CHAPTEK III. 



OF THE GROUND OF INDUCTION. 



1 . INDUCTION properly so called, as distinguished from 

 those mental operations, sometimes though improperly desig- 

 nated by the name, which I have attempted in the preceding 

 chapter to characterize, may, then, he summarily defined as 

 Generalization from Experience. It consists in inferring from 

 some individual instances in which a phenomenon is observed 

 to occur, that it occurs in all instances of a certain class; 

 namely, in all which resemble the former, in what are regarded 

 as the material circumstances. 



In what way the material circumstances are to be distin- 

 guished from those which are immaterial, or why some of the 

 circumstances are material and others not so, we are not yet 

 ready to point out We must first observe, that there is a 

 principle implied in the very statement of what Induction is ; 

 an assumption with regard to the course of nature and the 

 order of the universe ; namely, that there are such things in 

 nature as parallel cases ; that what happens once, will, under 

 a sufficient degree of similarity of circumstances, happen again, 

 and not only again, but as often as the same circumstances 

 recur. This, I say, is an assumption, involved in every case of 

 induction. And, if we consult the actual course of nature, we 

 find that the assumption is warranted. The universe, so far 

 as known to us, is so constituted, that whatever is true in any 

 one case, is true in all cases of a certain description ; the only 

 difficulty is, to find what description. 



This universal fact, which is our warrant for all inferences 

 from experience, has been described by different philosophers 

 in different forms of language : that the course of nature is 

 uniform ; that the universe is governed by general laws ; and 



