238 REASONING. 



on without any general propositions ; they are mere formula 

 for inferring particulars from particulars. The principle of 

 general reasoning is (as before explained), that if from obser- 

 vation of certain known particulars, what was seen to be true 

 of them can be inferred to be true of any others, it may be 

 inferred of all others which are of a certain description. And 

 in order that we may never fail to draw this conclusion in a 

 new case when it can be drawn correctly, and may avoid 

 drawing it when it cannot, we determine once for all what are 

 the distinguishing marks by which such cases may be recog- 

 nised. The subsequent process is merely that of identifying 

 an object, and ascertaining it to have those marks ; whether 

 we identify it by the very marks themselves, or by others 

 which we have ascertained (through another and a similar 

 process) to be marks of those marks. The real inference is 

 always from particulars to particulars, from the observed 

 instances to an unobserved one : but in drawing this infe- 

 rence, we conform to a formula which we have adopted for our 

 guidance in such operations, and which is a record of the 

 criteria by which we thought we had ascertained that we 

 might distinguish when the inference could, and when it 

 could not, be drawn. The real premises are the individual 

 observations, even though they may have been forgotten, or, 

 being the observations of others and not of ourselves, may, to 

 us, never have been known : but we have before us proof that 

 we or others once thought them sufficient for an induction, 

 and we have marks to show whether any new case is one of 

 those to which, if then known, the induction would have been 

 deemed to extend. These marks we either recognise at once, 

 or by the aid of other marks, which by another previous 

 induction we collected to be marks of the first. Even these 

 marks of marks may only be recognised through a third set 

 of marks ; and we may have a train of reasoning, of any length, 

 to bring a new case within the scope of an induction grounded 

 on particulars its similarity to which is only ascertained in 

 this indirect manner. 



Thus, in the preceding example, the ultimate inductive in- 



