FALLACIES OF GENERALIZATION . 361 



reference to the canons of scientific investigation have been 

 attempted to he given, however unsuccessfully, for some of 

 these propositions ; but to the multitude of those who parrot 

 them, the enumeratio simplex, ex his tantummodo qua prtcsto 

 simt pronanclans, is the sole evidence. Their fallacy consists 

 in this, that they are inductions without elimination : there 

 has been no real comparison of instances, nor even ascertain 

 ment of the material facts in any given instance. There is 

 also the further error, of forgetting that such generalizations, 

 even if well established, could not be ultimate truths, but 

 must be results of laws much more elementary ; and there 

 fore, until deduced from such, could at most be admitted as 

 empirical laws, holding good within the limits of space and 

 time by which the particular observations that suggested the 

 generalization were bounded. 



This error, of placing mere empirical laws, and laws in 

 which there is no direct evidence of causation, on the same 

 footing of certainty as laws of cause and effect, an error which 

 is at the root of perhaps the greater number of had inductions, 

 is exemplified only in its grossest form in the kind of gene 

 ralizations to which we have now referred. These, indeed, do 

 not possess even the degree of evidence which pertains to a 

 well-ascertained empirical law ; but admit of refutation on the 

 empirical ground itself, without ascending to causal laws. A 

 little reflection, indeed, will show that mere negations can 

 only form the ground of the lowest and least valuable kind of 

 empirical law. A phenomenon has never been noticed ; this 

 only proves that the conditions of that phenomenon have not 

 yet occurred in experience, but does not prove that they may 

 not occur hereafter. There is a better kind of empirical law 

 than this, namely, when a phenomenon which is observed pre 

 sents within the limits of observation a series of gradations, 

 in which a regularity, or something like a mathematical law, 

 is perceptible : from which, therefore, something may be 

 rationally presumed as to those terms of the series which are 

 beyond the limits of observation. But in negation there are 

 no gradations, and no series : the generalizations, therefore, 

 which deny the possibility of any given condition of man and 



