A Logic Of Facts

ustrated by the whole. It seems that every single fact contains many truths, but induction establishes their universality. A single brain contains all the truths of phrenology, a sin

tanding are applied to the greatest number of facts.' The basis of all science is such an extensive induction of particula

f human nature are learned from individual instances. It is the only possible way of learning them. * * When we

Political Repre

acy and monarchy is in one sense an affair of logic. Where electors are limited in franchise, and candidates restricted by property qualifica

d a sufficient induction; e.g., having once ascertained that an individual magnet

the double refraction of light. By accidentally combining two rhombs in different positions, Huygens discovered the polarisation of light. By accidentally looking through a prism of the same substance, and

gens made the experiment alluded to, without design, what he really observed was that the images appeared and disappeared alternately as he turned the rhomb round. His success depended on his clearness of thought, which enabled him to perform the intellectual analysis which would never have occurred to most men, however often they had combined two rhombs in different positions. Malus saw that in some positions the light reflected from the windows of the Louvre became dim. Another person would have attributed this to accident; he, however, considered the position of the prism, and the window; repeated the experiment often; and by virtue of the emin

Induct. Sciences,

vol. 2,

Bailey's Ess

cts, and that the novelty of the occasion attracts all credit to itself, and we lose sight of the generalisation below-the fruitful soil of exper

The discovery of de Montmorine was not, as at first sight appears, an inference from a single fact, but from an adjacent induction. It was a general truth, (known to the party who observed the bones) a truth in

any of Useful and E

Story of Lav

asoning than that from inductions. Lord Brougham informs us, that what Newton's Principia is to science, Locke's essay to metaphysics, Demosthenes in oratory, and Homer

chain of facts constituting the basis of a well-known induction, which comparative anatomy has many times verified. It is important to distinguish well the grounds from which accurate inferences, such as these in the cases before us, have really been adduced, in order to ascertain the grounds from which we should reason generally. It will be found that solid r

reasoned or inferred, though he has never thought of the general maxim-fire burns. He knows from memory that he has been burnt, and on this evidence believes, when he sees a candle, that if he puts his fingers into the flame of it, he will be burnt again. He believes this in every case which happens to arise; but without looking, in each instance, beyond the present case. He is not generalising; he is inferring a particular from pa

is not only the village matron who, when called to a consultation upon the case of a neighbour's child, pronounces on the evil and its remedy simply on the recollection and authority of what she accounts the similar case of her Lucy. We all, where we have no definite maxims to steer by, guide ourselves in the same way; and if we have an extensive experience, and retain its impressions strongly, we may acquire, in this manner, a very considerable power of accurate judgment, which we may be utterly incapable of justifying or of communicating to others. Among the higher order of practical intellects, there have been many of whom it was remarked how admirably they suited their means to their ends, without being able to give any sufficient reasons for what they did and applied, or seemed to apply, recondite principles which they were wholly unable to state. This is a natural consequenc

anual dexterity. Not long ago a Scotch manufacturer procured from England, at a high rate of wages, a working dyer, famous for producing very fine colours, with a view of teaching to his other workmen the same skill. The workman came; but his mode of proportioning the ingredients, in which lay the secret of the effects he produced, was by taking them up in handfuls while the common method was to weigh them. The manufacturer sought to make him turn his handling system into an equivalent weighing system, that the general principle of his peculiar mode of proceeding might be ascertai

e good decision. Lord Mansfield knew that if any reason were assigned it would be necessarily an afterthought, the judge being in fact guided by impressions from past experience, without the circuitous process of framing general principles from them, and that if he attempted to frame any such he would assuredly fail. Lord Mansfield, however, would not have doubted that a man of equal experience, who had also a mind stored with general propositions derived by legitimate induction from that experience, wou

Logic,

The stranger saw that the wooden leg was used to stand in the water with, while the other was high and dry. The apparent economy of the fact struck the Chinese; he saw in it stro

on insuffi

e an inve

proper base

, on points where the power of the superior could not be contested, and where his personal gratification was incompatible with just conduct to the subordinate, would necessarily have formed in his own mind a species of general rule; and from this rule he might safely draw an inference

rth, not merely from the circumstance of an apple dropping from a tree, but from seeing the tendency in stones, water, animals, and all things within our observation. The use of uncontrolled power, for the gratification of the possessor, without an equitable respect to others, is no more peculiar to m

o Obser

itical Representati

ence of this extrac

upon reference, the

hfully

profound learning and easy faith, who, by the dim light of legends and traditions, of conjectures and etymologies, sought to establish the antiquity of Sweden over half the earth. Gibbon annihilated this well laboured system of German antiquities, by a single fa

arrest the error at its birth. With regard to character we constantly infer from data, partial, limited, and doubtful. If most quarrelers were called into a court of Inquiry to confess the real grounds from which they have arrived at certain conclusions with regard to their neighbours, and often with regard to their friends, they would be at once overwhelmed with a conviction of the weakness of which they have been guilty. Upon analysing the miserable sources of opinions of which scandal and calumny are born, I have found it impossible to restrain astonishmen

t on the

ay on

ere is more worth among men than wisdom, and that we do well much oftener than we reason well. We seldom need judge charitably, did we always endeavour to judge justly. But we make a virtue of our own errors, and we often affect to condescend to pronounce an opinion, which

mine once, who never would have judged me or any other man unheard.'* With the sublime intensity of one who felt the infinite value of private justice, has Schiller delineated this spirit in the interview between Octavio and

to Mr.

e light a shorte

o. Whe

To the

believed th

n this t

calculated on

st be str

th the

heart-I may n

er that a man

ust me-and then

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ll at his o

never lied to

takes me for,

uke; ere yet t

d of him tha

om the world, an

rend this fine-s

ll!-I still a

dge myself, but

perchance, with p

t this Tertsky

e himself too

do, to snar

ar excusing?

hall convict hi

ace will I go

-policy? O ho

time, with you

the measure;

determined th

ake him. All r

every outle

ower, till at len

orce him in h

his prison. F

end well-it c

at thou wilt;

bear me on i

in pure betwi

y-light dawns,

ose-my father,

iccolomini, a

er. Incalculable is the evil we bring on ourselves and society, by supposing

him who e

t to

him who e

e perversity of human nature, he will also be his own Iago, and fee

this in conversation, with persons of unknown or doubtful exactitude, I take care to keep much below the truth in matters of censure, as anything of that kind may gain ten

and ascribe to others as crimes what exists only in their own surmises, that most popular cases may be stripped of half their pretensions without injuring their truth. Exaggeration is the vice of ignorance. Hal

n is a secretary or banker's clerk, who keeps an account between truth and error. When a lady once consulted Dr. Johnson on the degree of turpitude to be attached to her son's robbing an orchard-'Madam,' said Johnson, 'it all depends upon the weight of the boy. I remember my schoolfellow, Davy Garrick, who was always a little fellow, robbing a dozen orchards with impunity, but

person's deficiency of knowledge and mental cultivation, is generally his inability t

ptions, is well known to experienced cross-examiners; and still more is this the case when ignorant persons attempt to describe any natural phenomenon. "The simplest narrative," says Dugald Stewart, "of the most illiterate observer involves more or less of hypothesis nay, in general, it will be found that, in proportion to his ignorance, the greater is the number of conjectural principle involved in his statements. A village apothecary (and, if possible, in a still greate

pp. 408-9

s made upon a minister or a statesman, perhaps not in the public service, for something which he does not choose to defend or explain, resting his claims to the confidence of his countrymen upon his past exertions and his known character. Yet these assaults are unremittingly made upon him, and the people believe that so much noise could not be stirred up without som

with merits of feeling and judgment which he had as it were pledged himself to deny, and indeed achieved himself a position by disbelieving in, he becomes ashamed of the injustice exacted from him by his inexorable adherents, and forsakes his party when he should only forsake its errors. The case of Barnave, in the fir

tially a reflective people. The English conceive doubts, but the Scotch put them into queries. Before I had been in the country many hours I was struck by the inductive habits of the people. A very old and illiterate woman, to whom I put an indefinite question, eyed me deliberately from head to foot before she gave me an answer. Not in rudeness did she gaze, so much as in inquiry as to what could be my object. I spent more than a week in inquiring at places, where apartments were to be let, by which I acquired profitable acquaintance

the law, suppose a certain case should arise?-are questions he never condescends to answer. 'Bring the plaintiff into court, let the evidence be taken,

an, strongly urged me to move it. I, thinking it too important to emanate from a young man, looked about for a person of experience and known discretion to introduce it. After several had declined, Mr. Hetherington undertook it. The English politicians were composed of two parties, the friends of Mr. O'Connor, and the members of the National Hall. At that time they were pleased to be the antipodes of each other. No sooner had Mr. Hetherington spoken, he being the friend of Mr. Lovett, than his motion was supposed to come from Mr. Lovett's party, though they were utterly ignorant of its origination. Clamour's hundred tongues were loosened.

tings, showing, by weighty, quantitive evidence, the side to which they leaned, better not quote them as authorities at all, but give what expresses your own views on your own responsibility-indeed, in all cases, the quoter ought to stand prepared, if possible, to justify all he cites from another in argument. 'There is perhaps something weak and servile in our wishing to rely on, or draw assistance from, ancient opinions. Reaso

eck

gy signifies reasoning from resemblances subsisting between

tion of a law of nature must be

g general principles are, that the

m children to a parent, this is called reasoning by analogy. Or if it be argued that a nation is most beneficially governed by an assembly elected by the people, from the admitted fact that other associations for a common purpose, such as joint stock companies, are best managed by a committee chosen by the parties interested; this, too, is an argument from analogy in the preceding sense, because its foundation is, not that a nation is like a joint stock company, or Parliament like a board of directors, but that Parliament stands in the same relation to the nation in which a board of directors stands to a joint stock company. Now, in an argument of this nature, there is no inherent inferiority of conclusiveness like other arguments from resemblance, it may amount to nothing, or it may be a perfect and conclusive induction. The circumstance in which the two cases resemble, may be capab

pp. 97-

nature of water, and of reducing it to its constituent elements. Indeed the whole history of this very important and useful department of human knowledge exhibits very striking and incontestable proofs how much of the art owed its existence to mere hints and conjectures, founded, in many cases, upon very slight resemblances or analogies.*. The chief province of analogy is confined to that of suggestion. Analogies are the great hinters of experiments. They illu

ofessor Matteuoci, which seem to prove that though the analogies between electrici

s Logic,

Illus.

oist No.