in making deductions is great caution and continual reminder to be very
careful, for our work here still lacks the proper material. In addition
we have to bear in mind that induction is intimately related to analogy.
According to Lipps[140] the ground of one is the ground of the other;
they both rest on the same foundation. “If I am still in doubt whether
the fact on which a moment ago I depended as the sufficient condition
for a judgment may still be so regarded, the induction is uncertain. It
is unjustified when I take for sufficiently valid something that as a
matter of fact ought not to be so taken.” If we bear in mind how much we
are warned against the use of analogy, how it is expressly excluded in
the application of certain criminal laws, and how dangerous the use of
every analogy is, we must be convinced that the use for our cases of
both induction and analogy, is always menace. We have at the same time
to bear in mind how much use we actually make of both; even our general
rules--e.g., concerning false testimony,--bias, revertibility, special
inclinations, etc.--and our doctrines concerning the composition and
indirection of testimony, even our rules concerning the value of
witnesses and confessions, all these depend upon induction and analogy.
We pass by their use in every trial from case to case. A means so
frequently and universally used must, however, be altogether reliable,
or be handled with the greatest care. As it is not the first it must be
handled in the second way.
We have yet to indicate the various ways in which induction may be used.
Fick has already called attention to the astounding question concluding
Mill’s system of logic: Why, in many cases, is a single example
sufficient to complete induction, while in other cases myriads of
unanimous instances admitting of no single known or suspected exception,
make only a small step toward the establishment of a generally valid
judgment?
This question is of enormous significance in criminal cases because it
is not easy to determine in any particular trial whether we have to deal
with a situation of the first sort where a single example is evidential,
or a situation of the second sort where a great many examples fail to be
evidential. On this difficulty great mistakes depend, particularly
mistakes of substitution of the first for the second. We are satisfied
in such cases with a few examples and suppose ourselves to have proved
the case although nothing whatever has been established.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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