406 



CHAPTER V. 

 FALLACIES OF GENERALIZATION. 



$ 1. THE class of Fallacies of which we are now 

 to speak, is the most extensive of all ; embracing a 

 greater number and variety of unfounded inferences 

 than any of the other classes, and which it is even 

 more difficult to reduce to sub-classes or species. If 

 the attempt made in the preceding books to define the 

 principles of well-grounded generalization has been 

 successful, all generalizations not conformable to those 

 principles might, in a certain sense, be brought under 

 the present class : when however the rules are known 

 and kept in view, but a casual lapse committed in the 

 application of them, this is a blunder, not a fallacy. 

 To entitle an error of generalization to the latter 

 epithet, it must be committed on principle ; there 

 must lie in it some erroneous general conception of 

 the inductive process ; the legitimate mode of drawing 

 conclusions from observation and experiment must be 

 fundamentally misconceived. 



Without attempting anything so chimerical as an 

 exhaustive classification of all the misconceptions 

 which can exist on the subject, let us content our- 

 selves with noting, among the cautions which might 

 >e suggested, a few of the most useful and needful. 



2. In the first place, there are certain kinds of 

 ;eneralization which, if the principles already laid 

 iown be correct, must be groundless : experience can- 

 lot afford the necessary conditions for establishing 

 '.hem by a correct induction. Such, for instance, are 



