TRAINS OF REASONING. 237 



of our senses that the case of the government under consi- 

 deration resembles a number of former cases, in the circum- 

 stance of having something asserted respecting it by intelli- 

 gent and disinterested witnesses, we infer, first, that, as in 

 those former instances, so in this instance, the assertion is 

 true. Secondly, what was asserted of the government being 

 that it acts in a particular manner, and other governments 

 or persons having been observed to act in the same manner, 

 the government in question is brought into known resem- 

 blance with those other governments or persons ; and since 

 they were known to desire the good of the people, it is there- 

 upon, by a second induction, inferred that the particular 

 government spoken of, desires the good of the people. This 

 brings that government into known resemblance with the 

 other governments which were thought likely to escape revo- 

 lution, and thence, by a third induction, it is concluded that 

 this particular government is also likely to escape. This is 

 still reasoning from particulars to particulars, but we now 

 reason to the new instance from three distinct sets of former 

 instances : to one only of those sets of instances do we directly 

 perceive the new one to be similar ; but from that similarity 

 we inductively infer that it has the attribute by which it 

 is assimilated to the next set, and brought within the 

 corresponding induction ; after which by a repetition of the 

 same operation we infer it to be similar to the third set, 

 and hence a third induction conducts us to the ultimate 

 conclusion. 



3. Notwithstanding the superior complication of these 

 examples, compared with those by which in the preceding 

 chapter we illustrated the general theory of reasoning, every 

 doctrine which we then laid down holds equally true in these 

 more intricate cases. The successive general propositions are 

 not steps in the reasoning, are not intermediate links in the 

 chain of inference, between the particulars observed and those 

 to which we apply the observation. If we had sufficiently 

 capacious memories, and a sufficient power of maintaining 

 order among a huge mass of details, the reasoning could go 



