526 LOGIC OF THE MORAL SCIENCES. 



consist, as we are so often told that it did, in explod- 

 ing the vicious method pursued by the ancients of 

 flying to the highest generalizations first, and deducing 

 the middle principles from them ; since this is neither 

 a vicious nor an exploded, hut the universally accre- 

 dited method of modern science, and that to which 

 it owes its greatest triumphs. The error of ancient 

 speculation did not consist in making the largest gene- 

 ralizations first, but in making them without the aid 

 or warrant of rigorous inductive methods, and apply- 

 ing them deductively without the needful use of that 

 important part of the Deductive Method termed 

 Verification. 



The order in which truths of the various degrees 

 of generality should be ascertained, cannot, I appre- 

 hend, be prescribed by any unbending rule. I know 

 of no maxim which can be laid down on the subject, 

 but to obtain those first, in respect to which the con- 

 ditions of a real induction can be first and most 

 completely realized. Now, wherever our means of 

 investigation can reach causes, without stopping at the 

 empirical laws of the effects, the simplest cases, being 

 those in which fewest causes are simultaneously con- 

 cerned., will be most amenable to the inductive pro- 

 cess ; and these are the cases which elicit laws of the 

 greatest comprehensiveness. In every science, there- 

 fore, which has reached the stage at which it becomes 

 a science of causes, it will be usual as well as desir- 

 able, first to obtain the highest generalizations, and 

 then deduce the more special ones from them. Nor 

 can I discover any foundation for the Baconian maxim, 

 so much extolled by subsequent writers, except this : 

 That before we attempt to explain deductively from 

 more general laws any new class of phenomena, it is 

 desirable to have gone as far as is practicable in ascer- 



