CHAPTER XIV. 



OF THE LIMITS TO THE EXPLANATION OF LAWS OF 

 NATURE; AND OF HYPOTHESES. 



1. THE preceding considerations have led us to recognise 

 a distinction between two kinds of laws, or observed uniformi 

 ties in nature : ultimate laws, and what may be termed deri 

 vative laws. Derivative laws are such as are deducible from, 

 and may, in any of the modes which we have pointed out, be 

 resolved into, other and more general ones. Ultimate laws are 

 those which cannot. We are not sure that any of the uniformi 

 ties with which we are yet acquainted are ultimate laws ; but 

 we know that there must be ultimate laws; and that every re 

 solution of a derivative law into more general laws, brings us 

 nearer to them. 



Since we are continually discovering that uniformities, not 

 previously known to be other than ultimate, are derivative, and 

 resolvable into more general laws ; since (in other words) we 

 are continually discovering the explanation of some sequence 

 which was previously known only as a fact ; it becomes an 

 interesting question whether there are any necessary limits 

 to this philosophical operation, or whether it may proceed 

 until all the uniform sequences in nature are resolved into some 

 one universal law. For this seems, at first sight, to be the 

 ultimatum towards which the progress of induction, by the 

 Deductive Method resting on a basis of observation and experi 

 ment, is tending. Projects of this kind were universal in the 

 infancy of philosophy ; any speculations which held out a less 

 brilliant prospect, being in those early times deemed not worth 

 pursuing. And the idea receives so much apparent counte 

 nance from the nature of the most remarkable achievements 

 of modern science, that speculators are even now frequently 



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