412 FALLACIES. 



multitude of those who parrot them, the enumeratio 

 simplex, ex his tantummodo qua prcesto sunt pronun- 

 cians, is the sole evidence. Their fallacy consists in 

 this, that they are inductions without elimination; 

 there has been no real comparison of instances, nor 

 even ascertainment of the material circumstances in 

 any given instance. There is also the further error, of 

 forgetting that such generalizations, even if well esta- 

 blished, cannot x be ultimate truths, but must be the 

 results of other laws much more elementary; and 

 therefore could at most be admitted as empirical laws, 

 holding good within the limits of space and time by 

 which the particular observations that suggested the 

 generalization were bounded. 



This error of placing mere empirical laws, and 

 laws in which there is no direct evidence of causation, 

 on the same footing of certainty as laws of cause and 

 effect, an error which is at the root of perhaps the 

 greater number of bad inductions, is exemplified only 

 in its grossest form in the kind of generalizations to 

 which we have now referred. These, indeed, do not 

 possess even the degree of evidence which pertains to 

 a well-ascertained empirical law ; but admit of refuta- 

 tion on the empirical ground itself, without ascend- 

 ing to causal laws. A little reflection, indeed, will 

 show that mere negations can only form the ground 

 of the lowest and least valuable kind of empirical law. 

 A phenomenon has never been noticed ; this only 

 proves that the conditions of that phenomenon have 

 not yet occurred in human experience, but does not 

 prove that they may not occur to-morrow. There is 

 a higher kind of empirical law than this, namely, 

 when a phenomenon which is observed presents 

 within the limits of observation a series of gradations, 

 in which a regularity, or something like a mathema- 



