INDUCTION IN GENERAL. 317 



new induction, represented, in the aggregate of its results, by 

 a general proposition. 



Not only is the process by which an individual astrono- 

 mical fact was thus ascertained, exactly similar to those by 

 which the same science establishes its general truths, but also 

 (as we have shown to be the case in all legitimate reasoning) 

 a general proposition might have been concluded instead of a 

 single fact. In strictness, indeed, the result of the reasoning 

 is a general proposition; a theorem respecting the distance, 

 not of the moon in particular, but of any inaccessible object ; 

 showing in what relation that distance stands to certain other 

 quantities. And although the moon is almost the only heavenly 

 body the distance of which from the earth can really be thus 

 ascertained, this is merely owing to the accidental circum- 

 stances of the other heavenly bodies, which render them inca- 

 pable of affording such data as the application of the theorem 

 requires ; for the theorem itself is as true of them as it is of the 



* Dr. Whewell thinks it improper to apply the term Induction to any 

 operation not terminating in the establishment of a general truth. Induction, 

 he says (Philosophy of Discovery, p. 245), "is not the same thing as experience 

 and observation. Induction is experience or observation consciously looked at 

 in a general form. This consciousness and generality are necessary parts of 

 that knowledge which is science." And he objects (p. 241) to the mode in 

 which the word Induction is employed in this work, as an undue extension of 

 that term ' ' not only to the cases in which the general induction is consciously 

 applied to a particular instance, but to the cases in which the particular instance 

 is dealt with by means of experience in that rude sense in which experience can 

 be asserted of brutes, and in which of course we can in no way imagine that the 

 law is possessed or understood as a general proposition." This use of the term 

 he deems a "confusion of knowledge with practical tendencies." 



I disclaim, as strongly as Dr. Whewell can do, the application of such terms 

 as induction, inference, or reasoning, to operations performed by mere instinct, 

 that is, from an animal impulse, without the exertion of any intelligence. But 

 I perceive no ground for confining the use of those terms to cases in which the 

 inference is drawn in the forms and with the precautions required by scientific 

 propriety. To the idea of Science, an express recognition and distinct appre- 

 hension of general laws as such, is essential : but nine-tenths of the conclusions 

 drawn from experience in the course of practical life, are drawn without any 

 such recognition : they are direct inferences from known cases, to a case sup- 

 posed to be similar. I have endeavoured to show that this is not only as legi- 



