OBSERVATION AND DESCRIPTION. 209 



guessing and verifying our guesses induction, but it is 

 the whole of induction: no other exposition can be 

 given of that logical operation. That he is wrong in 

 the latter assertion, the whole of the preceding book 

 has, I hope, sufficiently proved; and that even the 

 former of the two contains a large dose of error with 

 but a small portion of truth, was attempted to be 

 shown in the second chapter of the same book*. We 

 are now, however, prepared to go more into the heart 

 of the question than at that earlier period of our 

 inquiry, and a few words will, I think, suffice to dispel 



all remaining obscurity. 







4. We observed, in the second chapter, that the 

 proposition " the earth moves in an ellipse," so far as 

 it only serves for the colligation or connecting toge- 

 ther of actual observations, (that is, as it only affirms 

 that the observed positions of the earth may be cor- 

 rectly represented by as many points in the circum- 

 ference of an imaginary ellipse,) is not an induction, 

 but a description: it is an induction only when it 

 affirms that the intermediate positions, of which there 

 has been no direct observation, would be found to 

 correspond to the remaining points of the same 

 elliptic circumference. Now, although this real in- 

 duction is one thing, and the description another, we 

 are in a very different condition for making the induc- 

 tion after we have obtained the description, and before 

 it. For inasmuch as the description, like all other 

 descriptions, contains the assertion of a resemblance 

 between the phenomenon described and something 

 else; in pointing out something which the series of 

 observed places of a planet resembles, it points out 



* Supra, vol. i., pp. 356369. 

 VOL. II. P 



