classes, must be of different natures, and have different causes. This prejudice, so evidently of the same origin with those already treated of, marks more especially the earliest stage of science, when it has not yet broken loose from the trammels of every-day phraseology. The extraordinary prevalence of the fallacy among the Greek philosophers may be accounted for by their generally knowing no other language than their own; from which it was a consequence that their ideas followed the accidental or arbitrary combinations of that language, more completely than can happen among the moderns to any but illiterate persons. They had great difficulty in distinguishing between things which their language confounded, or in putting mentally together things which it distinguished; and could hardly combine the objects in nature, into any classes but those which were made for them by the popular phrases of their own country; or at least could not help fancying those classes to be natural and all others arbitrary and artificial. Accordingly, scientific investigation among the Greek schools of speculation and their followers in the Middle Ages, was little more than a mere sifting and analyzing of the notions attached to common language. They thought that by determining the meaning of words, they could become acquainted with facts. "They took for granted," says Dr. Whewell,(241) "that philosophy must result from the relations of those notions which are involved in the common use of language, and they proceeded to seek it by studying such notions." In his next chapter, Dr. Whewell has so well illustrated and exemplified this error, that I shall take the liberty of quoting him at some length.
"The propensity to seek for principles in the common usages of language may be discerned at a very early period. Thus we have an example of it in a saying which is reported of Thales, the founder of Greek philosophy. When he was asked, 'What is the greatest thing?' he replied 'Place; for all other things are in the world, but the world is in it.' In Aristotle we have the consummation of this mode of speculation. The usual point from which he starts in his inquiries is, that we say thus or thus in common language. Thus, when he has to discuss the question whether there be, in any part of the universe, a void, or space in which there is nothing, he inquires first in how many senses we say that one thing is in another. He enumerates many of these; we say the part is in the whole, as the finger is in the hand; again we say, the species is in the genus, as man is included in animal; again, the government of Greece is in the king; and various other senses are described and exemplified, but of all these the most proper is when we say a thing is in a vessel, and generally in place. He next examines what place is, and comes to this conclusion, that 'if about a body there be another body including it, it is in place, and if not, not.' A body moves when it changes its place; but he adds, that if water be in a vessel, the vessel being at rest, the parts of the water may still move, for they are included by each other; so that while the whole does not change its place, the parts may change their place in a circular order. Proceeding then to the question of a void, he as usual examines the different senses in which the term is used, and adopts as the most proper, place without matter, with no useful result.
"Again, in a question concerning mechanical action, he says, 'When a man moves a stone by pushing it with a stick, we say both that the man moves the stone, and that the stick moves the stone, but the latter _more properly_.'
