UNIFORMITY OF NATURE 107 



than the Empiricists, and a larger role to sense than the Idealists, for replacing 

 the Agnosticism of the former, and the Pantheism or Monism of the latter, by 

 the philosophy of Christian Theism, which teaches that the world was created 

 by an All-wise Deity, and is conserved and governed by His power and provi 

 dence. 



Writers in sympathy with a spiritualist or idealist interpretation of experi 

 ence have furnished very destructive criticisms of Empiricism. But their own 

 substitutes are often far from satisfactory. We may instance the account of 

 uniformity given by Mr. Joseph. 1 He deals with the principle as interpreted 

 in the categorical sense, i.e. as believed by us to be de facto applicable to the 

 universe revealed to us in sense experience. He shows clearly and conclu 

 sively that it cannot be established by induction in the manner propounded by 

 Mill. 2 His own view is that uniformity is a postulate, an assumption which 

 must be made antecedently to all induction : &quot; all induction assumes the 

 existence of universal connexions in nature &quot;. ;t He points out also, and rightly, 

 that belief in the uniformity of the causal relation really involves belief in its 

 necessary character, belief that it is a law* But he goes on to draw a dis 

 tinction between &quot; conditional &quot; and &quot; unconditional &quot; laws or principles. A 

 &quot;conditional&quot; principle he defines as one whose truth &quot;depends upon con 

 ditions which are not stated in if&quot;; 5 such a principle, therefore, may &quot;admit 

 of exception &quot; B when any of those unmentioned conditions are not verified. 

 An &quot;unconditional&quot; principle is, of course, one which is true absolutely 

 and unconditionally, one &quot; that can have no exception &quot;. 7 The uniformity of 

 nature he apparently holds to be an unconditional principle or law, for he says 

 it &quot; involves the truth, without exception or qualification, of all unconditional 

 laws &quot;. s Let us see, then, how he attempts to show that it is unconditional. 

 For, if the principle of uniform causation is unconditional, it undoubtedly 

 &quot;becomes . . . important to determine, if possible, when we have discovered 

 an unconditional law&quot;. 9 He gives us two tests, one admittedly satisfactory ; 

 the other admittedly less so. Theyfrr/ is simply cogent self-evidence : &quot;if a 

 principle is self-evident it must be unconditional &quot;. 10 Such truths, therefore, as 

 &quot;two and two are four,&quot; &quot;ex nihilo nihil fit&quot; &quot;a thing must be itself,&quot; etc. 

 are unconditional because self-evident. So, too, is the abstract, hypothetical 

 statement of uniformity &quot;if natural causes have fixed, stable modes of 

 acting . . . they will produce similar effects in similar circumstances &quot; &quot; un 

 conditional &quot; because it is &quot; self-evident &quot;. But is the categorical statement, that 

 &quot;nature actually is and must be uniform,&quot; a self-evident proposition? It 

 certainly is not. 11 



I op. cit., c. xix. 2 pp. 387-389. 3 p. 371. 4 pp. 376 3qq. 

 5 p. 381. p. 386. 7 p. 382. 8 p. 381. 



9 p. 382. 10 p. 386 ; cf. p. 384. 



II We cannot claim the categorical principle to be self-evident unless we claim 

 that the application of our abstract, universal concepts (and of the evidently necessary 

 and universal abstract truths which the mind enunciates by comparing these con 

 cepts with one another) to the concrete data of our sense experience (for the inter 

 pretation of these latter), is an evidently valid process ; in other words, unless we 

 claim that the doctrine of Realism in regard to the significance of our intellectual 

 concepts is, in some form or other, an evidently true doctrine : an indefensible claim, 

 because some forms of realism are not true, and the true form is not evident. Yet, 



