The attempt is made to resolve certain laws of nature into a more general law, that law not being one which, though real, is inappropriate, but one wholly imaginary.
Chapter III. Of Naming, As Subsidiary To Induction.
Professor Bain.
This sentence having been erroneously understood as if I had meant to assert that belief is nothing but an irresistible association, I think it necessary to observe that I express no theory respecting the ultimate analysis either of reasoning or of belief, two of the most obscure points in analytical psychology. I am speaking not of the powers themselves, but of the previous conditions necessary to enable those powers to exert themselves: of which conditions I am contending that language is not one, senses and association being sufficient without it. The irresistible association theory of belief, and the difficulties connected with the subject, have been discussed at length in the notes to the new edition of Mr. James Mill’s Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind.
Mr. Bailey agrees with me in thinking that whenever “from something actually present to my senses, conjoined with past experience, I feel satisfied that something has happened, or will happen, or is happening, beyond the sphere of my personal observation,” I may with strict propriety be said to reason: and of course to reason inductively, for demonstrative reasoning is excluded by the circumstances of the case. (The Theory of Reasoning, 2d ed., p. 27.)
Chapter IV. Of The Requisites Of A Philosophical Language, And The Principles Of Definition.
Novum Organum Renovatum, pp. 35-37.
Novum Organum Renovatum, pp. 39, 40.