GROUND OF INDUCTION. 373 



being a necessary condition of its being proved ; since 

 no conclusion is proved for which there cannot be 

 found a true major premiss*. 



* From the fact, that every induction may be expressed in the 

 form of a syllogism, Archbishop Whately concludes that Induction 

 itself is but a peculiar case of ratiocination, and that the universal 

 type of all Inference, or Reasoning, is the Syllogism. Our own 

 inquiries have led us to a directly opposite result. Instead of re- 

 solving Induction into Ratiocination, it has appeared to us that 

 Ratiocination is itself resolvable into Induction. The Archbishop's 

 theory may, I think, be shown to be fallacious by following out his 

 own train of thought. The induction, " John, Peter, Thomas, &c., 

 are mortal, therefore all mankind are mortal," may, as he justly 

 says, be thrown into a syllogism by prefixing as a major premiss 

 (what is at any rate a necessary condition of the validity of the 

 argument) namely, that whatever is true of John, Peter, Thomas, 

 &c., is true of all mankind. So far the case is made out; and Arch- 

 bishop Whately (who, endowed with a penetrating and active 

 rather than a patient and persevering intellect, seldom fails to cast 

 his sounding line to a greater depth than his predecessors, and when 

 he has done this, scarcely seems to care whether he reaches the 

 bottom or not) omitted to ask himself the further question, How 

 we come by the major premiss? It is not self-evident; nay, in all 

 cases of unwarranted generalization, it is not true. How, then, is 

 it arrived at? Necessarily either by induction or ratiocination; 

 and if by induction, then, on the Archbishop's principles, it is 

 by ratiocination still, that is, by a previous syllogism. This pre- 

 vious syllogism it is, therefore, necessary to construct. There is, in 

 the long run, only one possible construction : the real proof that 

 whatever is true of John, Peter, &c., is true of all mankind, can- 

 only be, that a different supposition would be inconsistent with the 

 uniformity which we know to exist in the course of nature. 

 "Whether there would be this inconsistency or not, may be a matter 

 of long and delicate inquiry; but unless there would, we have no 

 sufficient ground for the major of the inductive syllogism. It hence 

 appears, that if we throw the whole course of any inductive argu- 

 ment into a series of syllogisms, we shall arrive by more or fewer 

 steps at an ultimate syllogism, which will have for its major premiss 

 the principle, or axiom, of the uniformity of the course of nature. 

 Having reached this point, we have the whole field of induction 



