4. THE VARIOUS CONCEPTIONS OF INDUCTION.

The attending quotations will give the student a fair idea of the leading conceptions concerning induction:

(1) “Induction is the process by which we conclude that what is true of certain individuals of a class is true of the whole class, or that what is true at certain times will be true under similar circumstances at all times.” “Induction, as above defined, is a process of inference; it proceeds from the known to the unknown.” “Any process in which what seems the conclusion is no wider than the premises from which it is drawn, does not fall within the meaning of the term.”—J. S. Mill, A System of Logic, 1892, p. 175.

(2) “An induction is a generalization or an inference based upon propositions that state observed facts.” “The truth inferred may be general or particular, but it must be one which we cannot perceive in a single act of observation.”—Ballentine’s Inductive Logic, 1896, p. 14.

(3) “Induction is the process of inference by which we get at general truths from particular facts or cases.”—Ryland’s Logic, 1900, p. 148.

(4) “Induction may be defined as the legitimate inference of the general from the particular, or, of the more general from the less general.”—Fowler, 1905, p. 10, Vol. 2.

(5) “The term induction has been used by logicians to denote this leap of the mind from the limitations of its positive knowledge to belief in universal laws.” “In pedagogy, however, the term is applied to the whole process of arriving at general truths or principles.”—Salisbury’s Theory of Teaching, p. 156.