320 INDUCTION. 



separate planet, or All the Apostles were Jews, because 

 this is true of Peter, Paul, John, and every other apostle, 

 these, and such as these, would, in the phraseology in ques- 

 tion, he called perfect, and the only perfect, Inductions. 

 This, however, is a totally different kind of induction from 

 ours; it is not an inference from facts known to facts un- 

 known, hut a mere short-hand registration of facts known. 

 The two simulated arguments which we have quoted, are not 

 generalizations ; the propositions purporting to he conclusions 

 from them, are not really general propositions. A general 

 proposition is one in which the predicate is affirmed or denied 

 of an unlimited number of individuals ; namely, all, whether 

 few or many, existing or capable of existing, which possess 

 the properties connoted by the subject of the proposition. 

 "All men are mortal" does not mean all now living, but all 

 men past, present, and to come. When the signification of 

 the term is limited so as to render it a name not for any 

 and every individual falling under a certain general descrip- 

 tion, but only for each of a number of individuals designated 

 as such, and as it were counted off individually, the proposi- 

 tion, though it may be general in its language, is no general 

 proposition, but merely that number of singular propositions, 

 written in an abridged character. The operation may be very 

 useful, as most forms of abridged notation are ; but it is no 

 part of the investigation of truth, though often bearing an 

 important part in the preparation of the materials for that 

 investigation. 



As we may sum up a definite number of singular proposi- 

 tions in one proposition, which will be apparently, but not 

 really, general, so we may sum up a definite number of general 

 propositions in one proposition, which will be apparently, but 

 not really, more general. If by a separate induction applied 

 to every distinct species of animals, it has been established 

 that each possesses a nervous system, and we affirm thereupon 

 that all animals have a nervous system ; this looks like a 

 generalization, though as the conclusion merely affirms of all 

 what has already been affirmed of each, it seems to tell us 

 nothing but what we knew before. A distinction however 



