NAMING. 



435 



minda make almost all their Induc- 

 tions, and that we all do so in the 

 cases in which familiar experience 

 forces our conclusions upon us with- 

 out any active process of inquiry on 

 our part, and in which the belief or 

 expectation follows the suggestion of 

 the evidence with the promptitude 

 and certainty of an instinct.* 



§ 3. But though inference of an in- 

 ductive character is possible without 

 the use of signs, it could never, with- 

 out them, be carried much beyond the 

 very simple cases which we have just 

 described, and which form, in all pro- 

 bability, the limit of the reasonings 

 of those animals to whom conventional 

 language is unknown. Without lan- 

 guage, or something equivalent to it, 

 there could only be as much reasoning 

 from experience as can take place 

 without the aid of general proposi- 

 tions. Now, though in strictness we 

 may reason from past experience to a 

 fresh individual case without the in- 

 termediate stage of a general propo- 

 sition, yet without general proposi- 

 tions we should seldom remember 

 what past experience we have had, 

 and scarcely ever what conclusions 

 that experience will warrant. The 

 division of the inductive process into 

 two parts, the first ascertaining what 

 is a m.ark of the given fact, the second 

 whether in the new case that mark 

 exists, is natural, and scientifically 

 indispensable. It is, indeed, in a 

 majority of cases, rendered necessary 

 by mere distance of time. The ex- 

 perience by which we are to guide our 

 judgments may be other people's ex- 

 perience, little of which can be com- 

 municated to us otherwise than by 



* Mr. Bailey agrees with me in thinking 

 that whenever " from something actually 

 present to my senses, conjoined with past 

 experience, 1 feel satisfied that something 

 has happened, or will happen, or is hap- 

 pening beyi aid the sphere of my personal 

 observation," I may with strirt propriety 

 be said to reason, and of course to reason 

 inductively, for demonstrative reasoning 

 is excluded by the circumstances of the 

 case. {The Theory of Reasoning, 2nd ed., 

 p. 27.) 



language : when It Is our own, it Is 

 generally experience long past ; unless, 

 therefore, it were recorded by means 

 of artificial signs, little of it (except in 

 cases involving our intenser sensations 

 or emotions, or the subjects of our daily 

 and hourly contemplation) would be 

 retained in the memory. It is hardly 

 necessary to add, that when the induc- 

 tive inference is of any but the most 

 direct and obvious nature — when it re- 

 quires several observations or experi- 

 ments in varymg circumstances, and 

 the comparison of one of these with 

 another — it is impossible to proceed 

 a step without the artificial memory 

 which words bestow. Without words, 

 we should, if we had often seen A 

 and B in immediate and obvious con- 

 junction, expect B whenever we saw 

 A ; but to discover their conjunction 

 when not obvious, or to determine 

 whether it is really constant or only 

 casual, and whether there is reason to 

 expect it under any given change of 

 circumstances, is a process far too 

 complex to be performed without some 

 contrivance to make our remembrance 

 of our own mental operations accu- 

 rate. Now, language is such a con- 

 trivance. When that instrument is 

 called to our aid, the difficulty is re- 

 duced to that of making our remem- 

 brance of the meaning of words accu- 

 rate. This being secured, whatever 

 passes through our minds may be 

 remembered accurately by putting it 

 carefully into words, and committing 

 the words either to writing or to me- 

 mory. 



The function of Naming, and par- 

 ticularly of General Names, in Induc- 

 tion may be recapitulated as follows. 

 Every inductive inference which is 

 good at all is good for a whole class 

 of cases ; and, that the inference may 

 have any better warrant of its correct- 

 ness than the mere clinging together 

 of two ideas, a process of experimen- 

 tation and comparison is necessary, 

 in which the whole class of cases must 

 be brought to view, and some uni- 

 formity in the course of nature evolved 

 and ascertained, since the existence 



