Natural causes and supernatural seemings / by Henry Maudsley.

  • Henry Maudsley
Date:
1886
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural causes and supernatural seemings / by Henry Maudsley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    {d) Under the head of bias may be included a number of very active causes of fallacies of obser- vation and reasoning. They are such as have their origin in the feelings—in the various affections, wishes, interests, passions, prejudices, fears, and tem]3ers of human nature. The common notion is that men get their opinions through the understanding and hold them because they are based solidly on sound reason. Far from it: the understanding is certainly one avenue of opinion, but an avenue more open and used, though disavowed, is through the feelings; the opinions so obtained demanding only from reason so much of its help as serves to excuse and support them. A funda- mental fact of man's nature, as of all living nature, is the desire to be happy, and the im]3ulse to pursue and embrace those things which are agreeable; the consequence of which is a natural inclination to embrace and believe opinions that suit with desires, and to reject and disbelieve opinions that go contrary to desu^es. To contemplate a subject in the pure white light of knowledge, without any intermixture of feeling to colour perception, is pretty nigh impossible ; and the stronger the feeling which enters into the reflection, the more powerful it is as a factor in the determination of belief. It is always a far more effective way of persuasion to awaken sympathetic