In illustration of generalising from single instances, Miss Martineau gives this example:--'A raw Chinese traveller in England was landed by a Thames waterman who had a wooden leg. The stranger saw that the wooden leg was used to stand in the water with, while the other was high and dry. The apparent economy of the fact struck the Chinese; he saw in it strong evidence of design, and wrote home that in England one-legged men are kept for watermen, to the saving of all injury to health, shoe, and stocking, from standing in the river.'*
Falls like an inverted cone, Wanting its proper base to stand upon.
Samuel Bailey has furnished, in one passage, both a clear illustration of the process, and the validity of an induction:--'Whoever had witnessed the acts of a landlord to his tenants, of a schoolmaster to his pupils, of artizans towards their apprentices, of husbands towards their wives, on points where the power of the superior could not be contested, and where his personal gratification was incompatible with just conduct to the subordinate, would necessarily have formed in his own mind a species of general rule; and from this rule he might safely draw an inference as to what would be the conduct of a despot, seated on a throne, in the possession of unchecked authority; assisted too, as the inquirer would be, by that _indispensable and inestimable guide to the knowledge of mankind, an appeal to his own feelings_, in a variety of _analogous_ instances.
'We conclude, that a ruler with uncontrolled power will act the tyrant, not merely from the fact that Caligula, or Nero, or Bonaparte did, but from a thousand facts attesting that men, in, every situation, use uncontrolled power in this way--just as we infer that all bodies tend to the centre of the earth, _not merely from the circumstance of an apple dropping from a tree, but from seeing the tendency in stones, water, animals, and all things within our observation_. The use of uncontrolled power, for the gratification of the possessor, without an equitable respect to others, is no more peculiar to monarchs, than a tendency to the earth is peculiar to apples. It may be useful to know that _monarchs_ act in this way, as it may be useful to know that apples drop to the ground; but it is much more useful to know that _men_ act in this manner. _An inference is safer when gathered from the widest induction.'_
