52 PART I. THE PROBLEM. 



It is well known how scientists examine for months and years 

 the distinctive characteristics of a substance or the influences 

 which affect it, as is now the case with radium. Mill, on the 

 other hand, lauded to the skies the liberal use of hypotheses, 

 and left it to the art of education 1 , as distinct from logic, to 

 train the human mind to wrestle with the subtlety of nature 

 and prepare men for reading its secrets as if a fragmentary 

 methodology were a methodology at all. "In scientific investi- 

 gation," he writes, "as in all other works of human skill, the 

 way of obtaining the end is seen as it were instinctively by 

 some superior minds in some comparatively simple case, and 

 is then, by judicious generalisation, adapted to the variety of 

 complex cases." (Logic, bk. 6, ch. 1, 1.) With such an almost 

 superstitious regard for the value of instinct' 2 or intuition matters 

 are immensely simplified. Mill apparently never entered into 

 the spirit of indefatigable experimentalists like Faraday, to whom 

 it was "discomfort to reason upon data which admitted of 

 doubt" (Tyndall, Faraday as a Discoverer, 1868, p. 41), nor did 

 he consciously recognise that acknowledged scientific thinkers 

 are as much observers as they are generalisers. If we add 

 that Mill, agreeing in this with logicians generally, does not 

 provide us with an adequate analysis of such terms as object, 

 observation, hypothesis, generalisation, deduction, and verifica- 

 tion, we shall be convinced that he did not exhaust his subject. 

 In fact, an examination of Mill's Logic will show that, in the 

 main, it presents a philosophical discussion of certain inductive 

 principles rather than an attempt at constructing a compre- 

 hensive or systematic methodology. 



We have seen that scientific thinkers grow into the methods 

 which they happen to employ. It is consequently readily under- 



1 So Welton (Manual of Logic, vol. 2, p. Ill): "The means of training 

 the power of accurate observation belong to the general theory of education, 

 not to logic." 



2 Mill's point of view on this matter 'resembles so closely that of his 

 immediate predecessor Whewell that there appears to be adequate reason 

 for believing that Mill was strongly and fatally influenced by him. Since 

 Mill abstracted the substance of the material for the inductive part of his 

 Logic from Whewell (Autobiography, ch. 6), this is not astonishing. Whewell, 

 in his Novum Organum Renovatum, 1858, says little in justification of the 

 title of his work. "An art of discovery is not possible. At each step of 

 the investigation are needed invention, sagacity, genius elements which 

 no art can give." (P. v.) "Scientific discovery must ever depend upon some 

 happy thought, of which we cannot trace the origin ; some fortunate cast 

 of intellect, rising above all rules." (P. 44.) Nevertheless he presents some 

 scheme: "We have the following series of processes concerned in the for- 

 mation of science: (1) Decomposition of facts; (2) Measurement of pheno- 

 mena; (3) Explication of conceptions; (4) Induction of laws of phenomena: 

 (5) Induction of causes; (6) Application of inductive discoveries." (P. 143.) 

 It was his objective manner of facing facts, his want of interest in the 

 psychological processes which determine the arriving at a conclusion, that 

 hid from Whewell the art of discovery. Unhappily his influence over Mill 

 was paramount. Yet Mill recognised that "observation and experiment are 

 the ultimate basis of all knowledge". (Bk. 3, ch. 10, 8.) 



