n8 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



We believe the man will die. We may assign our reason in 

 either of two ways : 



&quot;Deductive: All men who are bitten die. The man XY 

 is bitten. Therefore XY will die. 



&quot; Inductive : The men A, B, C . . . were bitten and died. 

 The man XY has also been bitten. Therefore XY will die.&quot; 



Ask him who gives the deductive answer why he considers 

 that the reason he assigns is a sufficient one : he will tell you that 

 it is so because &quot; what holds good of a class holds good of every 

 member of that class &quot;. Now ask a similar question of him who 

 gave the inductive answer : ask him why does he consider the 

 fact that &quot; A, B, C . . . and all men who have been bitten died &quot; 

 to be a sufficient reason for believing that XY will die : he will 

 tell you finally that he considers it to be a sufficient reason &quot; be 

 cause nature is uniform &quot;. Now, why is the man who gives the 

 deductive answer let alone at this point and not called on to 

 explain why he believes that &quot; what holds good of a class holds 

 good of every member of that class,&quot; while the man who gives 

 the inductive answer is not let alone, but has to justify his belief 

 that &quot; nature is uniform &quot; ? The only reason for difference of 

 treatment would be because the deductive reasoner is not supposed 

 to be concerned with the application of his class-concepts to the 

 real world, but only with their consistency within the sphere of 

 abstract thought, in which they have been conceived as fixed, 

 static, unchanging : while the inductive reasoner is supposed to 

 be concerned with the real validity of those concepts, with their 

 application to the real world, and, therefore, with the existence of uni 

 formity in the real world itself. 



But the moment a person attempts to apply a syllogism within 

 any domain of actual reality in other words, to demonstrate or 

 prove anything as true he is committing himself to a belief in 

 the &quot; uniformity of nature &quot; regarding certain classes of things 

 within that domain. Hence, those logicians who are inclined to 

 view their science as concerned exclusively with the consistency of 

 thought refuse to go behind such ultimate logical generalizations 

 as the Dictum de omni and the Uniformity of nature for the pur 

 pose of justifying these. Understanding by a logical ground or 

 reason for assent to a judgment, always some wider generalization 

 which includes the latter (198), they observe that there is no pos 

 sible wider generalization than either of the two in question ; and 



