54 Origin, or Process of Causation of the Series. [CHAP. in. 



artificial. In the tossing of a penny, for instance, the objects 

 would be the penny or pence which were successively 

 thrown; the agencies would be the act of throwing, and 

 everything which combined directly or indirectly with this 

 to make any particular face come uppermost. This is a 

 simple and intelligible division, and can easily be so ex 

 tended in meaning as to embrace every class of objects with 

 which we are concerned. 



Now if, in any two or more cases, we had the same 

 object, or objects indistinguishably alike, and if they were 

 exposed to the influence of agencies in all respects precisely 

 alike, we should expect the results to be precisely similar. 

 By one of the applications of the familiar principle of the 

 uniformity of nature we should be confident that exact 

 likeness in the antecedents would be followed by exact 

 likeness in the consequents. If the same penny, or similar 

 pence, were thrown in exactly the same way, we should 

 invariably find that the same face falls uppermost. 



2. What we actually find is, of course, very far re 

 moved from this. In the case of the objects, when the 

 are artificial constructions, e.g. dice, pence, cards, it is true 

 that they are purposely made as nearly as possible indis 

 tinguishably alike. We either use the same thing over an 

 over again or different ones made according to precisel 

 the same model. But in natural objects nothing of th 

 sort prevails. In fact when we come to examine them, w 

 find reproduced in them precisely the same characteristi 

 as those which present themselves in the final result which 

 we were asked to explain, so that unless we examine them 

 a stage further back, as we shall have to do to some extent 

 at any rate, we seem to be merely postulating again the 

 very peculiarity of the phenomena which we were under 

 taking to explain. They will be found, for instance, to 



