What we might suppose ourselves to be thus expressing is,--not the measure of rational expectation which might be held by minds sufficiently advanced to be able to classify and to draw conscious inferences, but,--the law according to which the primitive elements of belief were started and developed. Of course such an interpretation as this would be equivalent to quitting the province of Logic altogether and crossing over into that of Psychology; but it would be a perfectly valid line of enquiry. We should be attempting nothing more than a development of the researches of Fechner and his followers in psychophysical measurement. Only then we ought, like them, not to start with any analogy of a ballot box and its contents, but to base our enquiry on careful determination of the actual mental phenomena experienced. We know how the law has been determined in accordance with which the intensity of the feeling of _light_ varies with that of its objective source. We see how it is possible to measure the growth of _memory_ according to the number of repetitions of a sentence or a succession of mere syllables. In this latter case, for instance, we just try experiments, and determine how much better a man can remember any utterances after eight hearings than after seven.[3] Now this case furnishes a very close parallel to our supposed attempt to measure the increase of intensity of belief after repeated recurrence. That is, if it were possible to experiment in this order of mental phenomena, we ought simply to repeat a phenomenon a certain number of times and then ascertain by actual introspection or by some simple test, how fast the belief was increasing. Thus viewed the problem seems to me a hopeless one. The difficulties are serious enough, when we are trying to measure our simple sensations, of laying aside the effects of past training, and of attempting, as it were, to leave the mind open and passive to mere reception of stimuli. But if we were to attempt in this way to measure our belief these difficulties would become quite insuperable. We can no more divest ourselves of past training here than we can of intelligence or thought. I do not see how any one could possibly avoid classing the observed recurrences with others which he had experienced, and of being thus guided by special analogies and inductions instead of trusting solely to De Morgan's 'pure induction'. The same considerations tend to rebut another form of defence for the rule in question. It is urged, for instance, that we may at least resort to it in those cases in which we are in entire ignorance as to the number and nature of the antecedents. This is a position to which I can hardly conceive it possible that we should ever be reduced. However remote or exceptional may be the phenomenon selected we may yet bring it into relation with some accepted generalizations and thus draw our conclusions from these rather than from purely _à priori_ considerations.