colours, let no labour, no expense, no arguments, no fascination, be spared in upholding their authority; but in the name of humanity resort not to the aid of the pillory and the dungeon. When they cannot be maintained by knowledge and reason, it will surely be time to suspect, that judicial severities will be but a feeble protection.

Whoever has attentively meditated on the progress of the human race cannot fail to discern, that there is now a spirit of inquiry amongst men, which nothing can stop, or even materially control. Reproach and obloquy, threats and persecution, will be vain. They may embitter opposition and engender violence, but they cannot abate the keenness of research. There is a silent march of thought, which no power can arrest, and which it is not difficult to foresee will be marked by important events. Mankind were never before in the situation in which they now stand. The press has been operating upon them for several centuries, with an influence scarcely perceptible at

its commencement, but daily becoming more palpable, and acquiring accelerated force. It is rousing the intellect of nations, and happy will it be for them if there be no rash interference with the natural progress of knowledge; and if, by a judicious and gradual adaptation of their institutions to the inevitable changes of opinion, they are saved from those convulsions, which the pride, prejudices, and obstinacy of a few may occasion to the whole.

ESSAY

ON

FACTS AND INFERENCES.

DR. REID, in that part of his Essays on the Intellectual Powers where he treats of the supposed fallacy of the senses, points out an important distinction between what our senses actually testify, and the conclusions which we draw from their testimony.

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"

Many things," says he,

"called decep

In

tions of the senses, are only conclusions rashly drawn from the testimony of the senses. these cases the testimony of the senses is true, but we rashly draw a conclusion from it, which does not necessarily follow. We are disposed to impute our errors rather to

false information than to inconclusive reasoning, and to blame our senses for the wrong conclusions we draw from their testimony.

"Thus," he continues, "when a man has taken a counterfeit guinea for a true one, he says his senses deceived him; but he lays the blame where it ought not to be laid for we must ask him, Did your senses give a false testimony of the colour, or of the figure, or of the impression? No. But this is all that they testified, and this they testified truly: from these premises you concluded that it was a true guinea, but this conclusion does not follow; you erred therefore, not by relying upon the testimony of sense, but by judging rashly from its testimony*."

This confounding of facts and inferences, so acutely exposed by Dr. Reid, is not, however, confined to cases in which we have the testimony of our own senses. The remark may be extended to every department of knowledge,

* Essays on the Intellectual Powers, page 291.

which depends on observation, for in all we are continually liable to the same mistake. If we attend to the understandings of the majority of mankind, we shall discover an utter confusion in this respect. Their opinions are a confused and indiscriminate mass, in which facts and inferences, realities and suppositions, are blended together, and conceived, not only as of equal authority, but as possessing the same character. In other words, inferences, or assumptions from facts, are regarded as forming part of the facts. This is particularly observable with regard to the relation of cause and effect. That one thing is the cause of another may be either actually witnessed, or merely inferred; the connection of two events may be, to us, either a fact, or a conclusion deduced from appearances; a difference which may be easily illustrated. For this purpose, let us suppose the case of a stone falling from a rock, and crushing a flower at its base. To an eye witness, it would be a fact and not an inference, that the falling of the stone was the