145

G97

certain inductive inquiries that would otherwise be requisite. But they leave other inductions (such as that which led Mendeléef to enunciate his periodic law,) quite untouched, not explaining them in any sense.

The true guarantee of the validity of induction is that it is a method of reaching conclusions which, if it be persisted in long enough, will assuredly correct any error concerning future experience into which it may temporarily lead us. This it will do not by virtue of any deductive necessity (since it never uses all the facts of experience even of the past,) but because it is manifestly adequate, with the aid of retroduction and of deductions from retroductive suggestions, to discovering any regularity there may be among experiences, while