33. I have above (Art. 30) referred to the difficulty of getting
hold of the right conception, as a proof that induction is not a
mere juxtaposition of facts. Mr. Mill does not dispute that it is
often difficult to hit upon the right conception. He says (i. 360),
"that a conception of the mind is introduced, is indeed most certain,
and Mr. Whewell has rightly stated elsewhere, that to hit upon the
right conception is often a far more difficult, and more meritorious
achievement, than to prove its applicability when obtained. But," he
adds, "a conception implies and corresponds to something conceived; and
although the conception itself is not in the facts, but in our mind, it
must be a conception of something which really is in the facts." But to
this I reply, that its being really in the facts, does not help us at
all towards knowledge, if we cannot see it there. As the poet says,
It is the mind that sees: the outward eyes
Present the object, but the mind descries.
And this is true of the sight which produces knowledge, as well as of
the sight which produces pleasure and pain, which is referred to in the
Tale.
34. Mr. Mill puts his view, as opposed to mine, in various ways, but,
as will easily be understood, the answers which I have to offer are
in all cases nearly to the same effect. Thus, he says (ii. 216), "the
tardy development of several of the physical sciences, for example,
of Optics, Electricity, Magnetism, and the higher generalizations of
Chemistry, Mr. Whewell ascribes to the fact that mankind had not yet
possessed themselves of the idea of Polarity, that is, of opposite
properties in opposite directions. But what was there to suggest such
an idea, until by a separate examination of several of these different
branches of knowledge it was shown that the facts of each of them did
present, in some instances at least, the curious phenomena of opposite
properties in opposite directions?" But on this I observe, that these
facts did not, nor do yet, present this conception to ordinary minds.
The opposition of properties, and even the opposition of directions,
which are thus apprehended by profound cultivators of science, are
of an abstruse and recondite kind; and to conceive any one kind of
polarity in its proper generality, is a process which few persons
hitherto appear to have mastered; still less, have men in general
come to conceive of them all as modifications of a general notion of
Polarity. The description which I have given of Polarity in general,
"opposite properties in opposite directions," is of itself a very
imperfect account of the manner in which corresponding antitheses are
involved in the portions of science into which Polar relations enter.
In excuse of its imperfection, I may say, that I believe it is the
first attempt to define Polarity in general; but yet, the conception
of Polarity has certainly been strongly and effectively present in the
minds of many of the sagacious men who have discovered and unravelled
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