2. The ministration to memory, aided by registering and arranging the
data, of observation and experiment in tables of instances of
agreement, difference and concomitant variations.
3. The ministration to intellect or reason, aided by the negative
elimination by means of contradictory instances of whatever in the
instances is not always present, absent and varying with the given
subject investigated, and finally by the positive inference that
whatever in the instances is always present, absent and varying with
the subject is its essential cause.
Bacon, like Aristotle, was anticipated in this or that point; but, as
Aristotle was the first to construct a system of deduction in the
syllogism and its three figures, so Bacon was the first to construct a
system of induction in three ministrations, in which the requisites of
induction, hitherto recognized only in sporadic hints, were combined
for the first time in one logic of induction. Bacon taught men to
labour in inferring from particular to universal, to lay as much
stress on induction as on deduction, and to think and speak of
inductive reasoning, inductive science, inductive logic. Moreover,
while Aristotle had the merit of discerning the triplicity of
inference, to Bacon we owe the merit of distinguishing the three
processes without reduction:--
1. Inference from particular to particular by Experientia Literata, in
plano;