SECT. 4.] Induction. 205 



than what has to be done at almost every step in psycho 

 logical enquiry 1 . 



3. His task at first might be conceived to be a slow 

 and tedious one. It would consist of a gradual accumula 

 tion of individual instances, as marked out from one another 

 by various points of distinction, and connected with one 

 another by points of resemblance. These would have to be 

 respectively distinguished and associated in the mind, and 

 the consequent results would then be summed up in general 

 propositions, from which inferences could afterwards be 

 drawn. These inferences could, of course, contain no new 

 facts, they would only be repetitions of what he or others 

 had previously observed. All that we should have so far 

 done would have been to make our classifications of things 

 and then to appeal to them again. We should therefore be 

 keeping well within the province of ordinary logic, the pro 

 cesses of which (whatever their ultimate explanation) may 

 of course always be expressed, in accordance with Aristotle s 

 Dictum, as ways of determining whether or not we can show 

 that one given class is included wholly or partly within 

 another, or excluded from it, as the case may be. 



4. But a very short course of observation would sug 

 gest the possibility of a wide extension of his information. 

 Experience itself would soon detect that events were con 

 nected together in a regular way; he would ascertain that 

 there are laws of nature. Coming with no d priori neces 

 sity of believing in them, he would soon find that as a matter 



1 Some of my readers maybe fa- his experience to gain, and speculates 

 miliar with a very striking digression on the gradual acquisition of his 

 in Buffon s Natural History (Natural knowledge. Whatever may be thought 

 Hist, of Man, vin.), in which he of his particular conclusions the pas- 

 supposes the first man in full pos- sage is very interesting and sugges- 

 session of his faculties, but with all tive to any student of Psychology. 



