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CHAPTER III. 

 OF THE GROUND OF INDUCTION. 



1. INDUCTION properly so called, as distin- 

 guished from those mental operations, sometimes 

 though improperly designated by the name, which I 

 have attempted in the preceding chapter to charac- 

 terize, may, then, be summarily defined as Generaliza- 

 tion from Experience. It consists in inferring from 

 some individual instances in which a phenomenon is 

 observed to occur, that it occurs in all instances of 

 a certain class ; namely, in all which resemble the 

 former, in what are regarded as the material circum- 

 stances. 



In what way the material circumstances are to be 

 distinguished from those which are immaterial, or 

 why some of the circumstances are material and 

 others not so, we are not yet ready to point out. We 

 must first observe, that there is a principle implied in 

 the very statement of what Induction is ; an assump- 

 tion with regard to the course of nature and the 

 order of the universe : namely, that there are such 

 things in nature as parallel cases ; that what happens 

 once, will, under a sufficient degree of similarity of 

 circumstances, happen again, and not only again, but 

 always. This, I say, is an assumption, involved in 

 every case of induction. And, if we consult the actual 

 course of nature, we find that the assumption is 

 warranted ; the fact is so. The universe, we find, is 

 so constituted, that whatever is true in any one case, 

 is true in all cases of a certain description ; the only 

 difficulty is, to find what description. 



