348 



INDUCTION. 



instance to the contrary, we must have reason to believe that 

 if there were in nature any instances to the contrary, we 

 should have known of them. This assurance, in the great 

 majority of cases, we cannot have, or can have only in a very 

 moderate degree. The possibility of having it, is the founda 

 tion on which we shall see hereafter that induction by simple 

 enumeration may in some remarkable cases amount practically 

 to proof.* No such assurance, however, can be had, on any of 

 the ordinary subjects of scientific inquiry. Popular notions 

 are usually founded on induction by simple enumeration ; in 

 science it carries us but a little way. We are forced to begin 

 with it ; we must often rely on it provisionally, in the absence 

 of means of more searching investigation. But, for the accu 

 rate study of nature, we require a surer and a more potent 

 instrument. 



It was, above all, by pointing out the insufficiency of this 

 rude and loose conception of Induction, that Bacon merited 

 the title so generally awarded to him, of Founder of the In 

 ductive Philosophy. The value of his own contributions to 

 a more philosophical theory of the subject has certainly been 

 exaggerated. Although (along with some fundamental errors) 

 his writings contain, more or less fully developed, several 

 of the most important principles of the Inductive Method, 

 physical investigation has now far outgrown the Baconian 

 conception of Induction. Moral and political inquiry, indeed, 

 are as yet far behind that conception. The current and 

 approved modes of reasoning on these subjects are still of 

 the same vicious description against which Bacon protested ; 

 the method almost exclusively employed by those professing 

 to treat such matters inductively, is the very inductio per 

 enumerationem simplicem which he condemns ; and the expe 

 rience which we hear so confidently appealed to by all sects, 

 parties, and interests, is still, in his own emphatic words, mera 

 palpatio. 



3. In order to a better understanding of the problem 



* Infra, chap. xxi. xxii. 



