A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive, 7th Edition, Vol. II

§ 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. 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 cannot in such cases be c...

§ 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 know...

§ 1. The preceding considerations have led us to recognise a distinction between two kinds of laws, or observed uniformities in nature: ultimate laws, and what may be termed der...

§ 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...

§ 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 i...

§ 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. T...

§ 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...

§ 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,...

§ 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...

§ 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...

§ 1. In the preceding chapters we have endeavoured to characterize the present state of those among the branches of knowledge called Moral, which are sciences in the only proper...

§ 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...

§ 1. "Probability," says Laplace,[17] "has reference partly to our ignorance, partly to our knowledge. We know that among three or more events, one, and only one, must happen; b...

§ 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...

§ 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...

§ 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 s...

§ 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...

§ 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...

§ 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 coexistence whic...

§ 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...

§ 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...

§ 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 be...

§ 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...

§ 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...

§ 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...

§ 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...

§ 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...

§ 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...

§ 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...

§ 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...

§ 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...

§ 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...

§ 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...

§ 1. It is a maxim of the schoolmen, 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 op...

§ 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...

§ 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...

§ 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 so...

§ 1. Principles of Evidence and Theories of Method are not to be constructed _à priori_. The laws of our rational faculty, like those of every other natural agency, are only lea...

"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...

"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...

"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...

"In such cases the inductive and deductive methods of inquiry may be said to go hand in hand, the one verifying the conclusions deduced by the other; and the combination of expe...