INDUCTIONS IMPROPERLY SO CALLED. 217 



to frame a supposition respecting the general course of the phenomenon, 

 and ask itself, If this be the general description, Avhat will the details be ? 

 and then compare these with the details actually observed. If they agreed, 

 the hypothesis would serve for a description of the phenomenon : if not, it 

 was necessarily abandoned, and another tried. It is such a case as this 

 which gives rise to the doctrine that the mind, in framing the descriptions, 

 adds something of its own which it does not find in the facts. 



Yet it is a fact surely, that the planet does describe an ellipse ; and a fact 

 which we could see, if we had adequate visual organs and a suitable posi- 

 tion. Not having these advantages, but possessing the conception of an el- 

 lipse, or (to express the meaning in less technical language) knowing what 

 an ellipse was, Kepler tried whether the observed places of the planet were 

 consistent with such a path. He found they were so ; and he, consequent- 

 ly, asserted as a fact that the planet moved in an ellipse. But this fact, 

 which Kepler did not add to, but found in, the motions of the planet, name- 

 ly, that it occupied in succession the various points in the circumference of 

 a given ellipse, was the very fact, the separate parts of which had been sep- 

 arately observed ; it was the sum of the different obsei'vations. 



Having stated -this fundamental difference between my opinion and that 

 of Dr. Whewell, I must add, that his account of the manner in which a 

 conception is selected, suitable to express the facts, appears to me perfectly 

 just. The experience of all thinkers will, I believe, testify that the process 

 is tentative; that it consists of a succession of guesses; many being reject- 

 ed, until one at last occurs fit to be chosen. We know from Kepler him- 

 self that befor6 hitting upon the "conception" of an ellipse, he tried nine- 

 teen other imaginary paths, which, finding them inconsistent with the ob- 

 servations, he was obliged to reject. But as Dr. Whewell truly says, the 

 successful hypothesis, though a guess, ought generally to be called, not a 

 lucky, but a skillful guess. The guesses which serve to give mental iinity 

 and wholeness to a chaos of scattered particulars, are accidents which rare- 

 ly occur to any minds but those abounding in knowledge and disciplined in 

 intellectual combinations. 



How far this tentative method, so indispensable as a means to the colli- 

 gation of facts for pui-poses of description, admits of application to Induc- 

 tion itself, and what functions belong to it in that department, will be con- 

 sidered in the chapter of the present Book which relates to Hypotheses. 

 On the present occasion we have chiefly to distinguish this process of Col- 

 ligation from Induction properly so called ; and that the distinction may be 

 made clearer, it is well to advert to a curious and interesting remark, which 

 is as strikingly true of the former operation, as it appears to me unequivo- 

 cally false of the latter. 



In different stages of the progress of knowledge, philosophers have em- 

 ployed, for the colligation of the same order of facts, different conceptions. 

 The early rude observations of the heavenly bodies, in which minute pre- 

 cision was neither attained nor sought, presented nothing inconsistent with 

 the representation of the path of a planet as an exact circle, having the earth 

 for its centre. As observations increased in aqcuracy, facts were disclosed 

 which were not reconcilable with this simple supposition : for the colliga- 

 tion of those additional facts, the supposition was varied ; and varied again 

 and again as facts became more numerous and precise. The earth was re- 

 moved from the centre to some other point within the circle; the planet 

 was supposed to revolve in a smaller circle called an epicycle, round an im- 

 aginary point which revolved in a circle round the earth : in proportion as 



