Dr. Whewell sets out this last operation, which he terms the _colligation of facts_, as induction, and even as the type of induction generally. But, though induction is always colligation, or (as we may, with equal accuracy, characterise such a general expression obtained by abstraction simply connecting observed facts by means of common characters) _description_, colligation, or description, as such, though a necessary preparation for induction, is not induction. Induction explains and predicts (and, as an incident of these powers, describes). Different explanations collected by real induction from supposed parallel cases (e.g. the Newtonian and the _Impact_ doctrines as to the motions of the heavenly bodies), or different predictions, i.e. different determinations of the conditions under which similar facts may be expected again to occur (e.g. the stating that the position of one planet or satellite so as to overshadow another, and, on the other hand, that the impending over mankind of some great calamity, is the condition of an eclipse), cannot be true together. But, for a colligation to be correct, it is enough that it enables the mind to represent to itself as a whole all the separate facts ascertained at a given time, so that successive tentative descriptions of a phenomenon, got by guessing till a guess is found which tallies with the facts, may, though conflicting (e.g. the theories respecting the motions of the heavenly bodies), be _all_ correct _so far as they go_. Induction is proof, the inferring something unobserved from something observed; and to provide a proper test of proof is the special purpose of inductive logic. But colligation simply sums up the facts observed, as seen under a new point of view. Dr. Whewell contends that, besides the sum of the facts, colligation introduces, as a principle of connection, a conception of the mind not existing in the facts. But, in fact, it is only because this conception is a copy of something in the facts, although our senses are too weak to recognise it directly, that the facts are rightly classed under the conception. The conception is often even got by abstraction from the facts which it colligates; but also when it is a hypothesis, borrowed from strange phenomena, it still is accepted as true only because found actually, and as a fact, whatever the origin of the knowledge of the fact, to fit and to describe as a whole the separate observations. Thus, though Kepler's consequent inference that, _because_ the orbit of a planet is an ellipse, the planet would _continue_ to revolve in that same ellipse, was an induction, his previous application of the conception of an ellipse, abstracted from other phenomena, to sum up his direct observations of the successive positions occupied by the different planets, and thus to describe their orbits, was no induction. It altered only the _predicate_, changing--The successive places of, e.g.