position to which he has given, and is at all times ready to
give, his acquiescence. In such cases, we frequently content ourselves
with throwing before him this alternative--refuse your _major_, to
which you have again and again assented, or accept, as involved in it,
our _minor_ proposition, which you have persisted in controverting.

It will have been gathered from the foregoing train of observation,
that, in direct contradistinction to Archbishop Whately, who had
represented induction (so far as it consisted of an act of
ratiocination) as resolvable into deductive and syllogistic reasoning,
our author has resolved the syllogism, and indeed all deductive
reasoning whatever, ultimately into examples of induction. In doing
this, he is encountered by a metaphysical notion very prevalent in the
present day, which lies across his path, and which he has to remove.
We allude to the distinction between contingent and necessary truths;
it being held by many philosophical writers that all necessary and
universal truths owe their origin, not to experience (except as
_occasion_ of their development,) and not, consequently, to the
ordinary process of induction, but flow from higher sources--flow
immediately from some supreme faculty to which the name of reason has
by some been exclusively appropriated, in order to distinguish it from
the understanding, the faculty judging according to sense. We will
pause a while upon this topic.

_Contingent and Necessary Truths._--Those who have read Mr Whewell's
treatise on the _Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences_, will remember
that there is no topic which that author labours more sedulously to
inculcate than this same distinction between contingent and necessary
truths; and it is against his statement of the doctrine in question,
that Mr Mill directs his observations. Perhaps the controverted tenets
would have sustained a more equal combat under the auspices of a more
practised and more complete metaphysician than Mr Whewell; but a
difficulty was probably experienced in finding a statement in any
other well-known English author full and explicit. Referring ourselves
to Mr Whewell's volumes for an extract, in order to give the
distinction here contended against the advantage of an exposition in
the words of one who upholds it, we are embarrassed by the number
which offer themselves. From many we select the following statement:--

"Experience," says Mr Whewell, "must always consist of a