CHAPTER V. 



FALLACIES OF GENERALIZATION. 



1. THE class of Fallacies of which we are now to speak, 

 is the most extensive of all ; embracing a greater number and 

 variety of unfounded inferences than any of the other classes, 

 and which it is even more difficult to reduce to sub-classes or 

 species. If the attempt made in the preceding books to define 

 the principles of well-grounded generalization has been suc- 

 cessful, all generalizations not conformable to those principles 

 might, in a certain sense, be brought under the present class : 

 when however the rules are known and kept in view, but a 

 casual lapse committed in the application of them, this is a 

 blunder, not a fallacy. To entitle an error of generalization 

 to the latter epithet, it must be committed on principle ; there 

 must lie in it some erroneous general conception of the induc- 

 tive process ; the legitimate mode of drawing conclusions from 

 observation and experiment must be fundamentally miscon- 

 ceived. 



Without attempting anything so chimerical as an exhaus- 

 tive classification of all the misconceptions which can exist on 

 the subject, let us content ourselves with noting, among the 

 cautions which might be suggested, a few of the most useful 

 and needful. 



2. In the first place, there are certain kinds of gene- 

 ralization which, if the principles already laid down be correct, 

 must be groundless: experience cannot afford the necessary 

 conditions for establishing them by a correct induction. Such, 

 for instance, are all inferences from the order of nature exist- 

 ing on the earth, or in the solar system, to that which may 

 exist in remote parts of the universe ; where the phenomena, 



