Where the principal phenomenon so far transcends in importance all other properties on which a classification could be grounded, as it does in the case of animated existence, any considerable deviation from the rule last laid down is in general sufficiently guarded against by the first principle of a natural arrangement, that of forming the groups according to the most important characters. All attempts at a scientific classification of animals, since first their anatomy and physiology were successfully studied, have been framed with a certain degree of instinctive reference to a natural series, and have accorded in many more points than they have differed, with the classification which would most naturally have been grounded on such a series. But the accordance has not always been complete; and it still is often a matter of discussion, which of several classifications best accords with the true scale of intensity of the main phenomenon. Cuvier, for example, has been justly criticised for having formed his natural groups, with an undue degree of reference to the mode of alimentation, a circumstance directly connected only with organic life, and not leading to the arrangement most appropriate for the purposes of an investigation of the laws of animal life, since both carnivorous and herbivorous or frugivorous animals are found at almost every degree in the scale of animal perfection. Blainville’s classification has been considered by high authorities to be free from this defect; as representing correctly, by the mere order of the principal groups, the successive degeneracy of animal nature from its highest to its most imperfect exemplification.
§ 5. A classification of any large portion of the field of nature in conformity to the foregoing principles, has hitherto been found practicable only in one great instance, that of animals. In the case even of vegetables, the natural arrangement has not been carried beyond the formation of natural groups. Naturalists have found, and probably will continue to find it impossible to form those groups into any series, the terms of which correspond to real gradations in the phenomenon of vegetative or organic life. Such a difference of degree may be traced between the class of Vascular Plants and that of Cellular, which includes lichens, algæ, and other substances whose organization is simpler and more rudimentary than that of the higher order of vegetables, and which therefore approach nearer to mere inorganic nature. But when we rise much above this point, we do not find any sufficient difference in the degree in which different plants possess the properties of organization and life. The dicotyledons are of more complex structure, and somewhat more perfect organization, than the monocotyledons; and some dicotyledonous families, such as the Compositæ, are rather more complex in their organization than the rest. But the differences are not of a marked character, and do not promise to throw any particular light upon the conditions and laws of vegetable life and development. If they did, the classification of vegetables would have to be made, like that of animals, with reference to the scale or series indicated.
Although the scientific arrangements of organic nature afford as yet the only complete example of the true principles of rational classification, whether as to the formation of groups or of series, those principles are applicable to all cases in which mankind are called upon to bring the various parts of any extensive subject into mental co-ordination. They are as much to the point when objects are to be classed for purposes of art or business, as for those of science. The proper arrangement, for example, of a code of laws, depends on the same scientific conditions as the classifications in natural history; nor could there be a better preparatory discipline for that important function, than the study of the principles of a natural arrangement, not only in the abstract, but in their actual application to the class of phenomena for which they were first elaborated, and which are still the best school for learning their use. Of this the great authority on codification, Bentham, was perfectly aware; and his early Fragment on Government, the admirable introduction to a series of writings unequaled in their department, contains clear and just views (as far as they go) on the meaning of a natural arrangement, such as could scarcely have occurred to any one who lived anterior to the age of Linnæus and Bernard de Jussieu.
Book V.
On Fallacies.
“Errare non modo affirmando et negando, sed etiam sentiendo, et in tacitâ hominum cogitatione contingit.”—Hobbes, Computatio sive Logica, chap. v.
“Il leur semble qu’il n’y a qu’à douter par fantaisie, et qu’il n’y a qu’à dire en général que notre nature est infirme; que notre esprit est plein d’aveuglement: qu’il faut avoir un grand soin de se défaire de ses préjugés, et autres choses semblables. Ils pensent que cela suffit pour ne plus se laisser séduire à ses sens, et pour ne plus se tromper du tout. Il ne suffit pas de dire que l’esprit est foible, il faut lui faire sentir ses foiblesses. Ce n’est pas assez de dire qu’il est sujet à l’erreur, il faut lui découvrir en quoi consistent ses erreurs.”—Malebranche, Recherche de la Vérité.
Chapter I.
Of Fallacies In General.
§ 1. It is a maxim of the school-men, that “contrariorum eadem est scientia:” we never really know what a thing is, unless we are also able to give a sufficient account of its opposite. Conformably to this maxim, one considerable section, in most treatises on Logic, is devoted to the subject of Fallacies; and the practice is too well worthy of observance, to allow of our departing from it. The philosophy of reasoning, to be complete, ought to comprise the theory of bad as well as of good reasoning.
We have endeavored to ascertain the principles by which the sufficiency of any proof can be tested, and by which the nature and amount of evidence needful to prove any given conclusion can be determined beforehand. If these principles were adhered to, then although the number and value of the truths ascertained would be limited by the opportunities, or by the industry, ingenuity, and patience, of the individual inquirer, at least error would not be embraced instead of truth. But the general consent of mankind, founded on their experience, vouches for their being far indeed from even this negative kind of perfection in the employment of their reasoning powers.
In the conduct of life—in the practical business of mankind—wrong inferences, incorrect interpretations of experience, unless after much culture of the thinking faculty, are absolutely inevitable; and with most people, after the highest degree of culture they ever attain, such erroneous inferences, producing corresponding errors in conduct, are lamentably frequent. Even in the speculations to which eminent intellects have systematically devoted themselves, and in reference to which the collective mind of the scientific world is always at hand to aid the efforts and correct the aberrations of individuals, it is only from the more perfect sciences, from those of which the subject-matter is the least complicated, that opinions not resting on a correct induction have at length, generally speaking, been expelled. In the departments of inquiry relating to the more complex phenomena of nature, and especially those of which the subject is man, whether as a moral and intellectual, a social, or even as a physical being; the diversity of opinions still prevalent among instructed persons, and the equal confidence with which those of the most contrary ways of thinking cling to their respective tenets, are proof not only that right modes of philosophizing are not yet generally adopted on those subjects, but that wrong ones are; that inquirers have not only in general missed the truth, but have often embraced error; that even the most cultivated portion of our species have not yet learned to abstain from drawing conclusions which the evidence does not warrant.