458 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



induction, general conceptions wrongly formed, " notiones temere a rebus 

 abstractae ;" to which Dr. Whewell adds, that not only does bad abstraction 

 make bad induction, but that, in order to perform induction well, we must 

 have abstracted well ; our general conceptions must be " clear " and " ap- 

 propriate " to the matter in hand. 



§ 3. In attempting to show what the difficulty in this matter really is, 

 and how it is surmounted, I must beg the reader, once for all, to bear this 

 in mind ; that although, in discussing the opinions of a different school of 

 philosophy, I am willing to adopt their language, and to speak, therefore, 

 of connecting facts through the instrumentality of a conception, this tech- 

 nical phraseology means neither more nor less than what is commonly call- 

 ed comparing the facts with one another and determining in what they 

 agree. Nor has the technical expression even the advantage of being met- 

 aphysically correct. The facts are not connected, except in a merely met- 

 aphorical acceptation of the term. The ideas of the facts may become 

 connected, that is, we may be led to think of them together; but this con- 

 sequence is no more than what may be produced by any casual association. 

 What really takes place, is, I conceive, more philosophically expressed by 

 the common word Comparison, than by the phrases "to connect" or "to 

 superinduce." For, as the general conception is itself obtained by a com- 

 parison of particular phenomena, so, when obtained, the mode in which we 

 apply it to other phenomena is again by comparison. We compare phe- 

 nomena with each other to get the conception, and we then compare those 

 and other phenomena with the conception. We get the conception of an 

 animal (for instance) by comparing different animals, and when we after- 

 ward see a creature resembling an animal, we compare it with our general 

 conception of an animal ; and if it agrees with that general conception, we 

 include it in the class. The conception becomes the type of comparison. 



And we need only consider what comparison is, to see that where the 

 objects are more than two, and still more when they are an indefinite num- 

 ber, a type of some sort is an indispensable condition of the comparison. 

 When we have to arrange and classify a great number of objects according 

 to their agreements and differences, we do not make a confused attempt to 

 compare all with all. We know that two things are as much as the mind 

 can easily attend to at a time, and we therefore fix upon one of the objects, 

 either at hazard or because it offers in a peculiarly striking manner some 

 important character, and, taking this as our' standard, compare it with one 

 object after another. If we find a second object which presents a remark- 

 able agreement with the first, inducing us to class them together, the ques- 

 tion instantly arises, in what particular circumstances do they agree ? and 

 to take notice of these circumstances is already a first stage of abstraction, 

 giving rise to a general conception. Having advanced thus far, when we 

 now take in hand a third object we naturally ask ourselves the question, 

 not merely whether this third object agrees with the first, but whether it 

 agrees with it in the same circumstances in which the second did? in other 

 words, whether it agrees with the general conception which has been ob- 

 tained by abstraction from the first and second ? Thus we see the tenden- 

 cy of general conceptions, as soon as formed, to substitute themselves as 

 types, for whatever individual objects previously answered that purpose in 

 our comparisons. We may, perhaps, find that no considerable number of 

 other objects agree with this first general conception ; and that we must 

 drop the conception, and beginning again with a different individual case, 



