man can observe are individual
cases.... A general truth is but an aggregate of particular truths.
But a general proposition is not merely a compendious form for
recording a number of particular facts.... It is also a process of
inference. From instances which we have observed we feel warranted in
concluding that what we have found true in those instances, holds in
all similar ones, past, present, and future. We then record all that
we have observed together with what we infer from our observations,
in one concise expression." A general proposition is thus at once a
summary of particular facts and a memorandum of our right to
infer from them. And when we make a deduction we are, as it were,
interpreting this memorandum. But it is upon the particular facts
that the inference really rests, and Mill contends that we might if we
chose infer to the particular conclusion at once without going through
the form of a general inference. Thus Mills seeks to make good his
point that all inference is essentially Inductive, and that it is
only for convenience that the word Induction has been confined to the
general induction, while the word Deduction is applied to the process
of interpreting our memorandum.

Clear and consecutive as this argument is, it is fundamentally
confusing. It confuses the nature of Syllogistic conclusion or
Deduction, and at the same time gives a partial and incomplete account
of the ground of Material inference.

The root of the first confusion lies in raising the question of the
ground of material inference in connexion with the Syllogism. As
regards the usefulness of the Syllogism, this is an IGNORATIO ELENCHI.
That the Major and the conclusion rest upon the same ground as
matters of belief is indisputable: but it is irrelevant. In so far
as "Socrates is mortal" is an inference from facts, it is not the
conclusion of a Syllogism. This is implicitly and with unconscious
inconsistency recognised by Mill when he represents Deduction as
the interpretation of a memorandum. To represent Deduction as the
interpretation of a memorandum--a very happy way of putting it and
quite in accordance with Roger Bacon's view--is really inconsistent
with regarding Deduction as an occasional step in the process of
Induction. If Deduction is the interpretation of a memorandum, it
is no part of the process of inference from facts. The conditions of
correct interpretation as laid down in Syllogism are one thing,
and the metho