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Updated: May 3, 2025
The induction of the ancients has been well described by Bacon, under the name of “Inductio per enumerationem simplicem, ubi non reperitur instantia contradictoria.” It consists in ascribing the character of general truths to all propositions which are true in every instance that we happen to know of.
Our only substitute for an universal law of coexistence is the ancients' induction per enumerationem simplicem ubi non reperitur instantia contradictoria, that is, the improbability that an exception, if any existed, could have hitherto remained unobserved. But the certainty thus arrived at can be only that of an empirical law, true within the limits of the observations.
As, however, all rigorous processes of induction presuppose the general uniformity, our knowledge of the particular uniformities from which it was first inferred was not, of course, derived from rigorous induction, but from the loose and uncertain mode of induction per enumerationem simplicem; and the law of universal causation, being collected from results so obtained, can not itself rest on any better foundation.
The current and approved modes of reasoning on these subjects are still of the same vicious description against which Bacon protested; the method almost exclusively employed by those professing to treat such matters inductively, is the very inductio per enumerationem simplicem which he condemns; and the experience which we hear so confidently appealed to by all sects, parties, and interests, is still, in his own emphatic words, mera palpatio.
This will is called antecedent when it is detached, and considers each good separately in the capacity of a good. In this sense it may be said that God tends to all good, as good, ad perfectionem simpliciter simplicem, to speak like the Schoolmen, and that by an antecedent will. He is earnestly disposed to sanctify and to save all men, to exclude sin, and to prevent damnation.
That things equal to the same thing are equal to one another, and that two straight lines which have once intersected one another continue to diverge, are inductive truths; resting, indeed, like the law of universal causation, only on induction per enumerationem simplicem; on the fact that they have been perpetually perceived to be true, and never once found to be false.
The current and approved modes of reasoning on these subjects are still of the same vicious description against which Bacon protested; the method almost exclusively employed by those professing to treat such matters inductively, is the very inductio per enumerationem simplicem which he condemns; and the experience which we hear so confidently appealed to by all sects, parties, and interests, is still, in his own emphatic words, mera palpatio.
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