mere empirical laws is not to be

looked for; much less, then, in more complex subjects of inquiry.

The same example shows how little can be inferred against the universality

or even the simplicity of the ultimate laws, from the impossibility of

establishing any but approximate empirical laws of the effects. The laws

of causation according to which a class of phenomena are produced may be

very few and simple, and yet the effects themselves may be so various and

complicated that it shall be impossible to trace any regularity whatever

completely through them. For the phenomena in question may be of an

eminently modifiable character; insomuch that innumerable circumstances

are capable of influencing the effect, although they may all do it

according to a very small number of laws. Suppose that all which passes in

the mind of man is determined by a few simple laws; still, if those laws

be such that there is not one of the facts surrounding a human being, or

of the events which happen to him, that does not influence in some mode or

degree his subsequent mental history, and if the circumstances of

different human beings are extremely different, it will be no wonder if

very few propositions can be made respecting the details of their conduct

or feelings, which will be true of all mankind.