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elusions from too limited an experience"; as illustrated by the North
American Indians' belief that the early French missionaries were bent
on doing them harm by the exercise of magic, since in their ignorance
of Christian ways and traditions they could conceive of no other motive
that could satisfactorily account for the behaviour of the Europeans.
7. The Scientific Fallacy— "the tendency to overlook certain factors in the scientific pursuit of other factors" ; as illustrated by the behaviour of "the surgeon who performs an operation without considering the condition of the patient's spirits or digestion". It is admitted that mistakes of this class have "a family likeness" to those 'of Limited Experience. The Scientific Fallacy is, we are told, "especially the pitfall of educated youth, of experts and of specialists and it makes a little knowledge such a dangerous thing when combined with only a little imagination, that we are apt to forget the still greater <langer arising from complete ignorance". It is obvious that this and the preceding class of fallacies differ from the other classes in that they are to some extent necessarily involved in the finite nature off all human knowledge; even here, however, the danger of ill-adjusted thought and action very frequently arises from the co-operation of conative and affective factors, as is recognised by Miss Bradby when she says for instance that "the expert in hot pursuit of some factors, overlooks others which would delay him, or bent on applying a theory, neglects data which do not tally with it."
8. The Fallacy of the Marvellous "a tendency to believe in a thing because it is mai-vcllous"; as illustrated by our readiness "to make a nine days' wonder out of anything which offers possibilities (such as the case of Helen Keller) or our alacrity in spreading or believing reports of supernatural phenomena. A full treatment of the psychological causes of this fallacy would have to deal with, among other things, (1) the intellectual basis of the fallacy in limitation or dissociation of experience (an aspect already treated by McDougall and other psycho- logists), (2) the belief in magic and the supernatural generally as arising from a projection of the primitive "omnipotence of thought", (3) the narcissistic roots of the motives leading to cxag}i[eration as a means of increasing the power and interest attaching to the individual (a matter upon which psycho-analytic research has still probably much enlighten- ment to give us).
9. The Fallacy of Suggestibility, individual or gregarious — an aspect of the subject to which considerable attention has of course already been paid by medical and social psychologists, on which Psycho-Analysis has been able to throw some further light by c.Khibiting tlie infantile roots of suggestibility in their various displacements, and as regards which the forthcoming pronouncements of Professor Freud on Collective Psychology will be eagerly awaited by psycho-analysts.
10. The Fallacy of Magic Influence ~"a tendency to believe that
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