378 INDUCTION. 



it provisionally, in the absence of means of more 

 searching investigation. But, for the accurate study 

 of nature, we require a surer and a more potent 

 instrument. 



It was, above all, by pointing out the insufficiency 

 of this rude and loose conception of Induction, that 

 Bacon merited the title so generally awarded to him, 

 of Founder of the Inductive Philosophy. The value 

 of his own contributions to a more philosophical 

 theory of the subject has certainly been exaggerated. 

 Although (along with some fundamental errors) his 

 writings contain, more or less fully developed, several 

 of the most important principles of the Inductive 

 Method, physical investigation has now far outgrown 

 the Baconian conception of Induction. Moral and 

 political inquiry, indeed, are as yet far behind that 

 conception. The current and approved modes of 

 reasoning on these subjects are still of the same 

 vicious description against which Bacon protested : 

 the method almost exclusively employed by those 

 professing to treat such matters inductively, is the 

 very inductio per enumerationem simplicem which he 

 condemns; and the experience, which we hear so 

 confidently appealed to by all sects, parties, and 

 interests, is still, in his own emphatic words, mera 

 palpatio. 



3. In order to a better understanding of the 

 problem which the logician must solve if he would 

 establish a scientific theory of Induction, let us com- 

 pare a few cases of incorrect inductions with others 

 which are acknowledged to be legitimate. Some, we 

 know, which were believed for centuries to be correct, 

 were nevertheless incorrect. That all swans are 

 white, cannot have been a good induction, since the 



