of which have been observed.
Generalization is not a process of mere naming, it is
also a process of inference. From instances which we
have observed, we feel warranted in concluding, that
what we found true in those instances holds in all
similar ones--past, present, and future, however
numerous they may be. We, then, by that valuable
contrivance of language, which enables us to speak of
many as if they were one, record all that we have
observed, together with all that we infer from our
observations, in one concise expression; and have thus
only one proposition, instead of an endless number, to
remember or to communicate. The results of many
observations and inferences, and instructions for making
innumerable inferences in unforeseen cases, are
compressed into one short sentence.

"When, therefore, we conclude, from the death of John
and Thomas, and every other person we ever heard of in
whose case the experiment had been fairly tried, that
the Duke of Wellington is mortal like the rest, we may,
indeed, pass through the generalization, All men are
mortal, as an intermediate stage; but it is not in the
latter half of the process--the descent from all men to
the Duke of Wellington--that the _inference_ resides.
The inference is finished when we have asserted that all
men are mortal. What remains to be performed afterwards
is merely deciphering our own notes.

"Archbishop Whately has contended, that syllogizing, or
reasoning from generals to particulars, is not,
agreeably to the vulgar idea, a peculiar mode of
reasoning, but the philosophical analysis of the mode in
which all men reason, and must do so if they reason at
all. With the deference due to so high an authority, I
cannot help thinking that the vulgar notion is, in this
case, the more correct. If, from our experience of John,
Thomas, &c. who once were living, but are now dead, we
are entitled to conclude that all human beings are
mortal, we might surely, without any logical
inconsequence, have concluded at once, from those
instances, that the Duke Wellington is mortal. The
mortality of John, Thomas, and Company, is, after all,
the whole evidence we have for the mortality of the Duke
of Wellington. Not one iota is added to the proof by
interpolating a general proposition. Since the