Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel's Philosophy, and Especially of His Logic
Georg Hegel · en
kinds of real things in their completeness, and not as viewed in
some definite aspect, induction and deduction must go hand in hand
and help each other at every step: and if they, as they must, have
recourse to experiment and observation, it will be at first in a very
unsatisfactory and tentative way.
Such is the way the contrast between the simplicity belonging to an
artificial method dealing with picked instances, and the complexity
that real concrete organic nature demands, presented itself to J. S.
Mill as he advanced in his inquiry. The only complete method for the
investigation of unsophisticated nature, not yet mapped out and defined
in general departments, is the deductive-inductive method in which
induction and deduction separately have a subordinate place,--using
induction in the narrow sense the term has been hitherto allowed to
bear. And that sense, it may be added, is, as in some passages of
Aristotle, little else than a reverse of syllogism, or to speak more
accurately, it is a syllogism which goes up to generals instead of
descending from them. It is like the syllogistic deduction formal and
abstract in character. The (deductive) syllogism assumes the existence
of major premises--of general propositions which in the last resort,
if they are real bases, must be primary and true, or self-evident
facts. But a critic, like Mill, had little difficulty in showing
that a general truth rests upon and presupposes the very particular
conclusions which it is used to establish. Unless every singular is
true, the universal which embraces or unifies them cannot really be
true. Therefore the conclusion is really implied and presupposed in
the principles of its premises. But, unfortunately for the application
and supposed sequel of this not unjust remark, a similar remark may
be made on the ordinary exposition of the inductive method. Induction,
it is said, infers from or on a basis of single facts. But if a single
truth is really, i. e. unconditionally true, it is indistinguishable
from the universal. If it is really true once, it is true for ever.
The assertion of the individual proposition as true, if it can be
supported--(and unless it be true, what basis can it afford for
the general conclusion?)--implies the truth of the universal it is
sometimes used to establish. The inductive logician tells us to build
on singular and definite facts, on truths of definite and individual
experience: but a definite or determinate truth rests upon universality
(indeed is a universal), and cannot be found unless we have already
found the special total or organism of truth in which it forms a part.
Individuals and universals presuppose each other, and do not, as the
first impression leads us to think, stand apart as two unconnected
termini, from either of which, if we happen to be so located, we can
without road or railway make a legitimate passage to the other.