370 THE CAUSES OF THE XI 
something has opened the window. A second 
general law that you have arrived at in the same 
way is, that tea-pots and spoons do not go out of 
a window spontaneously, and you are satisfied that, 
as they are not now where you left them, they 
have been removed. In the third place, you look 
at the marks on the window-sill, and the shoe- 
marks outside, and you say that in all previous: 
experience the former kind of mark has never 
been produced by anything else but the hand of a 
human being ; and the same experience shows that 
no other animal but man at present wears shoes 
with hob-nails in them such as would produce the: 
marks in the gravel. Ido not know, even if we 
could discover any of those “ missing links ” thatt 
are talked about, that they would help us to an 
other conclusion! At any rate the law which 
states our present experience is strong enough fo; 
my present purpose. You next reach the con- 
clusion, that as these kinds of marks have not beer 
left by any other animals than men, or are liable 
to be formed in any other way than by a man’ 
hand and shoe, the marks in question have bee 
formed by a man in that way. You have, further 
a general law, founded on observation and experi 
ence, and that, too, is, 1 am sorry to say, a ver 
universal and unimpeachable one,—that some me) 
are thieves ; and you assume at once from all thes 
premisses—and that is what constitutes you 
hypothesis—that the man who made the mar. 
