CHAPTER V. 



FALLACIES OF GENERALIZATION. 



I. THE class of Fallacies of which we are now to speak, 

 is the most extensive of all ; embracing a greater number and 

 variety of unfounded inferences than any of the other classes, 

 and which it is even more difficult to reduce to sub-classes or 

 species. If the attempt made in the preceding books to define 

 the principles of well-grounded generalization has been suc 

 cessful, all generalizations not conformable to those principles 

 might, in a certain sense, be brought under the present class : 

 when however the rules are known and kept in view, but a 

 casual lapse committed in the application of them, this is a 

 blunder, not a fallacy. To entitle an error of generalization 

 to the latter epithet, it must be committed on principle ; there 

 must lie in it some erroneous general conception of the induc 

 tive process ; the legitimate mode of drawing conclusions from 

 observation and experiment must be fundamentally miscon 

 ceived. 



Without attempting anything so chimerical as an exhaus 

 tive classification of all the misconceptions which can exist on 

 the subject, let us content ourselves with noting, among the 

 cautions which might be suggested, a few of the most useful 

 and needful. 



2. In the first place, there are certain kinds of gene 

 ralization which, if the principles already laid down be correct, 

 must be groundless : experience cannot afford the necessary 

 conditions for establishing them by a correct induction. Such, 

 for instance, are all inferences from the order of nature exist 

 ing on the earth, or in the solar system, to that which may 

 exist in remote parts of the universe ; where the phenomena, 



