An introductory text-book of logic - Mellone, Sydney - Rare Books at ...

THE PROBLEMS WHICH WE HAVE RAISED. 353
and distinguishing them according as one is like or un
like or comes before or after another. Knowledge is
the sum of these details of
nection into any kind of system.
"
sensation," not their con
When working out this line of thought, Mill argues that
every Judgment
Bosanquet says
refers to "real
things," and then as Mr
"
almost takes our breath away by calling
them [the real things ] states of consciousness
"
(I. v.
i, 5). From the same point of view he insists that "every
general truth is an aggregate of particular truths" (II. iii.
3), where "particular" means "unconnected" by anything
common to it with others. And Induction tends to mean the
process by which these disconnected details can manufacture
(in our minds) general statements or laws. Hence also he
maintains that the Law of Uniform Causation, which he had
stated to be the presupposition of all Induction (meaning
Scientific Method), "is itself an instance of Induction"
(meaning the process of combining the disconnected par
ticulars of sense -experience into general statements). It
is, moreover, an instance of "Induction" in its weakest
form (III. ch. xxi.) ; and Mill attempts to evade the result
ing difficulty, as we have seen, by a flagrant though un
conscious petitio principii (see above, ch. VIII. 6 ; ch. X.
i. P- 323)-
From the same line of thought came the view that "all
reasoning is from particulars to particulars" (II. iii. 4);
and the denial of the name of Induction to the generalisa
tions of Mathematics, because "the truth obtained, though
really general, is not believed on the evidence of particular
instances" (III. ii.
2). In this sense, the Methods of
Scientific Inquiry expounded by Mill himself in his Third
Book are not
"
"
inductive ; they do not, and can not, start
with disconnected particulars, but with facts observed to be
of such and such a kind, facts read through conceptions.
9. The subject of the relation of Logic to other
branches of Philosophy is one that has been the subject
of much unprofitable discussion ; nevertheless, some im-
z