478 INDUCTION. 



cess altogether ; for whatever cannot be reduced to syllogism, 

 is not reasoning. And Dr. Whewell's argument, if good at 

 all, is good against all inferences from experience. In saying 

 that no discoveries were ever made by the four Methods, he 

 affirms that none were ever made by observation and experi- 

 ment ; for assuredly if any were, it was by processes reducible 

 to one or other of those methods. 



This difference between us accounts for the dissatisfaction 

 which my examples give him ; for I did not select them with 

 a view to satisfy any one who required to be convinced that 

 observation and experiment are modes of acquiring knowledge : 

 I confess that in the choice of them I thought only of illus- 

 tration, and of facilitating the conception of the Methods by 

 concrete instances. If it had been my object to justify the 

 processes themselves as means of investigation, there would 

 have been no need to look far off, or make use of recondite or 

 complicated instances. As a specimen of a truth ascertained 

 by the Method of Agreement, I might have chosen the pro- 

 position "Dogs bark." This dog, and that dog, and the 

 other dog, answer to A B C, A D E, A F G. The circum- 

 stance of being a dog, answers to A. Barking answers to a. 

 As a truth made known by the Method of Difference, " Fire 

 burns" might have sufficed. Before I touch the fire I am not 

 burnt; this is B C ; I touch it, and am burnt; this is A B C, 

 aB C. 



Such familiar experimental processes are not regarded as 

 inductions by Dr. Whewell ; but they are perfectly homo- 

 geneous with those by which, even on his own showing, the 

 pyramid of science is supplied with its base. In vain he attempts 

 to escape from this conclusion by laying the most arbitrary 

 restrictions on the choice of examples admissible as instances 

 of Induction : they must neither be such as are still matter of 

 discussion (p. 265), nor must any of them be drawn from 

 mental and social subjects (p. 269), nor from ordinary obser- 

 vation and practical life (pp. 241 247). They must be 

 taken exclusively from the generalizations by which scientific 

 thinkers have ascended to great and comprehensive laws of 

 natural phenomena. Now it is seldom possible, in these com- 



