Chapter IV. Of Laws Of Nature.
Dr. Whewell (Phil. of Discov., p. 246) will not allow these and similar erroneous judgments to be called inductions; inasmuch as such superstitious fancies “were not collected from the facts by seeking a law of their occurrence, but were suggested by an imagination of the anger of superior powers, shown by such deviations from the ordinary course of nature.” I conceive the question to be, not in what manner these notions were at first suggested, but by what evidence they have, from time to time, been supposed to be substantiated. If the believers in these erroneous opinions had been put on their defense, they would have referred to experience: to the comet which preceded the assassination of Julius Cæsar, or to oracles and other prophecies known to have been fulfilled. It is by such appeals to facts that all analogous superstitions, even in our day, attempt to justify themselves; the supposed evidence of experience is necessary to their hold on the mind. I quite admit that the influence of such coincidences would not be what it is, if strength were not lent to it by an antecedent presumption; but this is not peculiar to such cases; preconceived notions of probability form part of the explanation of many other cases of belief on insufficient evidence.
The a priori prejudice does not prevent the erroneous opinion from being sincerely regarded as a legitimate conclusion from experience; though it improperly predisposes the mind to that interpretation of experience. Thus much in defense of the sort of examples objected to. But it would be easy to produce instances, equally adapted to the purpose, and in which no antecedent prejudice is at all concerned. “For many ages,” says Archbishop Whately, “all farmers and gardeners were firmly convinced—and convinced of their knowing it by experience—that the crops would never turn out good unless the seed were sown during the increase of the moon.” This was induction, but bad induction; just as a vicious syllogism is reasoning, but bad reasoning.
Chapter V. Of The Law Of Universal Causation.
The assertion, that any and every one of the conditions of a phenomenon may be and is, on some occasions and for some purposes, spoken of as the cause, has been disputed by an intelligent reviewer of this work in the Prospective Review (the predecessor of the justly esteemed National Review), who maintains that “we always apply the word cause rather to that element in the antecedents which exercises force, and which would tend at all times to produce the same or a similar effect to that which, under certain conditions, it would actually produce.” And he says, that “every one would feel” the expression, that the cause of a surprise was the sentinel’s being off his post, to be incorrect; but that the “allurement or force which drew him off his post, might be so called, because in doing so it removed a resisting power which would have prevented the surprise.” I can not think that it would be wrong to say, that the event took place because the sentinel was absent, and yet right to say that it took place because he was bribed to be absent. Since the only direct effect of the bribe was his absence, the bribe could be called the remote cause of the surprise, only on the supposition that the absence was the proximate cause; nor does it seem to me that any one (who had not a theory to support) would use the one expression and reject the other.