SECT. 30.] Induction. 231 



as before. Contradiction can only seem to arise when it is 

 attempted to justify each separate step on our paths, as well 

 as their ultimate tendency. 



Still it cannot be denied that these objections are a 

 serious drawback to the completeness and validity of any 

 anticipations which are merely founded upon statistical fre 

 quency, at any rate in an early stage of experience, when 

 but few statistics have been collected. Such knowledge as 

 Probability can give is not in any individual case of a high 

 order, being subject to the characteristic infirmity of re 

 peated error ; but even when measured by its own stand 

 ard it commences at a very low stage of proficiency. The 

 errors are then relatively very numerous and large compared 

 with what they may ultimately be reduced to. 



30. Here as elsewhere there is a continuous process 

 of specialization going on. The needs of a gradually widen 

 ing experience are perpetually calling upon us to subdivide 

 classes which are found to be too heterogeneous. Sometimes 

 the only complaint that has to be made is that the class to 

 which we are obliged to refer is found to be somewhat too 

 broad to suit our purpose, and that it might be subdivided 

 with convenience. This is the case, as has been shown above, 

 when an Insurance office finds that its increasing business 

 makes it possible and desirable to separate off the men who 

 follow some particular trades from the rest of their fellow- 

 countrymen. Similarly in every other department in which 

 statistics are made use of. This increased demand for speci- 

 ficness leads, in fact, as naturally in this direction, as does 

 the progress of civilization to the subdivision of trades in 

 any town or country. So in reference to the other kind of 

 perplexity mentioned above. Nothing is more common in 

 those sciences or practical arts, in which deduction is but 

 little available, and where in consequence our knowledge is 



