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10

If the phenomenon, when it comes, fulfills that
expectation, it strengthens the habits of thinking on which that
expectation is based, but teaches us nothing new.
But if it involves any surprise, as it mostly
does, our habits of thinking are deranged, whether
little or much. We then feel the need of a new
idea which shall serve to bind the surprising
phenomenon to our preëxisting experience.
Our usual phrase is that we want the surprising
fact explained. For this pur With this end in view we are
led to frame a hypothesis, and the process
of reasoning by which we come to set up a
hypothesis is the kind of reasoning that I
call Abduction. Now this hypothesis is
a purely ideal state of things, and upon the

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