GROUND OF INDUCTION. 



201 



order of the universe ; namely, that 

 there are such things in nature as 

 parallel cases ; that what happens 

 once will, under a sufiicient degree of 

 similarity of circumstances, happen 

 again, and not only again, but as often 

 as the san>e circumstances recur. 

 This, I say, is an assumption involved 

 in every case of induction. And if 

 we consult the actual course of nature, 

 we find that the assumption is war- 

 ranted. The universe, so far as known 

 to us, is so constituted, that whatever 

 is true in any one case, is true in all 

 cases of a certain description ; the 

 only difficulty is, to find what de- 

 scription. , 



This universal fact, which is our 

 warrant for all inferences from ex- 

 perience, has been described by dif- 

 ferent philosophers in difiFerent forms 

 of language ; that the course of nature 

 is uniform ; that the universe is gov- 

 erned by general laws ; and the like. 

 One of the most usual of those modes 

 of expression, but also one of the most 

 inadequate, is that which has been 

 brought into familiar use by the 

 metaphysicians of the school of Reid 

 and Stewart. The disposition of the 

 human mind to generalise from ex- 

 perience, — a propensity considered by 

 these philosophers as an instinct of our 

 nature, — they usually describe under 

 some such name as " our intuitive con- 

 viction that the future will resemble 

 the past." Now it has been well 

 pointed out by Mr. Bailey,* that 

 (whether the tendency be or not an 

 original and ultimate element of our 

 nature) Time, in its modifications of 

 past, present, and future, has no con- 

 cern either with the belief itself, or 

 with the grounds of it. We believe 

 that fire will burn to-morrow, because 

 it burned to-day and yesterday ; but 

 we believe, on precisely the same 

 grounds, that it burned before we were 

 born, and that it burns this very day 

 in Cochin-China. It is not from the 

 past to the future, as past and future, 

 that we infer, but from the known to 



* Euayt on the Purtuit qf TrvXh. 



the unknown ; from facta observed to 

 facts unobserved ; from what we have 

 perceived, or been directly conscious 

 of, to what has not come within our 

 experience. In this last predicament 

 is the whole region of the future ; but 

 also the vastly greater portion of the 

 present and of the past. 



Whatever be the most proper mode 

 of expressing it, the proposition that 

 the course of nature is uniform is 

 the fundamental principle, or general 

 axiom, of Induction. It would yet 

 be a great error to offer this large 

 generalisation as any explanation of 

 the inductive process. On the con- 

 trary, I hold it to be itst If an instance 

 of induction, and induction by no 

 means of the most obvious kind. Far 

 from being the first induction we 

 make, it is one of the last, or at all 

 events one of those wliich are latest 

 in attaining strict philosophical accu- 

 racy. As a general maxim, indeed, it 

 has scarcely entered into the minds 

 of any but philosophers ; nor even by 

 them, as we shall have many oppor- 

 tunities of remarking, have its extent 

 and limits been always very justly 

 conceived. The truth is, that this 

 great generalisation is itself founded 

 on prior generalisations. The obscurer 

 laws of nature were discovered by 

 means of it, but the more obvious 

 ones must have been understood and 

 assented to as general truths before it 

 was ever heard of. We shotdd never 

 have thought of affirming that all 

 phenomena take place according to 

 general laws, if we had not first 

 arrived, in the case of a great multi- 

 tude of phenomena, at some know- 

 ledge of the laws themselves ; which 

 could be done no otherwise than by 

 induction. In what sense, then, can 

 a principle, which is so far from being 

 our earliest induction, be regarded as 

 our warrant for all the others ? In 

 the only sense in which (as we have 

 already seen) the general propositions 

 which we place at the head of our 

 reasonings when we throw them into 

 syllogisms ever really contribute to 

 their validity. As Archbishop Whately 



