We have implied throughout that we have feeling about a thing only so far as we attach on basis of past experience an experience value to the thing, as we say, “the burnt child dreads the fire.” Induction, as this interpretation is termed, is so important an element that we will devote a little space to considering its rationale, development, and place in intellectual emotion.
What is the rationale of the inductive act? Why should iteration lead to expectancy of reiteration? I observe that a body unsupported falls in a hundred instances, but is it not arbitrary for me then to suppose that it will fall the hundred and first instance? In fact would it not be more rational to suppose that this particular combination should be exhausted, that it was time for nature to stop? But this very reason rests on the uniformity of nature—the very law we are questioning—as experienced in the past and applied to the future; only it is a negative law of omissions, literally law of reiteration of unreiterations. Thus if reason takes the law of uniformity of nature to task it can only do so by assuming it. J. S. Mill in his treatment of this matter (Logic, bk. iii. chap. 3, sec. 2), falls into an error. It is, indeed, true, as he says, that some occurrences repeated suggest cessation and not recurrence, as when we have several consecutive cloudy days, we expect a bright one, or having had several rainy seasons we expect a dry one; but it is plainly wrong to 283regard this, as he does, as a contradiction of the principle of uniformity of nature. On the contrary, this is a very good example of it. Experience of intermittent character of bad weather in the past leads to expectancy of its re-intermittency for the future, and the oftener the experience the stronger the belief as to the nature of the still unexperienced. A negative uniformity is as much a uniformity as a positive.
It is plain that we can assign no reason for our belief in the uniformity of nature. It is simply a fact, an arbitrary fact if you will, that the more often experiences are conjoined, the more strongly we expect the conjuncture. I may imagine a body unsupported remaining stationary in the air as readily as to imagine it falling; however, I believe it will fall, and I duck my head for fear of getting hurt. Not any speculative reason then, but a very practical reason, is at the bottom of this inductive tendency, that is, the conservation and progress of the organism is secured by induction as anticipatory function. The origin of induction is not then in its abstract rationality, but in its immediate utility as a life function. Experience is self-adjustment through felt stimulus. Once begun it grows by continual self-reference, and hence practically all experience is inductive. Experience is thus a continuum, an integrating cumulating whole; and inductive experience, like all experience, arises and progresses by reason of its serviceability.
It has been implied that the inductive act arises very early in the history of experience. Every psychosis is what it is by reason of all the previous psychoses in the individual and the race. Psychism, while it has its points of development in individuals, must yet be estimated as a unit, as a single whole. But we have to ask whether this modification of one psychosis by another is conscious or unconscious. If some low organism have in its lifetime but two consciousnesses, must we regard the second as 284influenced in quality by the first, and if so, consciously influenced, that is, a conscious relating, an active induction as opposed to mechanical integration? Is mind always self-building, or does psychosis act and react on psychosis automatically? We have maintained that all the growth of mind has been in the past, as in the present, by struggle, by severest endeavour, and hence if experience modify experience it is by conscious act. Experience thus constantly connects with itself and builds upon itself, it is self-integrating, that is, inductive, in all its evolution. Mind, as primarily pleasure-pain and struggle, by endeavour reaches back to itself, realizes itself, and rises upon itself.
Take a comparatively simple case. A child tastes an orange, and finds it sweet, i.e., it relates the sweetness to the object, which relating is a true thinking, an active conjoining or associating. Upon the presentation of another orange to the child at a later date, he identifies it as the sweet thing; he associates sweetness as to be experienced from it on basis of past associating, that is, he makes an induction. In this second orange-experience, as far as there is active conjoining of mental products, a definite adding to present percept of sweet taste as experienceable by conscious reference to former percept (taste-experience), we must recognise a genuine thought-process. The thinking consists in the joining of sensation of taste to an object, not as a present, but as a future experience, on the basis of some past experience. Here is a true mediation or reasoning of inductive type, and also a true concept-process, that is, a taking together, a conscious uniting, although the product is still particular. The nearest approach to expressing this psychological process in language is to say, “This round yellow is this sweet, because this round yellow was this sweet before.” The correlating process rests upon the relating process accomplished at first experience of orange-tasting, whereby 285the taste was related to the thing tasted. This relating may be thrust upon the mind, or the mind may consciously and actively assimilate. Thought in the wide sense of the term may be made to include all mediate or immediate conscious conjoining of experiences, whether the product be general or particular.
Mediacy is certainly, however, accomplished before commonness is noted, which in ordinary usage is concept-making. The grouping of the particular taste with the particular sight and touch on basis of past experience does not give a general result. The mediate term of past experience of taste which the child brings up on sight of orange and applies to the present case does not suggest commonness, but constancy of experience, for at first it knows things only as identical, and not as separate, or as like or unlike. The method of this early intelligence is that of identifying, “The orange was sweet and is sweet”; and not that of common characterizing, “Oranges are sweet, and this is an orange.” The child does not discriminate or understand that the object of its first experience is, by reason of this experience, no longer to be experienced; it has not attained notion of disappearance. It does not cognize the orange as one of a group or class, having as common characters roundness, sweetness, and yellowness, and from presence of round-yellow in any instance infer sweet; but it knows orange only as this particular object of past, present, and future experience. Many of the early thought-experiences of children are to be interpreted rather upon this identity-method than upon the usual interpretation of true concepts. Thus the child who calls every person of certain age, dress, etc., “Papa,” is not thinking of a papa, or class of papas, but of the papa. This is mistaken identity: the common and like is the same, and the child requires considerable discrimination before it attains to notion of papa in general. Same and not-same are discriminated before like and unlike, and 286hence young children use common names as proper. Now the mental product achieved by the child, which, as expressed in words, we term the papa, may be styled a particular concept, a gathering together of sight-sensations, and associating sound- and touch-sensations with these so that any generally like group of sight-sensations enables the child to call up on basis of past experience the associated sound and touch, to expect the gentle word and caress. The child in identifying the orange, “This round yellow thing is the sweet thing,” is bringing together with a certain general force, not of common characterization, indeed, but of temporal significance as permanent grouping. Animals and young children think mostly on the identifying plan; they join to and expect for a present experience what has been conjoined with it in past experience, but the object is the same, not a like one.
How then does the child come to knowledge of things as like, to form a class of oranges after regarding all oranges as the orange? Pass oranges before a young child one after the other so that one only is in sight, and the child will probably know only one orange as the same continually re-appearing. The image formed will, however, be more or less composite, the mental product will be a concept-image, as being a re-inforcement and exaggeration of common characters and a suppression of individual; but for practical purposes it is still a particular concept, that is, the child applies it to the one and not the many, and does not recognise its representative nature. A general image as a group of common qualities may be thus attained before consciousness of this generality is reached.
If now two or three oranges are presented to the child at the same time, it will learn to discriminate them as separate co-existences, having characters in common, roundness, yellowness, etc.; the objects will be recognised as individuals belonging to class round-yellow things. Here a general image having a general import is achieved. 287The particular characters, round, yellow, sweet, which always centred in and made up the individual orange, are recognised to have general scope in applying to many objects. Groups of characters had been achieved before by particular thinking, but now by general thought groups of characters as common are formed. From the practically coincident impressions it gains the notion orange, so that it recognises new individuals as individuals, and not as the individual or single object, as in the earlier and cruder identity method of thinking. The mind now—instead of saying “Same impressions, same object”—says “Same impressions, like objects.” Instead of making an object as a group of qualities, it makes a class of objects having the group of qualities in common. Concept-forming is thus often but an extension from what I have termed the particular concept; the group of qualities formed as characterizing the thing is through experience with co-existences predicated of things. Notion or idea of the orange precedes notion or idea of orange; but both are truly notions or concepts, a taking together of impressions, one of particular, the other of general import. The general significance of the particular group is first forced upon the mind by experience, but soon the mind generalizes as well as notices generalizations brought to it. Gradually the mind obtains power to generalize, not only from co-existences, but from successions, and later still to generalize by abstraction, to compare and pick out common features amidst the unlike, to search for unity in diversity.
The rise of generalizing power is through the struggle for existence; it originates, like all other mental processes, in practical needs. Law is thereby not simply acted upon or merely recognised, as in the associative stage: it is definitely sought for and applied. Art arises, and also science. The ability, given by generalizing power, of dealing with things in the lump, becomes of signal service, and specially distinguishes man. But the primary value of the 288concept in all its stages is not as a summation of experience, but as a guide for the future. Through reiterated grouping the concept-group is recognised as permanent factor, so that one element of a group being given, other elements are expected through a conscious assimilation with the past experience. The concept answering to the word orange, for example, is the mental product recognising a constant co-existence of certain qualities of shape, colour, size, taste, etc., so that from occurrence of one or more we infer other or others. Concepts are the inner groupings, the mental synthesizings, which interpret the outer groupings that we term laws of nature. In all this we see the inductive element in its conscious form, experience developing itself by anticipating future in terms of past.
We have now to consider briefly the psychological nature of judgment and reasoning with special reference to the inductive feature. Logically judgment is any connecting, plus affirming of reality, as effected through the copula. The copula is made, not only to denote relation, but reality of relation, to express, not only the act of connecting, but also its validity for the case in hand. Psychologically, judging may be regarded as any thinking, as any relating without reference to the things related, whether it be a joining of the conce............