92 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



dence. Mill, though urging this view of the matter, 

 had never formed any clear ideas on the sub- 

 ject. Observe that the method of simple enumer- 

 ation consists in ascribing the character of gen- 

 eral truths to all propositions which are true 

 in every instance that we happen to know of 

 Uncertainty enters in a double manner : there 

 is the uncertainty whether what is true of cer- 

 tain particular cases is true of all other cases. 

 This uncertainty would be gradually removed by 

 increasing the number of cases examined. The 

 other uncertainty depends upon the difficulty of 

 showing that any one consequent follows from an 

 invariable antecedent. Now, Mill makes it abun- 

 dantly plain that only the Method of Difference 

 can establish this fact of sequence with certainty. 

 It follows that every other method of ascertain- 

 ing the connection can give it only with a degree 

 of probability. Then every particular case to 

 which we apply simple enumeration is more or 

 less uncertain ; and, so far as this uncertainty is 

 common to all the cases, no multiplication of new 

 cases can remove the uncertainty. In fact, it 

 comes to this, that the degree of certainty (that is, 

 more properly speaking, probability) which we can 

 give to the universal law of causation cannot ex- 

 ceed, and may fall short of, the certainty of the 

 process by which we discover the connection of 

 causes and effects, prior to the establishment of 

 the great experimental methods. Now, as those 

 methods are expounded as the modes of discover- 

 ing causation, and are often described as the only 

 modes of proving causation, we are again left by 

 Mill without any analysis of the real base of his 

 system. There is an evident vicious circle. The 



Method of Difference proves causation ; it reposes 

 on the universal law of causation ; which is 

 gathered by simple enumeration from particular 

 cases of causation ; which are proved by a pro- 

 cess left quite undescribed by Mill, unless it be 

 the Method of Difference. Observe, carefully, 

 that the particular cases to which we apply in- 

 duction by simple enumeration must be proved, 

 or else the uncertainty attaching to all of them 

 will attach also to the universal law, and to the 

 methods of experiment founded upon it. 



There is no difficulty in pointing out the mis- 

 take which led Mill into so much trouble. That 

 mistake consisted in basing his Experimental 

 Methods upon the law of causation. His exposi- 

 tion of those methods is faulty and objectionable 

 in several different ways, and, as I have before 

 remarked, the brief and simple rules of Herschel 

 are to be preferred. But the principal fault is 

 that, instead of employing the methods of induc- 

 tion to ascertain the general law of causation, he 

 put the cart before the horse, and used the law 

 of causation to support the methods. He was 

 wrong again in excluding from use the theory of 

 probabilities ; he holds that a single perfect ex- 

 periment proves a general law, which must mean, 

 if it means anything, that it proves the law with 

 certainty, a result opposed to all science and to 

 all common-sense. It is quite to be expected 

 that a philosopher who seriously proposed to 

 base the " scientific upon the unscientific " should 

 meet with paradox and inconsistency in all direc- 

 tions. Such will also be the fate of all who try 

 to uphold Mill's views of the relation between 

 causation and induction. — Contemporary Review. 



THE LIVERY OF WOE. 



IT is a strange thing in the ceremonialism of 

 life that the frankest of emotions should be 

 of all others bound the most to be conventional, 

 that what is held to be the most sacred of emo- 

 tions should be compelled to obtrude itself on all 

 beholders and to trick itself out for the common 

 gaze duly intense to the regulation pattern. Sor- 

 row for the dead must be sorrow by the yard ; 

 regrets have their measure in the width of a hat- 

 band and the depth of a tuck. Other griefs are 

 taught to go patient and obscure, but this flaunts 

 itself in uniform, puts on, as it were, a label 

 " Genuine grief, very decorous," makes its out- 



ward garb its advertisement. And the display is 

 avowedly and absolutely under the rules of fash- 

 ion and etiquette ; it has no spontaneous symbol- 

 ism, no meaning of its own at all. It simply says : 

 " Look at me ; this is how sorry my respectability 

 requires me to be in the present state ; " and, by- 

 and-by : " Look at me ; my respectability requires 

 me to be so far consoled at this period of my 

 grief; " and society accepts the clothes as a for- 

 mal certificate, and it is understood that, whether 

 there be actual sorrow or no, there is no hypoc- 

 risy, since the respectability, not the sorrow, is 

 what the clothes really indicate. The milliner's 



