INDUCTIONS IMPROPERLY SO CALLED. 357 



of confounding a mere description of a set of observed 

 phenomena, with an induction from them. 



Suppose that a phenomenon consists of parts, and 

 that these parts are only capable of being observed 

 separately, and as it were piecemeal. When the 

 observations have been made, there is a convenience 

 (amounting for many purposes to a necessity) in 

 obtaining a representation of the phenomenon as a 

 whole, by combining, or, as we may say, piecing these 

 detached fragments together. A navigator sailing in 

 the midst of the ocean discovers land : he cannot at 

 first, or by any one observation, determine whether 

 it is a continent or an island ; but he coasts along it, 

 and after a few days, finds himself to have sailed 

 completely round it : he then pronounces it an island. 

 Now there was no particular time or place of observa- 

 tion at which he could perceive that this land was 

 entirely surrounded by water : he ascertained the fact 

 by a succession of partial observations, and then 

 selected a general expression which summed up in 

 two or three words the whole of what he so observed. 

 But is there anything of the nature of an induction in 

 this process? Did he infer anything that had not 

 been observed, from something else which had? 

 Certainly not. That the land in question is an island, 

 is not an inference from the partial facts which the 

 navigator saw in the course of his circumnavigation ; 

 it is the facts themselves ; it is a summary of those 

 facts ; the description of a complex fact, to which 

 those simpler ones are as the parts of a whole. 



Now there is no difference in kind between this 

 simple operation, and that by which Kepler ascer- 

 tained the nature of the planetary orbits : and Kep- 

 ler's operation, all at least that was characteristic in 



