§ 3. In attempting to show what the difficulty in this matter really is, and how it is surmounted, I must beg the reader, once for all, to bear this in mind; that although, in discussing the opinions of a different school of philosophy, I am willing to adopt their language, and to speak, therefore, of connecting facts through the instrumentality of a conception, this technical phraseology means neither more nor less than what is commonly called comparing the facts with one another and determining in what they agree. Nor has the technical expression even the advantage of being metaphysically correct. The facts are not connected, except in a merely metaphorical acceptation of the term. The ideas of the facts may become connected, that is, we may be led to think of them together; but this consequence is no more than what may be produced by any casual association. What really takes place, is, I conceive, more philosophically expressed by the common word Comparison, than by the phrases “to connect” or “to superinduce.” For, as the general conception is itself obtained by a comparison of particular phenomena, so, when obtained, the mode in which we apply it to other phenomena is again by comparison. We compare phenomena with each other to get the conception, and we then compare those and other phenomena with the conception. We get the conception of an animal (for instance) by comparing different animals, and when we afterward see a creature resembling an animal, we compare it with our general conception of an animal; and if it agrees with that general conception, we include it in the class. The conception becomes the type of comparison.
And we need only consider what comparison is, to see that where the objects are more than two, and still more when they are an indefinite number, a type of some sort is an indispensable condition of the comparison. When we have to arrange and classify a great number of objects according to their agreements and differences, we do not make a confused attempt to compare all with all. We know that two things are as much as the mind can easily attend to at a time, and we therefore fix upon one of the objects, either at hazard or because it offers in a peculiarly striking manner some important character, and, taking this as our standard, compare it with one object after another. If we find a second object which presents a remarkable agreement with the first, inducing us to class them together, the question instantly arises, in what particular circumstances do they agree? and to take notice of these circumstances is already a first stage of abstraction, giving rise to a general conception. Having advanced thus far, when we now take in hand a third object we naturally ask ourselves the question, not merely whether this third object agrees with the first, but whether it agrees with it in the same circumstances in which the second did? in other words, whether it agrees with the general conception which has been obtained by abstraction from the first and second? Thus we see the tendency of general conceptions, as soon as formed, to substitute themselves as types, for whatever individual objects previously answered that purpose in our comparisons. We may, perhaps, find that no considerable number of other objects agree with this first general conception; and that we must drop the conception, and beginning again with a different individual case, [pg 459] proceed by fresh comparisons to a different general conception. Sometimes, again, we find that the same conception will serve, by merely leaving out some of its circumstances; and by this higher effort of abstraction, we obtain a still more general conception; as in the case formerly referred to, the scientific world rose from the conception of poles to the general conception of opposite properties in opposite directions; or as those South-Sea islanders, whose conception of a quadruped had been abstracted from hogs (the only animals of that description which they had seen), when they afterward compared that conception with other quadrupeds, dropped some of the circumstances, and arrived at the more general conception which Europeans associate with the term.
These brief remarks contain, I believe, all that is well grounded in the doctrine, that the conception by which the mind arranges and gives unity to phenomena must be furnished by the mind itself, and that we find the right conception by a tentative process, trying first one and then another until we hit the mark. The conception is not furnished by the mind until it has been furnished to the mind; and the facts which supply it are sometimes extraneous facts, but more often the very facts which we are attempting to arrange by it. It is quite true, however, that in endeavoring to arrange the facts, at whatever point we begin, we never advance three steps without forming a general conception, more or less distinct and precise; and that this general conception becomes the clue which we instantly endeavor to trace through the rest of the facts, or rather, becomes the standard with which we thenceforth compare them. If we are not satisfied with the agreements which we discover among the phenomena by comparing them with this type, or with some still more general conception which by an additional stage of abstraction we can form from the type; we change our path, and look out for other agreements; we recommence the comparison from a different starting-point, and so generate a different set of general conceptions. This is the tentative process which Dr. Whewell speaks of; and which has not unnaturally suggested the theory, that the conception is supplied by the mind itself; since the different conceptions which the mind successively tries, it either already possessed from its previous experience, or they were supplied to it in the first stage of the corresponding act of comparison; so that, in the subsequent part of the process, the conception manifested itself as something compared with the phenomena, not evolved from them.
§ 4. If this be a correct account of the instrumentality of general conceptions in the comparison which necessarily precedes Induction, we are now 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 can not 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. [pg 460] If, for instance, we only compare animals according to their color, and class those together which are colored alike, we form the general conceptions of a white animal, a black animal, etc., which are conceptions legitimately formed; and if an induction were to be attempted concerning the causes of the colors of animals, this comparison would be the proper and necessary preparation for such an induction, but would not help us toward 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 school-men, 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 connection 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, etc.; 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 toward 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 toward 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 [pg 461] 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 can not be brought under one law; it is a case of Plurality of Causes.[209]
§ 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 analyzed 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 any [pg 462] thing which has not those common properties, nor exclude from it any thing 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.