one.

But it is not my touch in this case, nor my sight in the other, which is deceived; the deception, whether durable or only momentary, is in my judgment. From my senses I have only the sensations, and those are genuine. Being accustomed to have those or similar sensations when, and only when, a certain arrangement of outward objects is present to my organs, I have the habit of instantly, when I experience the sensations, inferring the existence of that state of outward things. This habit has become so powerful, that the inference, performed with the speed and certainty of an instinct, is confounded with intuitive perceptions. When it is correct, I am unconscious that it ever needed proof; even when I know it to be incorrect, I cannot, without considerable effort, abstain from making it. In order to be aware that it is not made by instinct but by an acquired habit, I am obliged to reflect on the slow process through which I learnt to judge by the eye of many things which I now appear to perceive directly by sight; and on the reverse operation performed by persons learning to draw, who with difficulty and labour divest themselves of their acquired perceptions, and learn afresh to see things as they appear to the eye.

tire phenomenon. And hence, among other consequences, follows the seeming paradox that a general proposition collected from particulars is often more certainly true than any one of the particular propositions from which, by an act of induction, it was inferred. For each of those particular (or rather singular) propositions involved an inference from the impression on the senses to the fact which caused that impression; and this inference may have been erroneous in any one of the instances, but cannot well have been erroneous in all of them, provided their number was sufficient to eliminate chance. The conclusion, therefore, that is, the general proposition, may deserve more complete reliance than it would be safe to repose in any one of the inductive premises.

The logic of observation, then, consists solely in a correct discrimination between that, in a result of observation, which has really been perceived, and that which is an inference from the perception. Whatever portion is inference, is amenable to the rules of induction already treated of, and requires no further notice here: the question for us in this place is, when all which is inference is taken away, what remains. There remains, in the first place, the mind's own feelings or states of consciousness, namely, its outward feelings or sensations, and its inward feelings-its thoughts, emotions, and volitions. Whether anything else remains, or all else is inference from this; whether the mind is capable of directly perceiving or apprehending anything except states of its own consciousness-is a problem of metaphysics not to be dis

It would be easy to prolong these illustrations, were there any need to expatiate on a topic so copiously exemplified in various popular works. From the examples already given, it is seen sufficiently that the individual facts from which we collect our inductive generalisations are scarcely ever obtained by observation alone. Observation extends only to the sen-cussed in this place. But after exsations by which we recognise objects; but the propositions which we make use of, either in science or in common life, relate mostly to the objects themselves. In every act of what is called observation, there is at least one inference-from the sensations to the presence of the object; from the marks or diagnostics to the en

cluding all questions on which metaphysicians differ, it remains true, that for most purposes the discrimination we are called upon practically to exercise is that between sensations or other feelings, of our own or of other people, and inferences drawn from them. And on the theory of Observation this is all which seems necessary

to be said for the purposes of the | more than that one observation; withpresent work.

out assimilating it to other phenomena already observed and classified. But this identification of an object—this recognition of it as possessing certain known characteristics-has never been confounded with Induction. It is an operation which precedes all induction, and supplies it with its materials. It is a perception of resemblances, obtained by comparison.

§3. If, in the simplest observation, or in what passes for such, there is a large part which is not observation but something else, so in the simplest description of an observation, there is, and must always be, much more asserted than is contained in the perception itself. We cannot describe a fact without implying more than the These resemblances are not always fact. The perception is only of one apprehended directly, by merely comindividual thing; but to describe it paring the object observed with some is to affirm a connection between it other present object, or with our reand every other thing which is either collection of an object which is absent. denoted or connoted by any of the They are often ascertained through terms used. To begin with an ex-intermediate marks, that is, deducample, than which none can be con- tively. In describing some new kind ceived more elementary: I have a of animal, suppose me to say that it sensation of sight, and I endeavour measures ten feet in length, from the to describe it by saying that I see forehead to the extremity of the tail. something white. In saying this, II did not ascertain this by the unas. do not solely affirm my sensation; Isisted eye. I had a two-foot rule also class it. I assert a resemblance which I applied to the object, and, between the thing I see, and all things which I and others are accustomed to call white. I assert that it resembles them in the circumstance in which they all resemble one another, in that which is the ground of their being called by the name. This is not merely one way of describing an observation, but the only way. If I would either register my observation for my own future use, or make it known for the benefit of others, I must assert a resemblance between the fact which I have observed and something else. It is inherent in a description, to be the statement of a resemblance, or resemblances.

We thus see that it is impossible to express in words any result of observation without performing an act possessing what Dr. Whewell considers to be characteristic of Induction. There is always something introduced which was not included in the observation itself; some conception common to the phenomenon with other phenomena to which it is compared. An observation cannot be spoken of in language at all without declaring

as we commonly say, measured it; an operation which was not wholly manual, but partly also mathematical, involving the two propositions, Five times two is ten, and Things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another. Hence, the fact that the animal is ten feet long is not an immediate perception, but a conclusion from reasoning; the minor premises alone being furnished by observation of the object. Nevertheless, this is called an observation, or a description of the animal, not an induction respecting it.

To pass at once from a very simple to a very complex example; I affirm that the earth is globular. The assertion is not grounded on direct perception; for the figure of the earth cannot, by us, be directly perceived, though the assertion would not be true unless circumstances could be supposed under which its truth could be so perceived. That the form of the earth is globular is inferred from certain marks, as, for instance, from this, that its shadow thrown upon the moon is circular; or this, that on the sea, or

any extensive plain, our horizon is | According to Dr. Whewell, however, always a circle; either of which this process of guessing and verifying marks is incompatible with any other our guesses is not only induction, but than a globular form. I assert fur- the whole of induction; no other exther, that the earth is that particular position can be given of that logical kind of globe which is termed an operation. That he is wrong in the oblate spheroid, because it is found latter assertion, the whole of the preby measurement in the direction of ceding Book has, I hope, sufficiently the meridian that the length on the proved; and that the process by surface of the earth which subtends a which the ellipticity of the planetary given angle at its centre diminishes orbits was ascertained is not inducas we recede from the equator and tion at all was attempted to be shown approach the poles. But these pro- in the second chapter of the same positions, that the earth is globular, Book.* We are now, however, preand that it is an oblate spheroid, pared to go more into the heart of assert, each of them, an individual the matter than at that earlier period fact, in its own nature capable of of our inquiry, and to show, not being perceived by the senses when merely what the operation in question the requisite organs and the necessary is not, but what it is. position are supposed, and only not actually perceived because those organs and that position are wanting. This identification of the earth, first as a globe, and next as an oblate spheroid, which, if the fact could have been seen, would have been called a description of the figure of the earth, may without impropriety be so called when, instead of being seen, it is inferred. But we could not without impropriety call either of these assertions an induction from facts respecting the earth. They are not general propositions collected from particular facts, but particular facts deduced from general propositions. They are conclusions obtained deductively from premises originating in induction; but of these premises some were not obtained by observation of the earth, nor had any peculiar reference to it.

If, then, the truth respecting the figure of the earth is not an induction, why should the truth respecting the figure of the earth's orbit be so? The two cases only differ in this, that the form of the orbit was not, like the form of the earth itself, deduced by ratiocination from facts which were marks of ellipticity, but was got at by boldly guessing that the path was an ellipse, and finding afterwards, on examination, that the observations were in harmony with the hypothesis.

§ 4. We observed, in the second chapter, that the proposition "the earth moves in an ellipse," so far as it only serves for the colligation or connecting together of actual observations, (that is, as it only affirms that the observed positions of the earth may be correctly represented by as many points in the circumference of an imaginary ellipse, ) is not an induction, but a description; it is an induction only when it affirms that the intermediate positions, of which there has been no direct observation, would be found to correspond to the remaining points of the same elliptic circumference. Now, though this real induction is one thing and the description another, we are in a very different condition for making the induction before we have obtained the description, and after it. For inasmuch as the description, like all other descriptions, contains the assertion of a resemblance between the phenome. non described and something else; in pointing out something which the series of observed places of a planet resembles, it points out something in which the several places themselves agree. If the series of places correspond to as many points of an ellipse,

There are, then, such things as general conceptions, or conceptions by means of which we can think generally; and when we form a set of phenomena into a class, that is, when we compare them with one another to ascertain in what they agree, some general conception is implied in this mental operation. And inasmuch as such a comparison is a necessary preliminary to Induction, it is most true that Induction could not go on without general conceptions.

the individuals denoted by the name | believe to be, common to the whole agree, and of no others, (which is the class.* doctrine of Locke, Brown, and the Conceptualists ;) or whether it be the idea of some one of those individuals, clothed in its individualising peculiarities, but with the accompanying knowledge that those peculiarities are not properties of the class, (which is the doctrine of Berkeley, Mr. Bailey,* and the modern Nominalists ;) or whether (as held by Mr. James Mill) the idea of the class is that of a miscellaneous assemblage of individuals belonging to the class; or whether, finally, it be any one or any other of all these, according to the accidental circumstances of the case; certain it is, that some idea or mental conception is suggested by a general name, whenever we either hear it or employ | it with consciousness of a meaning. And this, which we may call if we please a general idea, represents in our minds the whole class of things to which the name is applied. When ever we think or reason concerning the class, we do so by means of this idea. And the voluntary power which the mind has of attending to one part of what is present to it at any moment, and neglecting another part, enables us to keep our reasonings and conclusions respecting the class unaffected by anything in the idea or mental image which is not really, or at least which we do not really

Mr. Bailey has given the best statement of this theory. "The general name," he says, "raises up the image sometimes of sometimes of another, not unfrequently of many individuals in succession; and it sometimes suggests an image made up of elements from several different objects, by a latent process of which I am not conscious" (Letters on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 1st Series, Letter 22). But Mr. Bailey must allow that we carry on inductions and ratiocinations respecting the class by means of this idea or conception of some one individual in it. This is all I require. The name of a class calls up some idea through which we can, to all intents and purposes, think of the class as such, and not solely of an individual member of it.

one individual of the class formerly seen,

§ 2. But it does not therefore follow that these general conceptions must have existed in the mind previously to the comparison. It is not a law of our intellect, that, in comparing things with each other and taking note of their agreement, we merely recognise as realised in the outward world something that we already had in our minds. The conception originally found its way to us as the result of such a comparison. It was obtained (in metaphysical phrase) by abstraction from individual things. These things may be things which we perceived or thought of on former occasions, but they may also be the things which we are perceiving or thinking of on the very occasion. When Kepler compared the observed places of the planet Mars, and found that they agreed in being points of an elliptic circumference, he applied a general conception which was already in his mind, having been derived from his former experience. But this is by no means universally the case. When we compare several objects and find them to agree in being white, or when we compare the various species of ruminating animals

* I have entered rather fully into this question in chap. xvii. of An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, headed "The Doctrine of Concepts or General Notions," which contains my last views on the subject.