A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and InductiveMill, John Stuart
PhilosophyPhilosophy
A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
Mill, John Stuart
Knowledge, Theory of; Logic; Science -- Methodology
When, however, we thus add syllogism to syllogism, we are really adding
induction to induction. Two separate inductions must have taken place to
render this chain of inference possible; inductions founded, probably, on
different sets of individual instances, but which converge in their
results, so that the instance which is the subject of inquiry comes within
the range of them both. The record of these inductions is contained in the
majors of the two syllogisms. First, we, or others for us, have examined
various objects which yielded under the given circumstances a dark spot
with the given property, and found that they possessed the properties
connoted by the word arsenic; they were metallic, volatile, their vapor
had a smell of garlic, and so forth. Next, we, or others for us, have
examined various specimens which possessed this metallic and volatile
character, whose vapor had this smell, etc., and have invariably found
that they were poisonous. The first observation we judge that we may
extend to all substances whatever which yield that particular kind of dark
spot; the second, to all metallic and volatile substances resembling those
we examined; and consequently, not to those only which are seen to be
such, but to those which are concluded to be such by the prior induction.
The substance before us is only seen to come within one of these
inductions; but by means of this one, it is brought within the other. We
are still, as before, concluding from particulars to particulars; but we
are now concluding from particulars observed, to other particulars which
are not, as in the simple case, _seen_ to resemble them in material
points, but _inferred_ to do so, because resembling them in something
else, which we have been led by quite a different set of instances to
consider as a mark of the former resemblance.
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