It would seem as if results like these could not be otherwise than correct, because they are but the general expression of the facts themselves. It is this very appearance of certainty which sometimes, as in the present case, blinds us to the actual fallacy, and we go on accumulating and hugging our treasures of knowledge as we fancy them, until we find at last that we have been ingeniously deceiving ourselves with an empty show, while the substance has completely escaped us.
—Isaac Ray (1849)