206 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



chapter. We have seen, too, that all laws are embodied in general 

 judgments, and that induction is a process of generalization, based 

 on analysis of individual facts. We may distinguish, therefore, 

 between knowledge of particular &quot; facts &quot; and knowledge of the 

 &quot; laws &quot; reached by generalizing from these facts. 



In regard to any individual fact, we may know simply that it 

 is so, or we may know further why it must be so (cur? and 

 quomodo ?). We know the latter if we know the causes which pro 

 duce the fact, and the laws according to which they produce it. 

 But the same is true of the laws themselves. If we conceive a 

 &quot; law &quot; simply as the generalization of a fact beyond the range of 

 experience, simply as a statement that a certain kind of fact did 

 and does and will happen, always and everywhere, in a uniform 

 manner in similar circumstances, in a word, simply as an asser 

 tion that some observed uniformity of fact holds good generally, 

 then, since &quot;law&quot; in this sense is merely a wider fact, we may 

 know of it too, in turn, either that it is so, or we may know also 

 why it is so. 



Furthermore, confining our attention here to this concep 

 tion of a law, our knowledge that the law is so, i.e. that the fact 

 does happen uniformly beyond our experience as well as within 

 our experience this knowledge may vary from a very slender 

 degree .of probability to physical certitude. Our confidence in 

 the universal truth of such a law, our belief in its reliability, will 

 vary with the degree in which analysis of the facts points to its 

 truth, (a] It may be a rough generalization from uncontradicted 

 experience, based upon mere enumeration of instances, without 

 any attempt at analysis, e.g. &quot;All crows are black &quot;. (&) It may 

 have been observed to hold good in varied instances, in accord 

 ance with the method of agreement, e.g. &quot; All horned animals 

 are ruminants,&quot; &quot; All ruminants are cloven-footed &quot;. (c) It may 

 be a tentative extension of some known law to a new set of cases 

 by analogy, e.g. &quot; All animals having their habitat in the Arctic 

 regions are, like the polar bear, white-coloured &quot;. (cT) It may be 

 a supposed causal connexion, partially tested by the application of 

 one or more of the modes of analysis already described (240-4), 

 but not yet fully verified : an hypothesis in process of verification. 

 Of this latter we have had numerous examples. Now, generaliza 

 tions under any one of those various heads have this in common, 

 that they are all more or less probable ; but, since they are not cer 

 tain, they cannot be safely extended to cases that are not &quot;adjacent,&quot; 



