hat
induction is defined as a process of going from the particular to the
general. Moreover, since induction leads to the formation of a universal
judgment, or general truth, it differs from the generalizing process
known as conception, which leads to the formation of a concept, or
general idea. It is evident, however, that the process will enrich the
concept involved in the new judgment. When the mind is able to affirm
that air exerts pressure, the property, exerting-pressure, is at once
synthesised into the notion air. This point will again be referred to in
comparing induction and conception as generalizing processes.

In speaking of induction as a process of going from the particular to
the general, this does not signify that the process deals with
individual notions. The particulars in an inductive process are
particular cases giving rise to particular judgments, and judgments
involve concepts, or general ideas. When, in the inductive process, it
is asserted that air holds the card to the glass, the mind is seeking to
establish a relation between the notions air and pressure, and is,
therefore, thinking in concepts. For this reason, it is usually said
that induction takes for granted ordinary relations as involved in our
everyday concepts, and concerns itself only with the more hidden
relations of things. The significance of induction as a process of going
from the particular to the general, therefore, consists in the fact that
the conclusion is held to be a wider judgment than is contained in any
of the premises.

=Particular Truth Implies the General.=--Describing the premises of an
inductive process as particular truths, and the conclusion as a
universal truth, however, involves the same fiction as was noted in
separating the percept and the concept into two distinct types of
notions. In the first place, my particular judgment, that air presses
the card against the glass, is itself a deduction resting upon other
general principles. Secondly, if the judgment that air presses the card
against the glass contains no element of universal truth, then a
thousand such judgments could give no universal truth. Moreover, if the
mind approaches a process of induction with a problem, or hypothesis,
before it, the general truth is already apprehended hypothetically in
thought even before the particular instances are examined. When we set
out, for instance, to investigate whether the line joining the bisecting
points of the