Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/549

Rh that were derived from general impressions are discovered to be wrong, even absurdly so. I do not speak only of such matters as astrology and alchemy, but of those also with which most persons are acquainted. Think of the nonsense spoken every day about signs of coming weather, in connection, for example, with the phases of the moon, and firmly believed in by many respectable people. Think of the ideas about chance, held by those who are unacquainted with the theory of probabilities. Think of the notions entertained on heredity before the days of Darwin. Think of the ridiculous nostrums that have been prescribed for common ailments by gifted and experienced practitioners, the merits of which have been also vaunted by the invalids who tried them. # It is not necessary to go into more detail in illustration of the fallacies of popular generalizations. The list of them is endless; they are to be abundantly found, as already observed, in every branch of knowledge, before it has been seized in the firm and sure grasp of processes that depend upon exact measurement and number. That popular notions are habitually incorrect may be taken for granted, and my purpose in this memoir is to explain one cause of their incorrectness.

I propose to call attention to an error in the operations of the mind, whenever it blends memories together, and to show why the brain is a faulty apparatus for elaborating general impressions. I shall argue that we have no means of correcting its necessarily fallacious results, except by picking them to pieces, and going back to the facts whence the general impressions were derived, and by dealing with those facts on true statistical principles. Thus if we hear that some medical nostrum is highly reputed, or that some particular appearance is an excellent prognostic of coming weather, our first step toward investigating the truth is not to ask whether the belief is firmly held, or of old standing, or shared by many, but to obtain a considerable number of instances and to set off the failures against the successes.

The general impressions and ideas to which I refer guide the great majority of our every-day actions. We have a general impression that the day looks rainy, and we take an umbrella. We find ourselves in a railway-carriage with a person who looks sociably inclined and agreeable, and we accost him accordingly.

In an infinity of cases like these, the opinion on which we act has not been formed by any process of reasoning; neither has it been made by considering what similar experiences we have had, and counting their results on this side and on that, but it is the effect of blending together a large number of similar incidents. These blended memories are the subject of my present memoir. I shall try to prove that blended memories are strictly analogous to blended pictures, of which I have produced many specimens by combining actual portraits together; and I shall explain the peculiarities of the images by those of the portraits; then I shall show that the brain is incompetent to blend images in their right proportions. My conclusion will be that our unreasoned