As there are cases of this kind, it is important to mark some of their characteristics. Among these I cite the following:
1. The qualities of a particular object, actually perceived, as in the case above cited, may be common to a variety of classes which we know, and also to others which we do not know. On the perception of such qualities, the Intelligence will suggest those classes only which we know, while the particular object perceived may belong to a class unknown. If, in such circumstances, a positive assumption, as to what class it does belong, is made, a wrong assumption must of necessity be made. The Intelligence in this case is not deceived. It places the Will, however, in such a relation to the object, that if a positive assumption is made, it must necessarily be a wrong one. In this manner, multitudes of wrong assumptions arise.
2. When facts are before the mind, an explanation of them is often desired. In such circumstances, the Intelligence may suggest, in explanation, a number of hypotheses, which hypotheses may be all alike false. If a positive assumption is made in such a case, it must of necessity be a false one; because it must be in the direction of some one hypothesis before the mind at the time. Here, also, the Intelligence necessitates a wrong assumption, if any is made. Yet it is not itself deceived; because it gives no positive affirmations as the basis of positive assumptions. In such circumstances, error very frequently arises.
3. Experience often occasions wrong assumptions, which are attributed incorrectly to real affirmations of the Intelligence. A friend, for example, saw an object which presented the external appearance of the apple. He had never before seen those qualities, except in connection with that class of objects. He assumed, at once, that it was a real apple; but subsequently found that it was an artificial, and not a real one. Was the Intelligence deceived in this instance? By no means. That faculty had never affirmed, that those qualities which the apple presents to the eye, never exist in connection with any other object, and consequently, that the apple must have been present in the instance given. Experience, and not a positive affirmation of the Intelligence, led to the wrong assumption in this instance. The same principle holds true, in respect to a vast number of instances that might be named.
4. Finally, the Intelligence may not only make positive affirmations in the presence of qualities perceived, but it may affirm hypothetically, that is, when a given proposition is assumed as true, the Intelligence may and will present the logical antecedents and consequents of that assumption. If the assumption is false, such will be the character of the antecedents and consequents following from it. An individual, in tracing out these antecedents and consequents, however, may mistake the hypothetical, for the real, affirmations of the Intelligence. One wrong assumption in theology or philosophy, for example, may give an entire system, all of the leading principles of which are likewise false. In tracing out, and perfecting that system, how natural the assumption, that one is following the real, and not the hypothetical, affirmations of the Intelligence! From this one source an infinity of error exists among men.
In an enlarged Treatise on mental science, the subject of the present chapter should receive a much more extensive elucidation than could be given to it in this connection. Few subjects would throw more clear light over the domains of truth and error than this, if fully and distinctly elucidated.
In conclusion, I would simply remark, that one of the highest attainments in virtue which we can conceive an intelligent being to make, consists in a continued and vigorous employment of the Intelligence in search of the right, the just, the true, and the good, in all departments of human investigation; and in a rigid discipline of the Will, to receive and treat, as true and sacred, whatever the Intelligence may present, as possessed of such characteristics, to the full subjection of all impulses in the direction of unauthorized assumptions.
[CHAPTER XIV.]
LIBERTY AND SERVITUDE.