365; The Bible and Geology, 365-367; The Bible and Evolution, 367-370; Chronology and the Bible, 371-377; Conclusion, 377-380. (pp. 351-380.) MAPS. I. Glaciated Region of North America, 307; II. Portion of CUTS. STUDIES IN SCIENCE AND RELIGION. CHAPTER I. THE GROUND OF CONFIDENCE IN INDUCTIVE REASONING. 1. WRITERS on logic find it difficult to defend the deductive syllogism from the charge of baldly begging the question. It is certainly harder to prove the major premise than to prove the conclusion. For example, it would seem impossible for those who state their syllogisms merely in extension, to show that John is in the class mortal until they have proven that he is really mortal. If all men are mortal, how can it be known that John is a man before he dies? In the hands of Sir William Hamilton the reasoning of the deductive syllogism is represented as merely an explication of the concept contained in the major premise. Upon this view the advance made through use of the syllogism is merely towards clearness of conception. In the case referred to the attribute of mortality is postulated as a part of the .concept man; and the sentence "all men are mortal" is made to mean "all men possess mortality," that is, mortality is a part of the definition of the word "man." The difficulty in the reasoning is that we see the other attributes, while this of mortality remains yet to be realized. By what right does this element enter the concept "man"? How is the unseen attribute of mortality so connected with those that are visible as necessarily to be joined to them? This is no imaginary difficulty, but is a genuine paradox. Hamilton cuts the Gordian knot by maintaining that deductive logic relates only to the forms of truth, having no regard to the truth itself as involved in the major premise; thus, in reality, throwing the whole burden of proof back into the field of induction, where the major premise itself must find its guarantee of truthfulness. Plainly this is an evasion rather than a solution of the mystery. John Stuart Mill denies that there are any imperative, universal propositions such as are wont to figure in the major premise of deductive syllogisms, and squarely defends the doctrine that all productive reasoning is strictly inductive. With him the deductive syllogism is valuable only as a convenient register of past observations by which we may readily check rash conclusions from too narrow an experience. The statement of the major premise leads us to go over the ground again, and assure ourselves of the exact force of our past experience. But the real reasoning, he maintains, is from particulars to particulars. From observing that John, Thomas, and Harry are mortal, we advance to the conclusion that James, who is still alive, is mortal also. Here is not an explication of the more clearly known from the less clearly known, but the addition of something entirely new.1 To ascertain the authority for this something entirely new which is added in inductive reasoning is the object of our present inquiry. Hamilton avers that we advance from the limited observation to the universal conclusion by adding to it the force of the natural presumption "that nature is uniform in her operations." 2 This presumption of the uniformity of nature's operations would be his authority for translating the "some" of inductive reasoning into the "all" of the deductive formulary. This, however, he would not call a logical conclusion, but merely a "philosophical presumption"; and the real question still remains, By what authority do we make this philosophical presumption? For, as Hamilton 1 See Mill's Logic, Book ii. chap. 3. Examination of Hamilton, Vol. ii. p. 195 (Spencer's ed., Boston, 1866). 2 Hamilton's Metaphysics, pp. 72, 510; Logic, pp. 451, 453 (Boston, 1865). remarks, "In some cases the observation of a very few particulars or individual examples is sufficient to warrant an assertion in regard to the whole class; in others the total judgment is hardly competent until our observation has gone through each of its constituent parts. ..... For example, it would require a far less induction to prove that all animals breathe than to prove that the mammalia, and the mammalia alone, have lateral lobes to the cerebellum.” Mill states the difficulty even more forcibly:1 "When a chemist announces the existence and properties of a newly-discovered substance, if we confide in his accuracy, we feel assured that the conclusions he has arrived at will hold universally, although the induction be founded but on a single instance. ..... Here, then, is a general law of nature inferred without hesitation from a single instance a universal proposition from a singu lar one. Now mark another case, and contrast it with this. Not all the instances which have been observed since the beginning of the world in support of the general proposition that all crows are black would be deemed a sufficient presumption of the truth of the proposition to outweigh the testimony of one unexceptionable witness who should affirm that in some region of the earth not fully explored he had caught and examined a 1 Logic, Book iii. chap. 3. |