266 REASONING. 



would immediately have thought of Nero, Domitian, 

 and other instances, which, showing the falsity of the 

 general conclusion, and therefore the insufficiency 

 of the premisses, would have warned him that those 

 premisses could not prove in the instance of Corn- 

 modus, what they were inadequate to prove in any 

 collection of cases in which his was included. 



The advantage, in judging whether any contro- 

 verted inference is legitimate, of referring to a parallel 

 case, is universally acknowledged. But by ascending 

 to the general proposition, we bring under our view 

 not one parallel case only, but all possible parallel 

 cases at once ; all cases to which the same set of 

 evidentiary considerations are applicable. 



When, therefore, we argue from a number of 

 known cases to another case supposed to be analo- 

 gous, it is always possible,, and generally advanta- 

 geous, to divert our argument into the circuitous 

 channel of an induction from those known cases to a 

 general proposition, and a subsequent application of 

 that general proposition to the unknown case. This 

 second part of the operation, which, as before 

 observed, is essentially a process of interpretation, 

 will be resolvable into a syllogism or a series of 

 syllogisms, the majors of which will be general pro- 

 positions embracing whole classes of cases ; every one 

 of which propositions must be true in all its extent, 

 if our argument is maintainable. If, therefore, any 

 fact fairly coming within the range of one of these 

 general propositions, and consequently asserted by it, 

 is known or suspected to be other than the propo- 

 sition asserts it to be, this mode of stating the argu- 

 ment causes us to know or to suspect that the 

 original observations, which are the real grounds of 

 our conclusion, are not sufficient to support it. And 



