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INDUCTION, 



2. As was observed in a former place,* the belief we 

 entertain in the universality, throughout nature, of the law 

 of cause and effect, is itself an instance of induction ; and by 

 no means one of the earliest which any of us, or which 

 mankind in general, can have made. We arrive at this uni- 

 versal law, by generalization from many laws of inferior 

 generality. We should never have had the notion of causation 

 (in the philosophical meaning of the term) as a condition of 

 all phenomena, unless many cases of causation, or in other 

 words, many partial uniformities of sequence, had previously 

 become familiar. The more obvious of the particular uniformi- 

 ties suggest, and give evidence of, the general uniformity, 

 and the general uniformity, once established, enables us to 

 prove the remainder of the particular uniformities of which it 

 is made up. As, however, all rigorous processes of induction 

 presuppose the general uniformity, our knowledge of the par- 

 ticular uniformities from which it was first inferred was 

 not, of course, derived from rigorous induction, but from the 

 loose and uncertain mode of induction per enumerationem sim- 

 plicem : and the law of universal causation, being collected 



limited range of his own experience, though he doubt or deny it in everything 

 beyond, is, in fact, bearing unconscious testimony to its universal truth. Nor, 

 again, is it only among the most ignorant that this limitation is put upon the 

 truth. There is a very general propensity to believe that everything beyond 

 common experience, or especially ascertained laws of nature, is left to the 

 dominion of chance or fate or arbitrary intervention ; and even to object to any 

 attempted explanation by physical causes, if conjecturally thrown out for an 

 apparently unaccountable phenomenon. 



" The precise doctrine of the generalization of this idea of the uniformity 

 of nature, so far from being obvious, natural, or intuitive, is utterly beyond 

 the attainment of the many. In all the extent of its universality it is charac- 

 teristic of the philosopher. It is clearly the result of philosophic cultivation 

 and training, and by no means the spontaneous offspring of any primary prin- 

 ciple naturally inherent in the mind, as some seem to believe. It is no mere 

 vague persuasion taken up without examination, as a common prepossession to 

 which we are always accustomed ; on the contrary, all common prejudices and 

 associations are against it. It is pre-eminently an acquired idea. It is not 

 attained without deep study and reflection. The best informed philosopher is 

 the man who most firmly believes it, even in opposition to received notions ; its 

 acceptance depends on the extent and profoundness of his inductive studies." 

 * Supra, book iii. ch. iii. 1. 



