222 INDUCTION. 



does think the operations identical. He allows of no logical process in any 

 case of induction, other than what there was in Kepler's case, namely, 

 guessing until a guess is found which tallies with the facts ; and accord- 

 ingly, as we shall see hereafter, he rejects all canons of induction, because 

 it is not by means of them that we guess. Dr. Whewell's theory of the 

 logic of science would be very perfect if it did not pass over altogether the 

 question of Proof. But in ray apprehension there is such a thing as proof, 

 and inductions differ altogether from descriptions in their relation to that 

 element, p^nduction is proof ; it is inferring something unobserved from 

 somethin^-sDbserved : it requires, therefore, an appropriate test of proof ; 

 and to i^rovide that test, is the special purpose of inductive logic. When, 

 on the contrary, we merely collate known observations, and, in Dr. Whe- 

 well's phraseology, connect them by means of a new conception ; if the 

 conception does serve to connect the observations, we have all we Avant. 

 As the proposition in which it is embodied pretends to no other truth than 

 what it may share with many other modes of representing the same facts, 

 to be consistent with the facts is all it requires : it neither needs nor ad- 

 mits of proof; though it may serve to prove other things, inasmuch as, by 

 placing the facts in mental connection with other facts, not previously seen 

 to resemble them, it assimilates the case to another class of phenomena, 

 concerning which real Inductions have already been made. Thus Kepler's 

 so-called law brought the orbit of Mars into the class eUipse, and by doing 

 so, proved all the properties of an ellipse to be true of the orbit : but in this 

 proof Kepler's law supplied the minor premise, and not (as is the case with 

 real Inductions) the major. 



Dr. Whewell calls nothing Induction where there is not a new mental 

 conception introduced, and every thing induction where there is. L^^^^t this 

 is to confound two very different things. Invention and Proof. The intro- 

 duction of a new conception belongs to Invention : and invention may be 

 required in any operation, but is the essence of none. A new conception 

 may be introduced for descriptive purposes, and so it may for inductive 

 purposes. But it is so far from constituting induction, that induction docs 

 not necessarily stand in need of it. Most inductions require no conception 

 but what was present in every one of the particular instances on which the 

 induction is grounded. That all men are mortal is surely an inductive 

 conclusion ; yet no new conception is introduced by it.J Whoever knows 

 that any man has died, has all the conceptions involvM in the inductive 

 generalization. But Dr. Whewell considers the process of invention which 

 consists in framing a new conception consistent with the facts, to be not 

 merely a necessary part of all induction, but the whole of it. 



The mental operation which extracts fi'om a number of detached obser- 

 vations certain general characters in which the observed phenomena resem- 

 ble one another, or resemble other known facts, is what Bacon, Locke, and 

 most subsequent metaphysicians, have understood by the Avord Abstrac- 

 tion. TA general expression obtained by abstraction, connecting known 

 facts Tiy means of common characters, but without concluding from them 

 to unknown, may, I think, with strict logical correctness, be termed a De=^ 

 scrijJtion ; nor do I know in what other way things can ever be describedj 

 My position, however, does not depend on the employment of that partic- 

 ular word ; I am quite content to use Dr. Whewell's term Colligation, or 

 the more general phrases, " mode of representing, or of expressing, phe- 

 nomena :" provided it be clearly seen that the process is not Induction, but 

 something radically different. 



