ANALOGY. 



m which the two cases resemble, may be capable of being 

 shown to be the material circumstance ; to be that on which 

 all the consequences, necessary to be taken into account in 

 the particular discussion, depend. In the example last given, 

 the resemblance is one of relation ; thefimdamentum relationis 

 being the management by a few persons, of affairs in which 

 a much greater number are interested along with them. 

 Now, some may contend that this circumstance which is 

 common to the two cases, and the various consequences 

 which follow from it, have the chief share in determining all 

 the effects which make up what we term good or bad 

 administration. If they can establish this, their argument 

 has the force of a rigorous induction ; if they cannot, they 

 are said to have failed in proving the analogy between the 

 two cases ; a mode of speech which implies that when the 

 analogy can be proved, the argument founded on it cannot be 

 resisted. 



2. It is on the whole more usual, however, to extend 

 the name of analogical evidence to arguments from any sort 

 of resemblance, provided they do not amount to a complete 

 induction : without peculiarly distinguishing resemblance of 

 relations. Analogical reasoning, in this sense, may be reduced 

 to the following formula : Two things resemble each other in 

 one or more respects ; a certain proposition is true of the one ; 

 therefore it is true of the other. But we have nothing here 

 by which to discriminate analogy from induction, since this 

 type will serve for all reasoning from experience. In the 

 strictest induction, equally with the faintest analogy, we 

 conclude because A resembles B in one or more properties, 

 that it does so in a certain other property. The difference is, 

 that in the case of a complete induction it has been previously 

 shown, by due comparison of instances, that there is an in 

 variable conjunction between the former property or properties 

 and the latter property ; but in what is called analogical 

 reasoning, no such conjunction has been made out. There 

 have been no opportunities of putting in practice the Method 

 of Difference, or even the Method of Agreement ; but we 



