62. Mr. Mill himself indeed, notwithstanding that he slights Bacon's injunction to seek knowledge by proceeding from less general to more general laws, has given a very good reason why this is commonly necessary and wise. He says (ii. 526), "Before we attempt to explain deductively, from more general laws, any new class of phenomena, it is desirable to have gone as far as is practicable in ascertaining the empirical laws of these phenomena; so as to compare the results of deduction, not with one individual instance after another, but with general propositions expressive of the points of agreement which have been found among many instances. For," he adds with great justice, "if Newton had been obliged to verify the theory of gravitation, not by deducing from it Kepler's laws, but by deducing all the observed planetary positions which had served Kepler to establish those laws, the Newtonian theory would probably never have emerged from the state of an hypothesis." To which we may add, that it is certain, from the history of the subject, that in that case the hypothesis would never have been framed at all. X. _Mr. Mill's Hope from Deduction._--63. Mr. Mill expresses a hope of the efficacy of Deduction, rather than Induction, in promoting the future progress of Science; which hope, so far as the physical sciences are concerned, appears to me at variance with all the lessons of the history of those sciences. He says (i. 579), "that the advances henceforth to be expected even in physical, and still more in mental and social science, will be chiefly the result of deduction, is evident from the general considerations already adduced:" these considerations being, that the phenomena to be considered are very complex, and are the result of many known causes, of which we have to disentangle the results.