320 PROFESSOR WHEWELL, ON CAUSE AND EFFECT. 



long series of Fundamental Ideas as the bases of a corresponding series of 

 sciences, of which sciences I have shown also, by an historical survey, that 

 they claim to possess universal truths, and have their claims allowed. I 

 have gone further: for I have stated the Axioms which flow from these 

 Fundamental Ideas, and which are the logical grounds of necessity and uni- 

 versality in the truths of each science, when the science is presented in the 

 form of a demonstrated system. The Reviewer does not assent to this 

 doctrine, nor to the argument by which it is supported ; namely, that Ex- 

 perience cannot lead to universal truths, except by means of a universal Idea 

 supplied by the mind, and infused into the particular facts which observa- 

 tion ministers. He considers that the existence of universal truths in our 

 knowledge may be explained otherwise. He holds that it is a sufficient 

 account of the matter to say that we pass from special experience to 

 universal truth in virtue of "the inductive propensity — the irresistible 

 impulse of the mind to generalize ad infinitum? I shall not here dwell 

 upon very strong reasons which may be assigned, as I conceive, for not 

 accepting this as a full and satisfactory explanation of the difficulty. 

 Instead of doing so, I shall here content myself with remarking, that 

 even if we adopt the Reviewer's expressions, we must still contend 

 that there are different forms of the impulse of the mind to generalize, 

 corresponding to each of the Fundamental Ideas of our system. These 

 Fundamental Ideas, if they be nothing else, must at least be accepted 

 as a classification of the modes of action of the Inductive Propensity, — > 

 as so many different paths and tendencies of the Generalizing Impulse : 

 and the Axioms which I have stated as the express results of the Fun- 

 damental Ideas, and as the steps by which those Ideas make universal truths 

 possible, are still no less worthy of notice, if they are stated as the results 

 of our Generalizing Impulse; and as the steps by which that Impulse, 

 in its many various forms, makes universal truths possible. The Gene- 

 ralizing Impulse in that operation by which it leads us to the Axioms 

 of geometry, and to those of mechanics, takes very different courses ; and 

 these courses may well deserve to be separately studied. And perhaps, 

 even if we accept this view of the philosophy of our knowledge, no 

 simpler or clearer way can be found of describing and distinguishing 

 these fundamentally different operations of the Inductive Propensity, 



