374 INDUCTION. 



It was not to be expected that in the case of this 

 axiom, any more than of other axioms, there should 

 be unanimity among philosophers with respect to the 

 grounds upon which it is to be received as true. I 

 have already stated that I regard it as itself a genera- 

 lization from experience. Others hold it to be a 

 principle which, antecedently to any verification by 

 experience, we are compelled by the constitution of 

 our thinking faculty to assume as true. Having so 

 recently, and at so much length, combated a similar 

 doctrine as applied to the axioms of mathematics, by 

 arguments which are in a great measure applicable to 

 the present case, I shall defer the more particular 

 discussion of this controverted point in regard to the 



laid out in syllogisms, an4 every instance of inference from experi- 

 ence exhibited as the conclusion of a ratiocination, except one ; but 

 that one, unhappily, includes all the rest. Whence came the 

 universal major ? What proves to us that nature is governed by 

 general laws ? Where are the premisses of the syllogism of which 

 that is the conclusion ? Here, at least, is a case of induction which 

 cannot be resolved into syllogism. 



And undoubtedly it would be the ideal perfection of Inductive 

 Philosophy if all other general truths could be exhibited as con- 

 clusions deduced from that widest generalization of all. But such 

 a mode of presenting them, however useful in giving coherence and 

 systematic unity to our thoughts, would be an inversion of the real 

 order of proof. This great generalization must itself have been 

 founded on prior generalizations: the obscurer laws of nature were 

 discovered by means of it, but the more obvious ones must have 

 been understood and assented to as general truths before it was ever 

 heard of. We should never have dared to affirm that all pheno- 

 mena take place according to general laws, if we had not first arrived, 

 in the case of a great multitude of phenomena, at some knowledge 

 of the laws themselves; which could be done no otherwise than by 

 induction. Archbishop Whately's theory, therefore, implying, as it 

 does, the consequence that we never could have had a single well- 

 grounded induction unless we had already reached that highest 

 generalization, must, I conceive, be regarded as untenable. 



