ing stone), and _a
fortiori_, on moral, social, and religious subjects, where yet stronger
feelings are involved.

The fallacy of Non-observation may occur ([Greek: b]) from neglect, not
of the material instances wholly, but of some material facts in them,
e.g. in cases of cures by quack remedies (such as Kenelm Digby's
'sympathetic powder'), of some attendant fact (as exclusion of air from
a wound, rest, regimen, and the like) which really worked the cure.
Sometimes the neglected fact is one ascertainable, not by the senses,
but by reasoning, which has been overlooked. Thus, Cousin's argument
that, if the sole end of punishment were to prevent crime by
intimidating intending criminals, the punishment of the innocent,
indiscriminately with the guilty, would have the same effect, ignores
the fact that the innocent would then be equally intimidated, and so the
punishment would be of no use as an example to criminals. So, in
Political Economy, where the effects of a cause often consist of two
sets of phenomena, the one obvious, the other deeper under the surface,
and exactly contrary, the latter is often neglected. This was why the
rapidly spent capital of the prodigal was supposed formerly to employ
more labour than the invested savings of the parsimonious, and the
purchase of native goods to encourage native industry more than the
purchase of foreign.

2. The error in Mal-observation, which is the _positive_ kind of
Mis-observation, is not the overlooking facts, but the seeing them
wrong. It arises from mistaking what is in fact inference (as much
_must_ be, whenever we try to observe or to describe) for perception,
which is infallible evidence of what is really perceived. The
Anti-Copernicans, when they appealed to common sense, made this mistake.
So do untrained persons generally in describing facts, especially
natural phenomena (e.g. apothecaries and nurses in stating symptoms),
and that, too, in proportion to their ignorance. We might expect this,
since usually the actual perceptions of the senses (e.g. the colour and
extension) are not of interest, except as marks whence to draw
inferences about something else (e.g. about the body, to which these
qualities belong). Painters, therefore, to know what the sensation
actually was, have to go through a special training. But this confusion
of inference with perception is still more likely in highly abstract
subjects; and, consequently, in these, mere, and often false inf