CONCEPTS OF &quot; REASON &quot; AND CA USE &quot; 5 7 



tree on the hill in front of my window was struck by lightning, 

 its foliage withered and burned, and its trunk rent asunder. This 

 individual event has happened once. With its own peculiar train of 

 circumstances, it had never happened before and it will never happen 

 again. But, at other times and places, other trees and houses and 

 people have been similarly struck by lightning. We examine 

 the effects produced by lightning in such cases. We try to find 

 out under what conditions exactly they have been produced. How 

 is it that the brilliant flash, which dazzles our eyes in the storm, 

 is accompanied by such effects? If our search be successful, we 

 shall learn the nature of the lightning, the law (that is, the how? 

 the quomodo ?} of its action, and we shall then understand, &quot; by their 

 causes&quot; the effects produced. 



To understand things by a knowledge of their causes is the aim 

 of all science. Now, even the most superficial observation of 

 the phenomena of nature convinces us that their variability is 

 bounded and ruled by a certain general sameness, or fixity, or 

 uniformity. The things of nature differ, no doubt, in many ways 

 from one another ; yet each of them belongs to a certain class, in 

 virtue of some common attributes else how or why would they 

 have common class names ? Each belongs to some specific type, 

 inorganic, vegetable, animal, human, whose fundamental uni 

 formity, and relative fixity, are ever conspicuous throughout the 

 incessant evolution and change of circumstance to which the 

 transient individuals of the class are subject. And what is true of 

 &quot; things &quot; is equally true of &quot; events &quot;. 



It will be observed, from the expressions italicized in the 

 foregoing paragraphs, that in the inductive process by which we 

 rise from facts to laws we are seeking for reasons, or explana 

 tions, for the how and the why of some phenomenon : we 

 regard this latter as an effect, and look for its cause : we observe 

 similarity amid variety : we study the conditions and circumstances 

 in which the phenomenon takes place: we analyse the causes 

 that lead up to it, and try to find out the nature of these causes 

 and the law according to which they act. Obviously, therefore, 

 our understanding of the inductive process will depend on our 

 manner of conceiving cause, reason, law, uniformity, identity, etc. 

 Hence, some explanation of the principles of &quot; Sufficient Reason,&quot; 

 and &quot;Causality,&quot; and &quot;Uniformity of Nature,&quot; and of their 

 bearing on the inductive process, is evidently called for at the 

 present stage. And first as to the Principle of Sufficient Reason. 



