EVIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL CAUSATION. 103 



to be false ; if we at once affirm that fact as an universal truth 

 or law of nature, without testing it by any of the four methods 

 of induction, nor deducing it from other known laws, we 

 shall in general err grossly : but we are perfectly justified in 

 affirming it as an empirical law, true within certain limits of 

 time, place, and circumstance, provided the number of coinci 

 dences be greater than can with any probability be ascribed to 

 chance. The reason for not extending it beyond those limits 

 is, that the fact of its holding true within them may be a con 

 sequence of collocations, which cannot be concluded to exist in 

 one place because they exist in another ; or may be dependent 

 on the accidental absence of counteracting agencies, which any 

 variation of time, or the smallest change of circumstances, 

 may possibly bring into play. If we suppose, then, the 

 subject-matter of any generalization to be so widely diffused 

 that there is no time, no place, and no combination of circum 

 stances, but must afford an example either of its truth or of its 

 falsity, and if it be never found otherwise than true, its truth 

 cannot depend on any collocations, unless such as exist at all 

 times and places ; nor can it be frustrated by any counteracting 

 agencies, unless by such as never actually occur. It is, there 

 fore, an empirical law coextensive with all human experience ; 

 at which point the distinction between empirical laws and 

 laws of nature vanishes, and the proposition takes its place 

 among the most firmly established as well as largest truths 

 accessible to science. 



Now, the most extensive in its subject-matter of all gene 

 ralizations which experience warrants, respecting the sequences 

 and coexistences of phenomena, is the law of causation. It 

 stands at the head of all observed uniformities, in point of 

 universality, and therefore (if the preceding observations are 

 correct) in point of certainty. And if we consider, not what 

 mankind would have been justified in believing in the infancy 

 of their knowledge, but what may rationally be believed in its 

 present more advanced state, we shall find ourselves warranted 

 in considering this fundamental law, though itself obtained by 

 induction from particular laws of causation, as not less certain, 

 but on the contrary, more so, than any of those from which it 



