INDUCTIONS IMPROPERLY SO CALLED. 339 



to be true of the orbit : but in this proof Kepler's law supplied 

 the minor premise, and not (as is the case with real Induc- 

 tions) the major. 



Dr. Whewell calls nothing Induction where there is not a 

 new mental conception introduced, and everything induction 

 where there is. But this is to confound two very different 

 things, Invention and Proof. The introduction of a new con- 

 ception belongs to Invention : and invention may be required 

 in any operation, but is the essence of none. A new concep- 

 tion may be introduced for descriptive purposes, and so it may 

 for inductive purposes. But it is so far from constituting 

 induction, that induction does not necessarily stand in need 

 of it. Most inductions require no conception but what was 

 present in every one of the particular instances on which the 

 induction is grounded. That all men are mortal is surely an 

 inductive conclusion ; yet no new conception is introduced by 

 it. Whoever knows that any man has died, has all the con- 

 ceptions involved in the inductive generalization. But Dr. 

 Whewell considers the process of invention which consists in 

 framing a new conception consistent with the facts, to be not 

 merely a necessary part of all induction, but the whole of it. 



The mental operation which extracts from a number of 

 detached observations certain general characters in which the 

 observed phenomena resemble one another, or resemble other 

 known facts, is what Bacon, Locke, and most subsequent 

 metaphysicians, have understood by the word Abstraction. A 

 general expression obtained by abstraction, connecting known 

 facts by means of common characters, but without concluding 

 from them to unknown, may, I think, with strict logical cor- 

 rectness, be termed a Description ; nor do I know in what 

 other way things can ever be described. My position, how- 

 ever, does not depend on the employment of that particular 

 word ; I am quite content to use Dr. Whewell's term Colli- 

 gation, or the more general phrases, " mode of representing, 

 or of expressing, phenomena :" provided it be clearly seen 

 that the process is not Induction, but something radically 

 different. 



222 



