228 OPERATIONS SUBSIDIARY TO INDUCTION. 



round us, and if we can see the object, it is well; if 

 not, we ask ourselves mentally what are the places in 

 which it may be hid, in order that we may there 

 search for it: and so on, until we imagine the place 

 where it really is. And here too we require to have 

 had a previous conception, or knowledge, of those 

 different places. As in this familiar process, so in 

 the philosophical operation which it illustrates, we 

 first endeavour to find the lost object or recognise the 

 common attribute, without conjecturally invoking the 

 aid of any previously acquired conception, or in other 

 words, of any hypothesis. Having failed in this, we 

 call upon our imagination for some hypothesis of a 

 possible place, or a possible point of resemblance, and 

 then look, to see whether the facts agree with the 

 conjecture. 



For such cases something more is required than a 

 mind accustomed to accurate observation and com- 

 parison. It must be a mind stored with general con- 

 ceptions, previously acquired, of the sorts which bear 

 affinity to the subject of the particular inquiry. And 

 much will also depend upon the natural strength and 

 acquired culture of what has been termed the scientific 

 imagination ; upon the faculty possessed of mentally 

 arranging known elements into new combinations 

 such as have not yet been observed in nature, though 

 not contradictory to any known laws. 



But the variety of intellectual habits, the purposes 

 which they serve, and the modes in which they may 

 be fostered and cultivated, are considerations belonging 

 to the Art of Education: a subject far wider than 

 Logic, and which the present treatise does not profess 

 to discuss. Here, therefore, the present chapter may 

 properly close. It constitutes a real digression from 

 the main purpose of this work ; to which nothing would 



