16 ON THE RELATION OF 



Moreover, such is the complexity of the influences affect- 

 ing the formation both of character in general and of the 

 mental condition at any given moment, that this same 

 kind of induction necessarily plays a leading part in the 

 investigation of psychological processes. In fact, in 

 ascribing to ourselves free-will, that is, full power to act 

 as we please, without being subject to a stern inevitable 

 law of causality, we deny in toto the possibility of re- 

 ferring at least one of the ways in which our mental 

 activity expresses itself to a rigorous law. 



We might possibly, in opposition to logical induction 

 which reduces a question to clearly-defined universal 

 propositions, call this kind of reasoning cesthetic induc- 

 tion, because it is most conspicuous in the higher class of 

 works of art. It is an essential part of an artist's talent 

 to reproduce by words, by form, by colour, or by music, 

 tlie external indications of a character or a state of mind, 

 and by a kind of instinctive intuition, uncontrolled by 

 any definable rule, to seize the necessary steps by which 

 we pass from one mood to another. If we do find that 

 the artist has consciously worked after general rules and 

 abstractions, we think his work poor and commonplace, 

 and cease to admire. On the contrary, the works of 

 great artists bring before us characters and moods with 

 such a lifelikeness, with such a wealth of individual traits 

 and such an overwhelming conviction of truth, that they 

 almost seem to be more real than the reality itself, because 

 all disturbing influences are eliminated. 



Now if, after these reflections, we proceed to review 

 the different sciences, and to classify them according to 

 the method by which they must arrive at their results, 

 we are brought face to face with a generic difference 

 between the natural and the moral sciences. The natural 

 sciences are for the most part in a position to reduce their 

 inductions to sharply-defined general rules and principles ; 



