INDUCTIONS IMPROPERLY SO CALLED. 211 



in the common books of Logic we find this laid down as the most perfect, 

 indeed the only quite perfect, form of iudnction. In those books, every 

 process which sets out from a less general and terminates in a more gen- 

 eral expression — which admits of being stated in the form, " This and that 

 A are B, therefore every A is B " — is called an induction, whether any 

 thing be really concluded or not: and the induction is asserted not to be 

 perfect, unless every single individual of the class A is included in the 

 antecedent, or premise : that is, unless what we affirm of the class has 

 already been ascertained to be true of every individual in it, so that the 

 nominal conclusion is not really a conclusion, but a mere re-assertion of the 

 premises. If we were to say, All the planets shine by the sun's light, from 

 A observation of each separate planet, or All the Apostles were Jews, because 

 ' this is true of Peter, Paul, John, and every other apostle — these, and such 

 as these, would, in the phraseology in question, be called perfect, and the 

 only perfect. Inductions. This, however, is a totally different kind of in- 

 duction from ours ; it is not an inference from facts known to facts un- 

 known, but a mere short-hand registration of facts known. The two sim- 

 ulated arguments which we have quoted, are not generalizations ; the prop- 

 ositions purporting to be conclusions from them, are not really general 

 propositions. A general proposition is one in which the predicate is af- 

 firmed or denied of an unlimited number of individuals; namely, all, wheth- 

 er few or many, existing or capable of existing, which possess the proper- 

 ties connoted by the subject of the proposition. " All men are mortal " does 

 not mean all now living, but all men past, present, and to come. When the 

 signification of tho term is limited so as to render it a name not for any 

 and every individual falling under a certain general description, but only 

 for each of a number of individuals, designated as such, and as it were 

 counted off individually, the proposition, though it may be general in its 

 language, is no general proposition, but merely that number of singular 

 propositions, written in an abridged character. The operation may be very 

 useful, as most forms of abridged notation are ; but it is no part of the in- 

 vestigation of truth, though often bearing an imisortant part in the prej^a- 

 ration of the materials for that investigation. 



As we may sum up a definite number of singular propositions in one 

 proposition, which will be apparently, but not really, general, so we may 

 sum up a definite number of general propositions in one proposition, which 

 will be apparently, but not really, more general. If by a separate induc- 

 tion applied to every distinct species of animals, it has been established 

 that each possesses a nervous system, and we affirm thereupon that all an- 

 imals have a nervous system ; this looks like a generalization, though as 

 the conclusion merely affirms of all what has already been affirmed of each, 

 it seems to tell us nothing but what we knew before. A distinction, liow- 

 ever, must be made. C[f in concluding that all animals have a nervous sys- 

 tem, we mean the same thing and no more as if we had said " all known 

 animals," the proposition is not general, and the process by which it is ar- 

 rived at is not induction. But if our meaning is that the observations 

 made of the various species of animals have discovered to us a law of an- 

 imal nature, and that we are in a condition to say that a nervous system 

 will be found even in animals yet undiscovered, this indeed is an induc- 

 tion ; but in this case the general proposition contains more than the sum 

 of the special propositions from which it is inferred!\ The distinction is 

 still more forcibly brought out when we consider, th^if this real general- 

 ization be legitimate at all, its legitimacy probably does not require that 



