GROUND OF INDUCTION. 227 



the known from the unknown, is simply a habit of expecting that what has 

 been found true once or several times, and never yet found false, will be 

 found true again. Whether the instances are few or many, conclusive or 

 inconclusive, does not much affect the matter : these are considerations 

 which occur only on reflection ; the unprompted tendency of the mind is to 

 generalize its experience, provided this points all in one direction ; provided 

 no other experience of a conflicting chai'acter comes unsought. The notion 

 of seeking it, of experimenting for it, of interrogating nature (to use Ba- 

 con's expression) is of much later growth. The observation of nature, by 

 uncultivated intellects, is purely passive : they accept the facts which pre- 

 sent themselves, without taking the trouble of searching for more : it is a 

 superior mind only which asks itself what facts are needed to enable it to 

 come to a safe conclusion, and then looks out for these. 



But though Ave have always a propensity to generalize from unvarying 

 experience, we are not always warranted in doing so. Before we can be 

 at liberty to conclude that something is universally ti'ue because we have 

 never known an instance to the contrary, we must have reason to believe 

 that if there were in nature any instances to the contrary, we should have 

 known of them. This assurance, in the great majority of cases, we can not 

 have, or can have only in a very moderate degree. The possibility of hav- 

 ing it, is the foundation on which we shall see hereafter that induction by 

 simple enumeration may in some remarkable cases amount practically to 

 proof.* No such assurance, however, can be had, on any of the ordinary 

 subjects of scientific inquiry. Popular notions are usually founded on in- 

 duction by simple enumeration ; in science it carries us but a little way. 

 We are forced to begin with it; we must often rely on it provisionally, in 

 the absence of means of more searching investigation. But, for the accu- 

 rate study of nature, we require a surer and a more potent instrument. 



It was, above all, by pointing out the insufficiency of this rude and loose 

 conception of Induction, that Bacon merited the title so generally awarded 

 to him, of Founder of the Inductive Philosophy. The value of his own con- 

 tributions to a more philosophical theory of the subject has certainly been 

 exaggerated. Although (along with some fundamental errors) his writings 

 contain, more or less fully developed, several of the most important princi- 

 ples of the Inductive Method, physical investigation has now far outgrown 

 the Baconian conception of Induction. Moral and political inquiry, indeed, 

 are as yet far behind that conception. The current and approved modes 

 of reasoning on these subjects are still of the same vicious description 

 against which Bacon protested ; the method almost exclusively employed 

 by those professing to treat such matters inductively, is the very inductio 

 per enumerationeyn sim2)licem which he condemns; and the experience 

 which we hear so confidently appealed to by all sects, j^arties, and interests, 

 is still, in his own emphatic words, mera 2)alpatio. 



§ 3. In order to a better understanding of the problem which the logi- 

 cian must solve if he would establish a scientific theory of Induction, let us 

 compare a few cases of incorrect inductions with others which are acknowl- 

 edged to be legitimate. Some, we know, which were believed for centuries 

 to be correct, were nevertheless incorrect. That all swans are white, can 

 not have been a good induction, since the conclusion has turned out errone- 

 ous. The experience, however, on which the conclusion rested, was genu- 



* Infra, chap, xxi., xxii. / 



