[§ 4.] If this be a correct account of the instrumentality of general conceptions in the comparison which necessarily precedes Induction, we shall easily be able to translate into our own language what Dr. Whewell means by saying that conceptions, to be subservient to Induction, must be "clear" and "appropriate."
If the conception corresponds to a real agreement among the phenomena; if the comparison which we have made of a set of objects has led us to class them according to real resemblances and differences; the conception which does this cannot fail to be appropriate, for some purpose or other. The question of appropriateness is relative to the particular object we have in view. As soon as, by our comparison, we have ascertained some agreement, something which can be predicated in common of a number of objects; we have obtained a basis on which an inductive process is capable of being founded. But the agreements, or the ulterior consequences to which those agreements lead, may be of very different degrees of importance. If, for instance, we only compare animals according to their colour, and class those together which are coloured alike, we form the general conceptions of a white animal, a black animal, &c., which are conceptions legitimately formed; and if an induction were to be attempted concerning the causes of the colours of animals, this comparison would be the proper and necessary preparation for such an induction, but would not help us towards a knowledge of the laws of any other of the properties of animals: while if, with Cuvier, we compare and class them according to the structure of the skeleton, or, with Blainville, according to the nature of their outward integuments, the agreements and differences which are observable in these respects are not only of much greater importance in themselves, but are marks of agreements and differences in many other important particulars of the structure and mode of life of the animals. If, therefore, the study of their structure and habits be our object, the conceptions generated by these last comparisons are far more "appropriate" than those generated by the former. Nothing, other than this, can be meant by the appropriateness of a conception.
When Dr. Whewell says that the ancients, or the schoolmen, or any modern inquirers, missed discovering the real law of a phenomenon because they applied to it an inappropriate instead of an appropriate conception; he can only mean that in comparing various instances of the phenomenon, to ascertain in what those instances agreed, they missed the important points of agreement; and fastened upon such as were either imaginary, and not agreements at all, or if real agreements, were comparatively trifling, and had no connexion with the phenomenon, the law of which was sought.
Aristotle, philosophizing on the subject of motion, remarked that certain motions apparently take place spontaneously; bodies fall to the ground, flame ascends, bubbles of air rise in water, &c.: and these he called natural motions; while others not only never take place without external incitement, but even when such incitement is applied, tend spontaneously to cease; which, to distinguish them from the former, he called violent motions. Now, in comparing the so-called natural motions with one another, it appeared to Aristotle that they agreed in one circumstance, namely, that the body which moved (or seemed to move) spontaneously, was moving towards its own place; meaning thereby the place from whence it originally came, or the place where a great quantity of matter similar to itself was assembled. In the other class of motions, as when bodies are thrown up in the air, they are, on the contrary, moving from their own place. Now, this conception of a body moving towards its own place may justly be considered inappropriate; because, though it expresses a circumstance really found in some of the most familiar instances of motion apparently spontaneous, yet, first, there are many other cases of such motion, in which that circumstance is absent: the motion, for instance, of the earth and planets. Secondly, even when it is present, the motion, on closer examination, would often be seen not to be spontaneous: as, when air rises in water, it does not rise by its own nature, but is pushed up by the superior weight of the water which presses upon it. Finally, there are many cases in which the spontaneous motion takes place in the contrary direction to what the theory considers as the body's own place; for instance, when a fog rises from a lake, or when water dries up. The agreement, therefore, which Aristotle selected as his principle of classification, did not extend to all cases of the phenomenon he wanted to study, spontaneous motion; while it did include cases of the absence of the phenomenon, cases of motion not spontaneous. The conception was hence "inappropriate." We may add that, in the case in question, no conception would be appropriate; there is no agreement which runs through all the cases of spontaneous or apparently spontaneous motion and no others: they cannot be brought under one law: it is a case of Plurality of Causes.[4]
[§ 5.] So much for the first of Dr. Whewell's conditions, that conceptions must be appropriate. The second is, that they shall be "clear:" and let us consider what this implies. Unless the conception corresponds to a real agreement, it has a worse defect than that of not being clear; it is not applicable to the case at all. Among the phenomena, therefore, which we are attempting to connect by means of the conception, we must suppose that there really is an agreement, and that the conception is a conception of that agreement. In order, then, that it may be clear, the only requisite is, that we shall know exactly in what the agreement consists; that it shall have been carefully observed, and accurately remembered. We are said not to have a clear conception of the resemblance among a set of objects, when we have only a general feeling that they resemble, without having analysed their resemblance, or perceived in what points it consists, and fixed in our memory an exact recollection of those points. This want of clearness, or, as it may be otherwise called, this vagueness, in the general conception, may be owing either to our having no accurate knowledge of the objects themselves, or merely to our not having carefully compared them. Thus a person may have no clear idea of a ship because he has never seen one, or because he remembers but little, and that faintly, of what he has seen. Or he may have a perfect knowledge and remembrance of many ships of various kinds, frigates among the rest, but he may have no clear but only a confused idea of a frigate, because he has never been told, and has not compared them sufficiently to have remarked and remembered, in what particular points a frigate differs from some other kind of ship.
It is not, however, necessary, in order to have clear ideas, that we should know all the common properties of the things which we class together. That would be to have our conception of the class complete as well as clear. It is sufficient if we never class things together without knowing exactly why we do so,—without having ascertained exactly what agreements we are about to include in our conception; and if, after having thus fixed our conception, we never vary from it, never include in the class anything which has not those common properties, nor exclude from it anything which has. A clear conception means a determinate conception; one which does not fluctuate, which is not one thing to-day and another to-morrow, but remains fixed and invariable, except when, from the progress of our knowledge, or the correction of some error, we consciously add to it or alter it. A person of clear ideas, is a person who always knows in virtue of what properties his classes are constituted; what attributes are connoted by his general names.
The principal requisites, therefore, of clear conceptions, are habits of attentive observation, an extensive experience, and a memory which receives and retains an exact image of what is observed. And in proportion as any one has the habit of observing minutely and comparing carefully a particular class of phenomena, and an accurate memory for the results of the observation and comparison, so will his conceptions of that class of phenomena be clear; provided he has the indispensable habit, (naturally, however, resulting from those other endowments,) of never using general names without a precise connotation.
As the clearness of our conceptions chiefly depends on the carefulness and accuracy of our observing and comparing faculties, so their appropriateness, or rather the chance we have of hitting upon the appropriate conception in any case, mainly depends on the activity of the same faculties. He who by habit, grounded on sufficient natural aptitude, has acquired a readiness in accurately observing and comparing phenomena, will perceive so many more agreements and will perceive them so much more rapidly than other people, that the chances are much greater of his perceiving, in any instance, the agreement on which the important consequences depend.
[§ 6.] It is of so much importance that the part of the process of investigating truth, discussed in this chapter, should be rightly understood, that I think it is desirable to restate the results we have arrived at, in a somewhat different mode of expression.
We cannot ascertain general truths, that is, truths applicable to classes, unless we have formed the classes in such a manner that general truths can be affirmed of them. In the formation of any class, there is involved a conception of it as a class, that is, a conception of certain circumstances as being those which characterize the class, and distinguish the objects composing it from all other things. When we know exactly what these circumstances are, we have a clear idea (or conception) of the class, and of the meaning of the general name which designates it. The primary condition implied in having this clear idea, is that the class be really a class; that it correspond to a real distinction; that the things it includes really do agree with one another in certain particulars, and differ, in those same particulars, from all other things. A person without clear ideas, is one who habitually classes together, under the same general names, things which have no common properties, or none which are not possessed also by other things; or who, if the usage of other people prevents him from actually misclassing things, is unable to state to himself the common properties in virtue of which he classes them rightly.