Mr Glover oJi Forms of Induction. 117 



whatever phases it may assume, when the indices correspondent 

 to it are regarded in nature. As our space is necessarily some- 

 Avhat limited, we shall only premise further, that our purposed 

 divisions will regard methods of inductive procedure, and not 

 individual instances, as in the classifications of Bacon, and that 

 if the circumstances in the very constitution of the different 

 sciences, which compel the inquirer to take diverse routes in ar- 

 riving at their truths, have already been described, the ?;;'■• -Ct, 

 so far as Ave are aware, has not been treated as a whole '..\ th^ 

 particular way proposed. ^ 



It is perhaps scarcely proper to remind the reader, that all 

 our knowledge is rendered available to the reasoning faculty 

 by means of Avhat is termed generalization : — for, as all pro- 

 cesses of pure reasoning may be resolved into syllogisms, which 

 can proceed only from generals to particulars, — until the mind 

 has arrived at genei'al notions, it cannot of course be capable 

 of reasoning either on the subject-matter of the knowledge af- 

 forded by scientific inquiry, or on that of the information ac- 

 quired in the ordinary relations of life. To that intellective 

 faculty which has the power of forming general notions is given 

 tlie name of abstraction ; while its mode of procedure is termed 

 induction or the inductive process. Abstraction is not regard- 

 ed by metaphysicians of the pi'esent day as a simple faculty of 

 the mind ; but its real nature is of little concern here ; — let it 

 be understood, however, that induction is its mode of procedure, 

 and generalization its result. And, first, let us attend to the 

 result, in order that a clear conception may be had of what is 

 required in a method of procedure, tlie great object of which 

 is that this result may be attained. 



In a logical point of view, a science may be I'egarded as a 

 collection of general terms, each of which in all sciences, except 

 tliose generally considered abstract, expresses common circum- 

 stances possessed by a certain number of particulars, from the 

 examination of which the genus has been formed. In the ab- 

 stract sciences, as for example in geometry, and that depart- 

 ment of mental science, which, by the disciples of Reid, is call- 

 ed the doctrine of first trutlis, the highest and most inclusive 

 principles are ideas of relation which subsist solely in the mind 



