My theory of Induction was substantially completed before I knew of
Comte’s book; and it is perhaps well that I came to it by a different
road from his, since the consequence has been that my treatise contains,
what his certainly does not, a reduction of the inductive process to
strict rules and to a scientific test, such as the Syllogism is for
ratiocination. Comte is always precise and profound on the methods of
investigation, but he does not even attempt any exact definition of the
conditions of proof: and his writings show that he never attained a just
conception of them. This, however, was specifically the problem which,
in treating of Induction, I had proposed to myself. Nevertheless, I
gained much from Comte, with which to enrich my chapters in the
subsequent rewriting: and his book was of essential service to me in some
of the parts which still remained to be thought out. As his subsequent
volumes successively made their appearance, I read them with avidity,
but, when he reached the subject of Social Science, with varying
feelings. The fourth volume disappointed me: it contained those of his
opinions on social subjects with which I most disagree. But the fifth,
containing the connected view of history, rekindled all my enthusiasm;
which the sixth (or concluding) volume did not materially abate. In a
merely logical point of view, the only leading conception for which I am
indebted to him is that of the Inverse Deductive Method, as the one
chiefly applicable to the complicated subjects of History and
Statistics: a process differing from the more common form of the
Deductive Method in this—that instead of arriving at its conclusions by
general reasoning, and verifying them by specific experience (as is the
natural order in the deductive branches of physical science), it obtains
its generalizations by a collation of specific experience, and verifies
them by ascertaining whether they are such as would follow from known
general principles, This was an idea entirely new to me when I found it
in Comte: and but for him I might not soon (if ever) have arrived at it.
Note from KBJ: Mill's intellectual honesty extended to giving credit to those from whom he learned. He did not try to take credit for ideas he got from others, such as Comte.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 