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Reasons having some reference to the canons of scientific investigation have been attempted to be given, however unsuccessfully, for some of these propositions; but to the multitude of those who parrot them, the enumeratio simplex, ex his tantummodo quæ præsto sunt pronuncians, is the sole evidence.
This class includes whatever errors of generalisation are not mere blunders, but arise from some wrong general conception of the inductive process. Only a few kinds can be noted. 1. Under this Fallacy come generalisations which cannot be established by experience, e.g. inferences from the order in the Solar System to other and unknown parts of the universe; and also, except when a particular effect would contradict either the laws of number and extension, or the universal law of causality, all inferences from the fact that we have never known of a particular effect to its impossibility. 2. Those generalisations also are fallacious which resolve, either, as in early Greece, all things into one element, or, as often in modern times, impressions on the senses, differing in quality, and not merely in degree, into the same; e.g. heat, light, and (through vibrations) sensation, into motion; mental, into nervous states; and vital phenomena, into mechanical or chemical processes. In these theories, one fact has its laws applied to another. It may possibly be a condition of that other; but even then the mode in which the new fact is actually produced would have to be explained by its own law, and not by that of the condition. 3. Again, generalisations got by Simple Enumeration, fall under this Fallacy. That sort of Induction 'precariò concludit, says Bacon, 'et periculo exponitur ab instantiâ contradictoriâ, ... ex his tantummodò quæ præsto sunt pronuncians. The ancients used it; and in questions relating to man and society, it is still employed by practical men. By it men arrived at the various examples of the formula, Whatsoever has never been (e.g. a State without artificial distinctions of rank; negroes as civilised as the white race) will never be; which, being inductions without elimination, could at most form the ground only of the lowest empirical laws. Higher empirical laws can be got, when a phenomenon presents (as no negation can) a series of regular gradations, since something may then be inferred from the observed as to the unobservable terms of the series. Such is the law of man's necessary progression, in contradiction to the above formula. But even this better generalisation is similarly, though not as grossly, fallacious as the preceding, when, though not itself a cause, but only a summary expression for the general result of all the causes, it is accepted as the law of human changes, past and even future. So, empirical generalisations, from present to past time, and from the character of one nation to that of another, are similarly fallacious when employed as causal laws. 4. This Fallacy occurs, not only when an empirical is confounded with a causal law, but when causation is inferred improperly. The mistake sometimes lies in inferring
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