particular _so far as can be discovered_, and _in all probability_ it
will always continue to be such. _High Probability_, amounting, it may
be, at times, to an assurance of certainty, is the strongest proof which
this Method can, from its very nature, produce. To establish a Principle
or Law for a _certainty beyond any possibility of doubt_ by the
Inductive Method, it is essential that we should know that we are in
possession of every Fact in the universe which has any relation to the
given Principle, or rather that we should know that there are _no_ Facts
in the universe at variance with it. To _know_ this, it is necessary to
be in possession of _all_ the Facts in the universe, since the Inductive
Method has no mode of discovering when it has sifted out of the immense
mass of Facts all those which exist in connection with any given Law. As
we shall _never_ be in possession of all the Facts of the universe, we
shall never be able, by the Inductive Method, to possess _certainty_ in
respect to the future operations of Nature; and thus we discover the
insufficiency of this Method as a perfect guide to the acquisition of
knowledge.

The famed Inductive Method, like the Anticipative or Hypothetical,
furnishes, in truth, only an _assumption_ as a starting point for
reasoning in the endeavor to establish other Facts than those already
known. The verification of the Law or Principle assumed is, indeed, in
the former Method, as complete as it can be, in the nature of the case,
while in the latter it is not; but we have just seen that the strongest
proof which Observation, Classification, and Induction can give is that
of High Probability, on the _supposition_ that a certain number of Facts
from which a Law is derived include substantially all that the whole
range of Phenomena belonging to the given sphere would represent. Any
possible application of the Inductive Method is, therefore, only a
nearer or more remote approximation to an Exactitude and Certainty which
the Method itself can never _fully_ attain.

The Inductive Method being thus defective as a Scientific guide, in the
most important requirement of Science, it is unnecessary to enter into
an exposition of minor defects, not the least of which is the _slowness_
with which conclusions must necessarily be arrived at, when they are
reached only by the gradual accumulation of Facts and the derivation of
a Law from these. A Method or a Process which lacks that which is the