488 FALLACIES. 



Reasons having some reference to the canons of scientific investigation 

 may have been given or attempted to be given for several of these 

 propositions ; but to the multitude of those who parrot them, the 

 enumeratio siviflcx, ex his tantumtnodo qnce, prcesto stint fronuncians^ 

 is the sole evidence. Their fallacy consists in this, that they are induc- 

 tions without elimination ; there has been no real comparison of in- 

 stances, nor even ascertainment of the material circumstances in any 

 given instance. There is also the further en'or, of forgetting that such 

 generalizations, even if well established, cannot be ultimate truths, but 

 must be the results of other laws much more elementary ; and there- 

 fore 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 certainly as 

 laws of cause an effect, and error which is at the root of perhaps the 

 gi'eater 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 per- 

 tains to a well-ascertained empirical law ; but admit of refutation on 

 the empirical ground itself, without ascending 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 condi- 

 tions of that phenomenon have not yet occurred in human experience, 

 but does not prove that they may not occur to-moiTow. 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 mathematical 

 law, is perceptible : from which, therefore, something may be ration- 

 • ally presumed as to those terms of the series which are beyond the 

 limits of observation. But in negation there are no gradations, and no 

 series : the generalizations, therefore, which deny the possibility of any 

 given condition of Man and Society merely because it has never yet 

 been witnessed, cannot possess this higher degree of validity even as 

 empirical laws. What is more, the minuter examination which that 

 higher order of empirical laws presupposes, being applied to the sub- 

 ject matter of these, not only does not confirm but actually i-efutes 

 them. For in reality the past history of Man and Society, instead of 

 exhibiting them as immovable, unchangeable, incapable of ever pre- 

 senting new phenomena, shows theni on the contrary to be, in many 

 most important particulars, not only changeable, but actually undergo- 

 ing a progressive change. The empirical law, therefore, best expres- 

 sive, in most cases, of the genuine result of observation, would be, not 

 that such and such a phenomenon will continue unchanged, but that it 

 will continue to change in some particular manner. 



Accordingly, while almost all generalizations relating to Man and 

 Society, antecedent to the last fifty years, have eiTed in the gross way 

 which we have attempted to characterize, namely, by implicitly as- 

 suming that human nature and society will for ever revolve in the 

 same orbit, and exhibit essentially the same phenomena ; which is also 

 the vulgar eiTor of practicalism and common sense in our own day, 

 especially in Great Britain ; the more thinking minds of the present 



