IXDUCTIONS IMPROrERLY SO CALLED. 179 



revolving in tlio inside of anollier wheel, these wheels were creations 

 of their minds, added to the facts which tliey perceived by sense. 

 And even if the wheels were no longer supposed to be material, but 

 were reduced to mere geometrical spheres or circles, they were not 

 the less products of the mind alone — something additional to the facts 

 observed. The same is the case in all other discoveries. The facts 

 are known, but they are insulated and unconnected, till the discoverer 

 supplies from his own store a principle of connexion. The pearls are 

 there, but they will not hang together till some one provides the string." 



That a conception of the mind is introduced is indeed most certain, 

 and Mr. Whewell has rightly stated elsewhere, that to hit upon the 

 right conception is often a far more difficult, and more meritorious 

 achievement, than to prove its applicability when obtained. But a 

 conception implies, and coiTesponds to, something conceived ; and 

 although the conception itself is not in the facts, but in our mind, it 

 must be a conception of something which really is in the facts, some 

 property which they actually possess, and which they would manifest 

 to oar senses, if our senses were able to take cognizance of them. If, 

 for instance, the planet left behind it in space a visible track, and if the 

 observer were in a fixed position at such a distance above the plane of 

 the orbit as would enable him to see the whole of it at once, he would 

 see it to be an ellipse ; and if gifted with appropriate, instruments, and 

 powers of locomotion, he could prove it to be such by measuring its 

 different dimensions. These things are indeed impossible to us, but 

 not impossible in themselves j if they were so, Kepler's law could not 

 be true. 



Subject to the indispensable condition which has just been stated, I 

 cannot perceive that the part which conceptions have in the operation 

 of studying facts, has ever been overlooked or undefvalued as Mr. Whe- 

 well supposes it has. No one ever disputed that in order to reason 

 about anything we must have a conception of it; or that when we 

 include a multitude of things under a general expression, there is 

 implied in the expression a conception of something common to those 

 things. But it by no means follows that the conception is necessarily 

 pre-existent, or constructed by the mind out of its own materials. If 

 the facts are rightly classed under the conception, it is because there 

 is in the facts themselves something of which the conception is itself a 

 copy ; and which if we cannot directly perceive, it is because of the 

 litnitcd power of our organs, and not because the thing itself is not 

 there. The conception itself is often obtained by abstraction from the 

 very facts which, in Mr. Whewell's language, it is afterwards called in 

 to coimect. This, Mr. Whewell himself admits, when he observes, 

 (which he does on several occasions,) how great a service would be ren- 

 dered to the science of physiology by the philosopher " who should 

 establish a 2:)recise, tenable, and consistent conception of life."* Such 

 a conception can only be abstracted from the phenomena of life itself; 

 from the very facts which it is put in requisition to connect. In other 

 cases (no doubt) instead of collecting the ctjnception from the very 

 phenomena which we are attempting to colligate, we selec't it from 

 among those which have been, jireviously collected by abstraction fiom 

 other facts. In the instance of Kepler's laws, the latter was the case. 



* Philosophi/ of the Inductive Sciences, vol ii., p. 173. 



