208 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



it illustrates, we first endeavour to find the lost object or 

 recognise the common attribute, without conjecturally in 

 voking the aid of any previously acquired conception, or in 

 other words, of any hypothesis. Having failed in this, we 

 call upon our imagination for some hypothesis of a possible 

 place, or a possible point of resemblance, and then look, to see 

 whether the facts agree with the conjecture. 



For such cases something more is required than a mind 

 accustomed to accurate observation and comparison. It must 

 be a mind stored with general conceptions, previously acquired, 

 of the sorts which bear affinity to the subject of the particular 

 inquiry. And much will also depend on the natural strength 

 and acquired culture of what has been termed the scientific 

 imagination ; on the faculty possessed of mentally arranging 

 known elements into new combinations, such as have not yet 

 been observed in nature, though not contradictory to any 



known laws. 



But the variety of intellectual habits, the purposes which 

 they serve, and the modes in which they may be fostered and 

 cultivated, are considerations belonging to the Art of Educa 

 tion : a subject far wider than Logic, and which this treatise 

 does not profess to discuss. Here, therefore, the present 

 chapter may properly close. 



