INDUCTION IN GENERAL. 347 



their more competent hands ; even if he could have 

 dispensed with the many important logical ideas and 

 principles, for the first suggestion of which he has been 

 indebted to one or other of those writers. 



2. For the purposes of the present inquiry, 

 Induction may be defined, the operation of discovering 

 and proving general propositions. It is true that (as 

 already shown) the process of indirectly ascertaining 

 individual facts, is as truly inductive as that by which 

 we establish general truths. But it is not a different 

 kind of induction; it is another form of the very same 

 process : since, on the one hand, generals are but 

 collections of particulars, definite in kind but inde- 

 finite in number ; and on the other hand, whenever 

 the evidence which we derive from observation of 

 known cases justifies us in drawing an inference 

 respecting even one unknown case, we should on 

 the same evidence be justified in drawing a similar 

 inference with respect to a whole class of cases. The 

 inference either does not hold at all, or it holds in all 

 cases of a certain description ; in all cases which, in 

 certain definable respects,, resemble those we have 

 observed. 



If these remarks are just; if the principles and 

 rules of inference are the same whether we infer 

 general propositions or individual facts; it follows 

 that a complete logic of the sciences would be also a 

 complete logic of practical business and common 

 life. Since there is no case of legitimate inference 

 from experience, in which the conclusion may not 

 legitimately be a general proposition ; an analysis 

 of the process by which general truths are arrived 

 at, is virtually an analysis of all induction whatever. 

 Whether we are inquiring into a scientific principle 



