Misinterpretation

“ Often, too, we put, so to speak, the shoe on the wrong foot, or stamp with the wrong seal; and from these wrong and hasty impressions come false opinions. There can be no mistake when perception and knowledge correspond; but we often have one without the other. ”

“ If a former opinion of ours is incorrect, if we have, through the influence of those whom we thought possessed understanding, embraced a system which we afterward fear is incorrect, what do we lose, if, after investigation, it proves to be so? ”

“ Wherefore, as men owe all their true ratiocination to the right understanding of speech, so also they owe their errors to the misunderstanding of the same; and as all the ornaments of philosophy proceed only from man, so from man also is derived the ugly absurdity of false opinion. ”

“ What does it matter how you build, if you have bad bricks to build with; or how you reason, if every idea with which you begin is foul or false? And in general all fatal false reasoning proceeds from people’s having some one false notion in their hearts, with which they are resolved that their reasoning shall comply. ”

“ When any wrong statement is made, whether in public or in society, or in books, and well received—or, at any rate, not refuted—that that is no reason why you should despair or think there the matter will rest. ”

“ If then this person should pretend, or even design, to reason from his definition, and yet reason from his idea, a misapprehension will arise in the hearer, who supposes him to reason from his definition merely. ”

“ What ought to be is, such is the simple rule. The rest is sham, false, unworthy of the thinking man's attention, except as the delusive and misleading falsehood from which the thinker should try to emancipate himself and others. ”

“ It is thus, O my God! that by our eternal contradictions we justify the adorable ways of thy wisdom upon the lots of men, and that we provide for thy justice powerful reasons to overthrow one day the illusion, and the falsity of our pretexts. ”

“ That such a fallacy could be imposed upon any human understanding, or that an author could have advanced a position so remote from truth and reason, any other ways than as a declaimer, to shew to what extent he could stretch his imagination, and with what strength he could press his principle, would scarcely have been credible, had not this lady kindly shewn us how far weakness may be deluded, or indolence amused. ”

“ The dead abstract notions of the intellect, the dialectical disputes of the reason, the purely subjective and one-sided apprehension of objects by a deluded fancy, and the absolute will, are the four sources of human error. ”

“ Their understanding is so feeble in the discernment of falsities, and averting the Errors of reason, that it submitteth unto the fallacies of sense, and is unable to rectifie the Error of its sensations. ”

“ Does it follow, as has been said with such ridiculous emphasis, that every truth, every idea, results from a contradiction,— that is, from a something which is affirmed and denied at the same moment and from the same point of view,—and that it may be necessary to abandon wholly the old-fashioned logic, which regards contradiction as the infallible sign of error? ”

“ Suppose his premises true, and his conclusions would necessarily follow. But here lies his mistake, his premises are false. He imagines himself to be what he is not. And therefore setting out wrong, the farther he goes, the more he wanders out of the way. ”

“ What does it matter if they are said to be inapplicable? Does it follow, because the majority of men still know and practise only what is wrong and false, that the clear-sighted man must follow the blind over the precipice? ”

“ Mistakes, misunderstandings, obstructions, which come in vexatious opposition to one's views, are always to be taken for just what they are—namely, natural phenomena of life, which represent one of its sides, and that the shady one. ”

“ Wrongly men complain of experience, which {13} with great railing they accuse of falsehood. Leave experience alone, and turn your lamentation to your ignorance, which leads you, with your vain and foolish desires, to promise yourselves those things which are not in her power to confer, and to accuse her of falsehood. Wrongly men complain of innocent experience, when they accuse her not seldom of false and lying demonstrations. ”

“ Will he come to the consideration of the question impartially, indifferently, and without any wrong bias, or give the painful and revolting truth the same cordial welcome as the long-cherished and favourite prejudice? To say that the truth or falsehood of a proposition is the only circumstance that gains it admittance into the mind, independently of the pleasure or pain it affords us, is itself an assertion made in pure caprice or desperation. ”

“ But it is enough that such assertions should be either contradictory to the known laws of nature, or exceed the limits of our experience, that their fallacy or irrelevancy to our consideration should be demonstrated. ”

“ To this they all agreed, and search was made; and soon they found Falsehood, whom they instantly tore to pieces, coiled up her bowels into knots, burnt her, and dispersed her ashes to the winds. But even her dust was so malignant that it was carried all over the world; and that is the reason that wherever men exist there Falsehood must be. ”

“ Take heed, lest by nice and subtle sophistry you burthen your knowing soul, or knowingly burthen your soul, with the guilt of advancing a false title, or of maintaining, by specious fallacies, a claim which, if shown in its native and true colours, would appear to be false. ”

“ Finding that they could neither answer nor controvert my principles, nor put me down, they have been base enough to resort to slander, and to the most wanton and barefaced falsehoods, which they have trumped up to blacken me. ”

“ Is not such an unequal conduct a plain proof of prejudice and passion?
Our senses, you say, are fallacious; our understanding erroneous; our ideas, even of the most familiar objects, extension, duration, motion, full of absurdities and contradictions. ”

“ In the agreement or disagreement of its sense with reality, its truth or falsity consists. ”

“ his answer was, "Just this, that when they speak the truth they are not believed." ”

“ Many people of knowledge and common sense have risen above it. But the evidences of this idea to be found still in prominent places at home, and the instances of it abroad, which are here cited, prove that there has been in popular thought too much leaning in that direction, and show that there is need to point out the fallacy, and the evil of it. ”

“ Sooner or later, false thinking brings wrong conduct. ”

“ Again, Truth may also be proved indirectly, by showing the folly and error of its opposite; and when this is done, not by methodical and gradual exposition, but in immediate and intuitive clearness, then this is indirect, and, in relation to the Idea, negative Wit; exciting laughter in those to whom it is addressed:—it is Wit as the source of the Ridiculous; for Error in its direct and intuitive aspect is essentially ridiculous. ”

“ It is astonishing and humiliating to perceive how frequently human wisdom, especially argumentative wisdom, is at fault as to results, while accident, prejudices, or common sense seem to light upon truths which reason feels after without finding. ”

“ But there is no end to the arguments which might be deduced to combat such palpable absurdities, by shewing the manifest inconsistencies which are necessarily involved in a direful train of false opinions. ”

“ Our whole natural thinking, as shall be distinctly proved in the body of this work, consists of a series of judgments, each of which involves a mental contradiction,—in other words, controverts a necessary truth or law of reason. ”

“ If they are vain or false, shame them by detecting it, or you shame yourselves by blaming them, when you cannot show the error. Expose not yourselves to laughter by avoiding just distinction to escape confusion: that is, avoiding knowledge to escape ignorance, or light to escape darkness. 2. It is ambiguity and confusion that breedeth and feedeth almost all our pernicious controversies ”

“ The irritation caused by misconception, the necessity of justifying even his limitations to a world which was apparently prepared to consider nothing else about him at one time—these were the wine-press of his eloquence. ”

“ As for the separation of truth from falsehood, and the resemblance which truth has with falsehood, and for the distinction between what is consistent and what is absurd, on both sides, a balance ought to be formed in which every thing may be weighed. ”

“ False, irrelevant, and futile ideas may arise in ourselves and others, or find their way into us from without. Let us persist in the effort to remove them as far as we can, by plain and honest purpose. ”

“ It is not right that they be exploited and deceived with false views of life, false characters, false sentiment, false morality, false history, false philosophy, false emotions, false heroism, false notions of self-sacrifice, false views of religion, of duty, of conduct, and of manners. ”

“ By analogy, therefore, if the mental eye, the judgment, be honest, virtuous, sincere, well-meaning, pious, it may be considered as enlightening and directing the whole of a person’s actions; but if it be perverse, malign, biassed by undue prejudices, or drawn aside by improper views, it darkens the understanding, perverts the conduct, and suffers a man to be misled by his unwise and unruly passions. ”

“ No man of common information ever believed a syllable of it. Yet it was of that class of falsehoods, which, by continued repetition, through all the organs of detraction and abuse, are capable of misleading those who are already far misled, and of further fanning passion already kindling into flame. ”

“ Judgments of reflection seem to be especially subject to error and as such to be compounded into false concepts and to be long entertained as such. In the act of making the judgment there must be judgments of bodies impinging on one another, leading to judgments of apprehension. ”

“ If a man shall form such ideas, and conceive them to be true, either from a defect in the power of his judgment, or without any comparison or examination shall infer them to be so, such defect will afford a sufficient source of derangement. ”

“ When facts conflict, contradict one another, melt into one another as the colours of the spectrum so insensibly that none can say where one begins and the other ends, contradictions in terms become first fruits of thought and speech. ”

“ Again, certain people have cried illusion and unreality at things political or moral or even at things physical, but only in the end to feel, and to make others feel, first, their evident narrowness, if not their actual dishonesty, and then their need of a more hospitable idea of what is valid and real. ”

“ In time some particular train of ideas fixes the attention, all other intellectual gratifications are rejected, the mind, in weariness or leisure, recurs constantly to the favourite conception, and feasts on the luscious falsehood whenever she is offended with the bitterness of truth. ”

“ And first, let us contemplate a common fallacy in men's opinions about human affairs, which pervades the several fallacies fostered by the political bias.
Results are proportionate to appliances—see here the tacit assumption underlying many errors in the conduct of life, private and public. In private life every one discovers the untruth of this assumption, and yet continues to act as though he had not discovered its untruth. ”

“ And here we may pause to observe how the strange contradictions that are found in the human character frequently produce a line of conduct which would, at first sight, appear irreconcilable with all probability, and yet which is in strict accordance with the secret workings of the wayward will by which it is directed. ”