466 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



we may reason from past experience to a fresh individual case without the 

 intermediate stage of a general proposition, yet without general propositions 

 we should seldom remember what past experience we have had, and scarce- 

 ly ever what conclusions that experience will warrant. The division of the 

 inductive process into two parts, the first ascertaining what is a mark of 

 the given fact, the second whether in the new case that mark exists, is 

 natural, and scientifically indispensable. It is, indeed, in a majority of 

 cases, rendered necessary by mere distance of time. The experience by 

 which we are to guide our judgments may be other people's experience, 

 little of which can be communicated to us otherwise than by language; 

 when it is our own, it is generally experience long past ; unless, therefore, 

 it wei*e recorded by means of artificial signs, little of it (except in cases in- 

 volving our intenser sensations or emotions, or the subjects of our daily and 

 hourly contemplation) would be retained in the memory. It is hardly nec- 

 essary to add, that when the inductive inference is of any but the most 

 direct and obvious nature — when it requires several observations or exper- 

 iments, in varying circumstances, and the comparison of one of these with 

 another — it is impossible to proceed a step, without the artificial memory 

 which words bestow. Without words, we should, if we had often seen A 

 and B in immediate and obvious conjunction, expect B whenever we saw 

 A; but to discover their conjunction when not obvious, or to determine 

 whether it is really constant or only casual, and whether there is reason to 

 expect it under any given change of circumstances, is a process far too com- 

 plex to be performed without some contrivance to make our remembrance 

 of our own mental operations accurate. Now, language is such a contriv- 

 ance. When that instrument is called to our aid, the difficulty is reduced 

 to that of making our remembrance of the meaning of words accurate. 

 This being secured, whatever passes through our minds may be remem- 

 bered accurately, by putting it carefully into words, and committing the 

 words either to writing or to memory. 



The function of Naming, and particularly of General Names, in Induc- 

 tion, may be recapitulated as follows. Every inductive inference which is 

 good at all, is good for a whole class of cases ; and, that the inference may 

 have any better warrant of its correctness than the mere clinging together 

 of two ideas, a process of experimentation and comparison is necessary; in 

 which the Avhole class of cases must be brought to view, and some uniform- 

 ity in the course of nature evolved and ascertained, since the existence 

 of such a uniformity is required as a justification for drawing the infer- 

 ence in even a single case. This uniformity, therefore, may be ascertained 

 once for all ; and if, being ascertained, it can be remembered, it will serve 

 as a formula for making, in particular cases, all such inferences as the pre- 

 vious experience will warrant. But we can only secure its being remem- 

 bered, or give ourselves even a chance of carrying in our memory any con- 

 siderable number of such uniformities, bj^ registering them through the 

 medium of permanent signs ; which (being, from the nature of the case, 

 signs not of an individual fact, but of a uniformity, that is, of an indefinite 

 number of facts similar to one another) are general signs; univei'sals; gen- 

 eral names, and general propositions. 



§ 4. And here I can not omit to notice an oversight committed by some 

 eminent thinkers; who have said that the cause of our using general names 

 is the infinite multitude of individual objects, which, making it impossible 

 to have a name for each, compels us to make one name serve for many. 



