480 INDUCTION. 



If discoveries are ever made by observation and experiment 

 without Deduction, the four methods are methods of discovery : 

 but even if they were not methods of discovery, it would not 

 be the less true that they are the sole methods of Proof; and 

 in that character, even the results of deduction are amenable 

 to them. The great generalizations which begin as Hypo- 

 theses, must end by being proved, and are in reality (as will 

 be shown hereafter) proved, by the Four Methods. Now it is 

 with Proof, as such, that Logic is principally concerned. This 

 distinction has indeed no chance of finding favour with 

 Dr. Whewell ; for it is the peculiarity of his system, not to 

 recognise, in cases of Induction, any necessity for proof. If, 

 after assuming an hypothesis and carefully collating it with 

 facts, nothing is brought to light inconsistent with it, that is, 

 'if experience does not disprove it, he is content : at least 

 until a simpler hypothesis, equally consistent with experience, 

 presents itself. If this be Induction, doubtless there is no 

 necessity for the four methods. But to suppose that it is so, 

 appears to me a radical misconception of the nature of the 

 evidence of physical truths. 



So real and practical is the need of a test for induction, 

 similar to the syllogistic test of ratiocination, that inferences 

 which bid defiance to the most elementary notions of inductive 

 logic are put forth without misgiving by persons eminent in 

 physical science, as soon as they are off the ground on which 

 they are conversant with the facts, and not reduced to judge 

 only by the arguments ; and as for educated persons in gene- 

 ral, it may be doubted if they are better judges of a good or 

 a bad induction than they were before Bacon wrote. The 

 improvement in the results of thinking has seldom extended 

 to the processes ; or has reached, if any process, that of inves- 

 tigation only, not that of proof. A knowledge of many laws 

 of nature has doubtless been arrived at, by framing hypotheses 

 and finding that the facts corresponded to them ; and many 

 errors have been got rid of by coming to a knowledge of facts 

 which were inconsistent with them, but not by discovering 

 that the mode of thought which led to the errors was itself 

 faulty, and might have been known to be such independently 



