JOHN STUART MILL. 381 



made. The work of deduction is the interpretation of these formula?, 

 and therefore, strictly speaking, is not inferential at all. The real in- 

 ference was accomplished when the universal proposition was ar- 

 rived at. 



It will easily be seen that this explanation of the deductive pro- 

 cess completely turns the tables on the transcendental school. All 

 reasoning is shown to be at bottom inductive. Inductions and their 

 interpretation make up the whole of logic, and to induction accord- 

 ingly Mr. Mill devoted his chief attention. For the first time induc- 

 tion was treated as the opus magnum of logic, and the fundamental 

 principles of science traced to their inductive origin. It was this, 

 taken with his theory of syllogism, which worked the great change. 

 Both his " System of Logic," and his " Examination of Sir William 

 Hamilton's Philosophy," are for the most part devoted to fortifying 

 this position, and demolishing beliefs inconsistent with it. As a sys- 

 tematic psychologist Mr. Mill has not done so much as either Prof. 

 Bain or Mr. Herbert Spencer. The perfection of his method, its ap- 

 plication, and the uprooting of prejudices which stood in its way 

 this was the task to which Mr. Mill applied himself with an ability and 

 success rarely matched and never surpassed. 



HIS WORK IN POLITICAL ECONOMY 



BY PBOF. J. E. OAIENES. 



The task of fairly estimating the value of Mr. Mill's achievements 

 in political economy and indeed the same remark applies to what he 

 has done in every department of philosophy is rendered particularly 

 difficult by a circumstance which constitutes their principal merit. 

 The character of his intellectual, no less than of his moral nature, led 

 him to strive to connect his thoughts, whatever was the branch of 

 knowledge at which he labored, with the previously existing body of 

 speculation, to fit them into the same framework, and exhibit them as 

 parts of the same scheme ; so that it might be truly said of him that 

 he was at more pains to conceal the originality and independent value 

 of his contributions to the stock of knowledge than most writers are 

 to set forth those qualities in their compositions. As a consequence 

 of this, hasty readers of his works, while recognizing the comprehen- 

 siveness of his mind, have sometimes denied its originality ; and in 

 political economy in particular he has been frequently represented as 

 little more than an expositor and popularizer of Ricardo. It cannot 

 be denied that there is a show of truth in this representation ; about 

 as much as there would be in asserting that Laplace and Herschel 

 were the expositors and popularizers of Newton, or that Faraday per- 

 formed a like office for Sir Humphrey Davy. In truth, this is an inci- 

 dent of all progressive science. The cultivators in each age may, in a 

 sense, be said to be the interpreters and popularizers of those who 

 have preceded them ; aud it is in this sense, and in this sense only, 



