380 METHODOLOGY OF SCIENCE 



in the relation of cause and effect. We found that the connection 

 between each definite cause and its effect is an empirically synthetic 

 one and has as its warrant merely experience. We saw further that 

 the necessity inherent in the causal connection contains merely the 

 demand that there shall be something fundamental in the constantly 

 preceding a which makes the appearance of b necessary; not, however, 

 that it informs us what this efficacy really is, and hence also not that 

 it informs us how this efficacy brings about its effect. Finally, we 

 had to urge that every induction, the most general no less than the 

 most particular, depends upon the presupposition that the same 

 causes will be given in the reality not yet observed as in that already 

 observed. This expectation is warranted by no necessity of thought, 

 not even by that involved in the relation of cause and effect; for 

 this relation begins for future experience only when the presup- 

 position that the same causes will be found in it is assumed as ful- 

 filled. 1 This expectation is then dependent solely upon previous 

 experience, whose servants we are, whose lords we can never be. 

 Therefore, every induction is an hypothesis requiring the verification 

 of a broader experience, since, in its work of widening and completing 

 our knowledge, it leads us beyond the given experience to a possible 

 one. In this respect we can call all inductive thought empirical, 

 that is, thought that begins with experience, is directed to experience, 

 and in its results is referred to experience. The office of this progress- 

 ing empirical thought is accordingly to form hypotheses from which 

 the data of perception can be regressively deduced, and by means of 

 which they can be exhibited as cases of known relations of our well- 

 ordered experience, and thus can be explained. 



The way of forming hypotheses can be divided logically into 

 different sections which can readily be made clear by an example. 

 The police magistrate finds a human corpse under circumstances 

 that eliminate the possibility of accident, natural death, or suicide; 

 in short, that indicate an act of violence on the part of another man. 

 The general hypothesis that he has here to do with a crime against 

 life forms the guide of his investigation. The result of the circum- 

 stantial evidence, which we presuppose as necessary, furnishes then 

 a special hypothesis as following from the general hypothesis. 



It is clear that this division holds for all cases of forming hypo- 

 theses. A general hypothesis serves every special hypothesis as a 

 heuristic principle. In the former we comprehend the causal explan- 

 ation indicated immediately by the facts revealed to our perception 



1 The only empiricism which can maintain that the same causes would, in con- 

 formity with the causal law, be given in the unobserved reality, is one which puts 

 all events that can be regarded as causes in the immediately given content of 

 perception as its members. Such a view is not to be found in Mill; and it stands 

 so completely in the way of all further analysis required of us by every perception 

 of events that no attention has been paid in the text to this extreme of extremes. 



