efficacy in calculous and gravelly disorders; for a similar reason, the roots of the Saxifraga granulata (white saxifrage) gained reputation in the cure of the same disease; and the Euphrasia (eye-bright) acquired fame, as an application in complaints of the eye, because it exhibits a black spot in its corolla resembling the pupil. The blood-stone, the Heliotropium of the ancients, from the occasional small specks or points of a blood-red color exhibited on its green surface, is even at this very day employed in many parts of England and Scotland to stop a bleeding from the nose; and nettle tea continues a popular remedy for the cure of Urticaria. It is also asserted that some substances bear the signatures of the humors, as the petals of the red rose that of the blood, and the roots of rhubarb and the flowers of saffron that of the bile."
The early speculations respecting the chemical composition of bodies were rendered abortive by no circumstance more than by their invariably taking for granted that the properties of the elements must resemble those of the compounds which were formed from them.
To descend to more modern instances; it was long thought, and was stoutly maintained by the Cartesians and even by Leibnitz against the Newtonian system (nor did Newton himself, as we have seen, contest the assumption, but eluded it by an arbitrary hypothesis), that nothing (of a physical nature at least) could account for motion, except previous motion; the impulse or impact of some other body. It was very long before the scientific world could prevail upon itself to admit attraction and repulsion (i.e., spontaneous tendencies of particles to approach or recede from one another) as ultimate laws, no more requiring to be accounted for than impulse itself, if indeed the latter were not, in truth, resolvable into the former. From the same source arose the innumerable hypotheses devised to explain those classes of motion which appeared more mysterious than others because there was no obvious mode of attributing them to impulse, as for example the voluntary motions of the human body. Such were the interminable systems of vibrations propagated along the nerves, or animal spirits rushing up and down between the muscles and the brain; which, if the facts could have been proved, would have been an important addition to our knowledge of physiological laws; but the mere invention, or arbitrary supposition of them, could not unless by the strongest delusion be supposed to render the phenomena of animal life more comprehensible, or less mysterious. Nothing, however, seemed satisfactory, but to make out that motion was caused by motion; by something like itself. If it was not one kind of motion, it must be another. In like manner it was supposed that the physical qualities of objects must arise from some similar quality, or perhaps only some quality bearing the same name, in the particles or atoms of which the objects were composed; that a sharp taste, for example, must arise from sharp particles. And reversing the inference, the effects produced by a phenomenon must, it was supposed, resemble in their physical attributes the phenomenon itself. The influences of the planets were supposed to be analogous to their visible peculiarities: Mars, being of a red color, portended fire and slaughter; and the like.
Passing from physics to metaphysics, we may notice among the most remarkable fruits of this a priori fallacy two closely analogous theories, employed in ancient and modern times to bridge over the chasm between the world of mind and that of matter; the species sensibiles of the Epicureans, and the modern doctrine of perception by means of ideas. These theories are indeed, probably, indebted for their existence not solely to the fallacy
