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what lies perdu in the Meaning of its premisses. This, I am sure sounds Plausible, and I cannot demand more of my readers' attention than is requisite to making it so. I pass, then, to the warrant of Induction. This lies in the fact that it follows a Method which, though it may at first lead the inquirer into some error, yet pursued with the persistence it essentially requires is sure to correct its own error. Its weakest Order, Crude Presumption, as long as it is confined to the sphere of experience, must ultimately flatly contradict its first conclusion, if this was erroneous.
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For the idea of an experiential object that should never betray itself to experience would be self-contradictory.
Approximate induction makes with each new experiment, a new,—though not necessarily a better,—approximation to the truth. The law of approximation is that, considering any degree of error whatever, there will sometime come an approximation which is absolutely the last to be affected by as much error as that; and although we cannot make absolutely sure when that degree of error will disappear, we can inductively approximate to a correct estimate of this value each induction and to the value of this inductive estimate of it, and so indefinitely; but for the rapidly increasing expense of increased accuracy, combined with the absolute limitation of each item of personal wealth,—time, energy, money, all,—a limitation to the value of personal life on earth.
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The Third Grade, that which combines different inductive arguments, pro and con, and estimates their combined value, may be called Inductive Summation. It is itself of the nature of Induction, but is more intricate in its structure even than Quantitative Induction. I should therefore be disposed to pass it by here and the more so, that its application to the theological argument is easy, even if my study of it were not, as I must confess it is, still I shall say no more of it here.
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Finally, what logical validity can we attribute to the First Stage of Inquiry? This is the bottom question of Logical Critic. Over the chasm that yawns between the ultimate goal of science and such ideas of Man's environment as, coming over him during his primeval wanderings in the forest, while yet his very notion of error was of the vaguest, he managed to communicate to some
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fellow, we are building the cantilever bridge of Induction, held together by scientific struts and ties, yet every plank of its advance is first laid by Retroduction alone;—by the spontaneous conjectures of instinctive reason; and neither Deduction nor Induction contributing a single new concept to the structure; and this is neither less true nor less important for those Inquiries that self interest prompts.
The first answer to the question will be that we cannot help accepting the conjecture in the mode in which we do accept it;
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