10. Perhaps some persons may be inclined to say that this difference of opinion, as to the extent of meaning which is to be given to the term _Induction_, is a question merely of words; a matter of definition only. This is a mode in which men in our time often seem inclined to dispose of philosophical questions; thus evading the task of forming an opinion upon such questions, while they retain the air of looking at the subject from a more comprehensive point of view. But as I have elsewhere said, such questions of definition are never questions of definition merely. A proposition is always implied along with the definition; and the truth of the proposition depends upon the settlement of the definition. This is the case in the present instance. We are speaking of _Induction_, and we mean that kind of Induction by which the sciences now existing among men have been constructed. On this account it is, that we cannot include, in the meaning of the term, mere practical tendencies or practical habits; for science is not constructed of these. No accumulation of these would make up any of the acknowledged sciences. The elements of such sciences are something of a kind different from practical habits. The elements of such sciences are principles which we _know_; truths which can be contemplated as being _true_. Practical habits, practical skill, instincts and the like, appear in action, and in action only. Such endowments or acquirements show themselves when the occasion for action arrives, and then, show themselves in the act; without being put, or being capable of being put, in the form of truths contemplated by the intellect. But the elements and materials of Science are necessary truths contemplated by the intellect. It is by consisting of such elements and such materials, that Science _is_ Science. Hence a use of the term _Induction_ which requires us to obliterate this distinction, must make it impossible for us to arrive at any consistent and intelligible view of the nature of Science, and of the mental process by which Sciences come into being. We must, for the purpose which Mr. Mill and I have in common, retain his larger and more philosophical definition of Induction,--that it is the inference of a more general proposition from less general ones.