218 Induction. [CHAP. ix. 



the individuals included in them. This is of course nothing 

 more than the familiar characteristic of what may be called 

 probability propositions/ But it leads up to, and indeed 

 renders possible, the second and more important point; 

 viz. that these various answers, though they cannot directly 

 and formally contradict each other (this their nature as pro 

 portional propositions, will not as a rule permit), may yet, in 

 a way which will now have to be pointed out, be found to be 

 more or less in conflict with each other. 



Hence it follows that in the attempt to draw a conclusion 

 from premises of the kind in question, we may be placed 

 in a position of some perplexity; but it is a perplexity 

 which may present itself in two forms, a mild and an aggra 

 vated form. We will notice them in turn. 



17. The mild form occurs when the different classes 

 to which the individual case may be appropriately referred 

 are successively included one within another ; for here our 

 sets of statistics, though leading to different results, will 

 not often be found to be very seriously at variance with 

 one another. All that comes of it is that as we ascend in the 

 scale by appealing to higher and higher genera, the sta 

 tistics grow continually less appropriate to the particular 

 case in point, and such information therefore as they afford 

 becomes gradually less explicit and accurate. 



The question that we originally wanted to determine, 

 be it remembered, is whether John Smith will die within 

 one year. But all knowledge of this fact being unattain 

 able, owing to the absence of suitable inductions, we felt 

 justified (with the explanation, and under the restrictions 

 mentioned in Chap. VI.), in substituting, as the only available 

 equivalent for such individual knowledge, the answer to the 

 following statistical enquiry, What proportion of men in his 

 circumstances die ? 



