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Updated: May 13, 2025
And if this be admissible as a supposition, it rests with those who contend for an entity per se called a quality, to show that their opinion is preferable, or is anything in fact but a lingering remnant of the scholastic doctrine of occult causes; the very absurdity which Molière so happily ridiculed when he made one of his pedantic physicians account for the fact that “l’opium endormit,” by the maxim “parcequ’il a une vertu soporifique.”
It is evident that when the physician stated that opium had “une vertu soporifique,” he did not account for, but merely asserted over again, the fact that it endormit. In like manner, when we say that snow is white because it has the quality of whiteness, we are only re-asserting in more technical language the fact that it excites in us the sensation of white.
Frequently a proposition is presented in abstract terms as a proof of the same in concrete, as, in Molière's parody, 'L'opium endormit parcequ'il a une vertu soporifique. So, some qualities of a thing selected arbitrarily are termed its nature or essence, and then reasoned from as though not able to be counteracted by any of the rest.
But it may be again objected that to say that species arise by the help of an innate power possessed by organisms is no explanation, but is a reproduction of the absurdity, l'opium endormit parcequ'il a une vertu soporifique. It is contended, however, that this objection does not apply, even if it be conceded that there is that force in Molière's ridicule which is generally attributed to it.
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