Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1843 edition. Excerpt: ... Chapter III. FALLACIES OF SIMPLE INSPECTION; OR A PRIORI FALLACIES. 1. The tribe of errors of which we are to treat in the first instance, are those in which no actual inference takes place at all; the proposition (it cannot in such cases be called a conclusion) being embraced, not as proved, but as requiring no proof; as a selfevident truth; or else as having such intrinsic verisimilitude, that external evidence not in itself amounting to proof, is sufficient in aid of the antecedent presumption. An attempt to treat this subject comprehensively would be a transgression of the bounds prescribed to this work, since it would necessitate the inquiry which, more than any other, is the grand question of transcendental metaphysics, viz., What are the propositions which may reasonably be received without proof? That there must be some such propositions all are agreed, since there cannot be an infinite series of proof, a chain suspended from nothing. But to determine what these propositions are, is the opus magnum of the higher mental philosophy. Two principal divisions of opinion on the subject have divided the schools of philosophy from its first dawn. The one recognises no ultimate premisses but the facts of our subjective consciousness; our sensations, emotions, intellectual states of mind, and volitions. These, and whatever by the strict rules of Induction can be derived from these, it is possible, according to this theory, for us to know; of all else we must remain in ignorance. The opposite school hold that there are other existences, suggested indeed to our minds by these subjective phenomena, but not inferrible from them, by any process either of deduction or of induction; which, however, we must, by the constitution of our..."
