Philosophy
This book makes no pretense of giving to the world a new theory of the intellectual operations. Its claim to attention, if it possess any, is grounded on the fact that it is an attempt, not to supersede, but to embody and systematize, the best ideas which have been either prom...
§ 1. In the preceding chapters we have endeavored to characterize the present state of those among the branches of knowledge called Moral, which are sciences in the only proper...
23. Chapter 23§ 1. The phenomena of nature exist in two distinct relations to one another; that of simultaneity, and that of succession. Every phenomenon is related, in a uniform manner, to s...
5. Chapter 5§ 1. Looking back now to the commencement of our inquiry, let us attempt to measure how far it has advanced. Logic, we found, is the Theory of Proof. But proof supposes somethin...
28. Chapter 28§ 1. I shall select, as a first example, an interesting speculation of one of the most eminent of theoretical chemists, Baron Liebig. The object in view is to ascertain the imme...
57. Chapter 57§ 1. The tribe of errors of which we are to treat in the first instance, are those in which no actual inference takes place at all; the proposition (it can not in such cases be...
13. Chapter 13§ 1. We have shown what is the real nature of the truths with which the Syllogism is conversant, in contradistinction to the more superficial manner in which their import is con...
15. Chapter 15§ 1. If, as laid down in the two preceding chapters, the foundation of all sciences, even deductive or demonstrative sciences, is Induction; if every step in the ratiocinations...
61. Chapter 61§ 1. Under this fifth and last class it is convenient to arrange all those fallacies in which the source of error is not so much a false estimate of the probative force of known...
4. Chapter 4§ 1. “A name,” says Hobbes,(7) “is a word taken at pleasure to serve for a mark which may raise in our mind a thought like to some thought we had before, and which being pronoun...
33. Chapter 33§ 1. The preceding considerations have led us to recognize a distinction between two kinds of laws, or observed uniformities in nature: ultimate laws, and what may be termed der...
27. Chapter 27§ 1. The simplest and most obvious modes of singling out from among the circumstances which precede or follow a phenomenon, those with which it is really connected by an invaria...
10. Chapter 10§ 1. One necessary part of the theory of Names and of Propositions remains to be treated of in this place: the theory of Definitions. As being the most important of the class of...
7. Chapter 7§ 1. An inquiry into the nature of propositions must have one of two objects: to analyze the state of mind called Belief, or to analyze what is believed. All language recognizes...
29. Chapter 29§ 1. In the preceding exposition of the four methods of observation and experiment, by which we contrive to distinguish among a mass of co-existent phenomena the particular effe...
72. Chapter 72§ 1. There are two kinds of sociological inquiry. In the first kind, the question proposed is, what effect will follow from a given cause, a certain general condition of social...
49. Chapter 49§ 1. In order that we may possess a language perfectly suitable for the investigation and expression of general truths, there are two principal, and several minor requisites. Th...
17. Chapter 17§ 1. Polemical discussion is foreign to the plan of this work. But an opinion which stands in need of much illustration, can often receive it most effectually, and least tedious...
59. Chapter 59§ 1. The class of Fallacies of which we are now to speak, is the most extensive of all; embracing a greater number and variety of unfounded inferences than any of the other clas...
43. Chapter 43§ 1. In the First Book we found that all the assertions which can be conveyed by language, express some one or more of five different things: Existence; Order in Place; Order in...
20. Chapter 20§ 1. Induction, then, is that operation of the mind, by which we infer that what we know to be true in a particular case or cases, will be true in all cases which resemble the f...
71. Chapter 71§ 1. After what has been said to illustrate the nature of the inquiry into social phenomena, the general character of the method proper to that inquiry is sufficiently evident,...
9. Chapter 9§ 1. In examining into the nature of general propositions, we have adverted much less than is usual with logicians to the ideas of a Class, and Classification; ideas which, sinc...
44. Chapter 44§ 1. The method of arriving at general truths, or general propositions fit to be believed, and the nature of the evidence on which they are grounded, have been discussed, as far...
1. Chapter 1This book makes no pretense of giving to the world a new theory of the intellectual operations. Its claim to attention, if it possess any, is grounded on the fact that it is an...
51. Chapter 51§ 1. We have, thus far, considered only one of the requisites of a language adapted for the investigation of truth; that its terms shall each of them convey a determinate and un...
52. Chapter 52§ 1. There is, as has been frequently remarked in this work, a classification of things, which is inseparable from the fact of giving them general names. Every name which connot...
14. Chapter 14§ 1. In our analysis of the syllogism, it appeared that the minor premise always affirms a resemblance between a new case and some cases previously known; while the major premis...
37. Chapter 37§ 1. “Probability,” says Laplace,(176) “has reference partly to our ignorance, partly to our knowledge. We know that among three or more events, one, and only one, must happen;...
47. Chapter 47§ 1. The metaphysical inquiry into the nature and composition of what have been called Abstract Ideas, or, in other words, of the notions which answer in the mind to classes and...
67. Chapter 67§ 1. The laws of mind as characterized in the preceding chapter, compose the universal or abstract portion of the philosophy of human nature; and all the truths of common experi...
73. Chapter 73§ 1. The doctrine which the preceding chapters were intended to enforce and elucidate—that the collective series of social phenomena, in other words the course of history, is su...
58. Chapter 58§ 1. From the Fallacies which are properly Prejudices, or presumptions antecedent to, and superseding, proof, we pass to those which lie in the incorrect performance of the prov...
42. Chapter 42§ 1. In our inquiries into the nature of the inductive process, we must not confine our notice to such generalizations from experience as profess to be universally true. There i...
41. Chapter 41§ 1. The order of the occurrence of phenomena in time, is either successive or simultaneous; the uniformities, therefore, which obtain in their occurrence, are either uniformiti...
40. Chapter 40§ 1. We have now completed our review of the logical processes by which the laws, or uniformities, of the sequence of phenomena, and those uniformities in their co-existence whi...
12. Chapter 12§ 1. The analysis of the Syllogism has been so accurately and fully performed in the common manuals of Logic, that in the present work, which is not designed as a manual, it is...
50. Chapter 50§ 1. It is not only in the mode which has now been pointed out, namely by gradual inattention to a portion of the ideas conveyed, that words in common use are liable to shift th...
66. Chapter 66§ 1. What the Mind is, as well as what Matter is, or any other question respecting Things in themselves, as distinguished from their sensible manifestations, it would be foreign...
16. Chapter 16§ 1. In the examination which formed the subject of the last chapter, into the nature of the evidence of those deductive sciences which are commonly represented to be systems of...
36. Chapter 36§ 1. Considering, then, as empirical laws only those observed uniformities respecting which the question whether they are laws of causation must remain undecided until they can...
32. Chapter 32§ 1. The most striking example which the history of science presents, of the explanation of laws of causation and other uniformities of sequence among special phenomena, by reso...
31. Chapter 31§ 1. The deductive operation by which we derive the law of an effect from the laws of the causes, the concurrence of which gives rise to it, may be undertaken either for the pur...
30. Chapter 30§ 1. The mode of investigation which, from the proved inapplicability of direct methods of observation and experiment, remains to us as the main source of the knowledge we posse...
6. Chapter 6§ 1. In treating of Propositions, as already in treating of Names, some considerations of a comparatively elementary nature respecting their form and varieties must be premised,...
35. Chapter 35§ 1. Scientific inquirers give the name of Empirical Laws to those uniformities which observation or experiment has shown to exist, but on which they hesitate to rely in cases v...
26. Chapter 26§ 1. It results from the preceding exposition, that the process of ascertaining what consequents, in nature, are invariably connected with what antecedents, or in other words wh...
8. Chapter 8§ 1. As a preparation for the inquiry which is the proper object of Logic, namely, in what manner propositions are to be proved, we have found it necessary to inquire what they...
46. Chapter 46§ 1. The inquiry which occupied us in the two preceding Books, has conducted us to what appears a satisfactory solution of the principal problem of Logic, according to the conce...
70. Chapter 70§ 1. The misconception discussed in the preceding chapter is, as we said, chiefly committed by persons not much accustomed to scientific investigation: practitioners in politics...
69. Chapter 69§ 1. The laws of the phenomena of society are, and can be, nothing but the laws of the actions and passions of human beings united together in the social state. Men, however, in...
34. Chapter 34§ 1. In the last four chapters we have traced the general outlines of the theory of the generation of derivative laws from ultimate ones. In the present chapter our attention wi...
64. Chapter 64§ 1. The question, whether the law of causality applies in the same strict sense to human actions as to other phenomena, is the celebrated controversy concerning the freedom of...
25. Chapter 25§ 1. To complete the general notion of causation on which the rules of experimental inquiry into the laws of nature must be founded, one distinction still remains to be pointed...
21. Chapter 21§ 1. Induction properly so called, as distinguished from those mental operations, sometimes, though improperly, designated by the name, which I have attempted in the preceding c...
11. Chapter 11§ 1. In the preceding Book, we have been occupied not with the nature of Proof, but with the nature of Assertion: the import conveyed by a Proposition, whether that Proposition...
22. Chapter 22§ 1. In the contemplation of that uniformity in the course of nature, which is assumed in every inference from experience, one of the first observations that present themselves...
39. Chapter 39§ 1. The word Analogy, as the name of a mode of reasoning, is generally taken for some kind of argument supposed to be of an inductive nature, but not amounting to a complete in...
38. Chapter 38§ 1. We have had frequent occasion to notice the inferior generality of derivative laws, compared with the ultimate laws from which they are derived. This inferiority, which aff...
56. Chapter 56§ 1. In attempting to establish certain general distinctions which shall mark out from one another the various kinds of Fallacious Evidence, we propose to ourselves an altogethe...
53. Chapter 53§ 1. Thus far, we have considered the principles of scientific classification so far only as relates to the formation of natural groups; and at this point most of those who have...
60. Chapter 60§ 1. We have now, in our progress through the classes of Fallacies, arrived at those to which, in the common books of logic, the appellation is in general exclusively appropriat...
3. Chapter 3§ 1. It is so much the established practice of writers on logic to commence their treatises by a few general observations (in most cases, it is true, rather meagre) on Terms and...
55. Chapter 55§ 1. It is a maxim of the school-men, that “contrariorum eadem est scientia:” we never really know what a thing is, unless we are also able to give a sufficient account of its o...
65. Chapter 65§ 1. It is a common notion, or at least it is implied in many common modes of speech, that the thoughts, feelings, and actions of sentient beings are not a subject of science, i...
48. Chapter 48§ 1. It does not belong to the present undertaking to dwell on the importance of language as a medium of human intercourse, whether for purposes of sympathy or of information. N...
19. Chapter 19§ 1. The portion of the present inquiry upon which we are now about to enter, may be considered as the principal, both from its surpassing in intricacy all the other branches, a...
68. Chapter 68§ 1. Next after the science of individual man comes the science of man in society—of the actions of collective masses of mankind, and the various phenomena which constitute soci...
63. Chapter 63§ 1. Principles of Evidence and Theories of Method are not to be constructed _a priori_. The laws of our rational faculty, like those of every other natural agency, are only lea...
24. Chapter 24matter can not have the power of moving itself, he proceeds to argue that neither can mind have the power of moving it. “Quand on examine l’idée que l’on a de tous les esprits f...
45. Chapter 45“Clear and distinct ideas are terms which, though familiar and frequent in men’s mouths, I have reason to think every one who uses does not perfectly understand. And possibly it...
62. Chapter 62“Si l’homme peut prédire, avec une assurance presque entière, les phénomènes dont il connaît les lois; si lors même qu’elles lui sont inconnues, il peut, d’après l’expérience, p...
18. Chapter 18“According to the doctrine now stated, the highest, or rather the only proper object of physics, is to ascertain those established conjunctions of successive events, which const...
54. Chapter 54“Il leur semble qu’il n’y a qu’à douter par fantaisie, et qu’il n’y a qu’à dire en général que notre nature est infirme; que notre esprit est plein d’aveuglement: qu’il faut avo...
2. Chapter 2“La scolastique, qui produisit dans la logique, comme dans la morale, et dans une partie de la métaphysique, une subtilité, une précision d’idées, dont l’habitude inconnue aux a...