LAW OF CAUSATION. 385 



once impressed) combined with the gravitation of the parts of 

 the earth towards one another. 



All phenomena without exception which begin to exist, 

 that is, all except the primeval causes, are effects either im- 

 mediate or remote of those primitive facts, or of some combi- 

 nation of them. There is no Thing produced, no event 

 happening, in the known universe, which is not connected 

 by an uniformity, or invariable sequence, with some one or 

 more of the phenomena which preceded it ; insomuch that it 

 will happen again as often as those phenomena occur again, 

 and as no other phenomenon having the character of a coun- 

 teracting cause shall coexist. These antecedent phenomena, 

 again, were connected in a similar manner with some that 

 preceded them ; and so on, until we reach, as the ultimate 

 step attainable by us, either the properties of some one 

 primeval cause, or the conjunction of several. The whole of 

 the phenomena of nature were therefore the necessary, or in 

 other words, the unconditional, consequences of some former 

 collocation of the Permanent Causes. 



The state of the whole universe at any instant, we believe 

 to be the consequence of its state at the previous instant ; 

 insomuch that one who knew all the agents which exist at the 

 present moment, their collocation in space, and all their pro- 

 perties, in other words, the laws of their agency, could predict 

 the whole subsequent history of the universe, at least unless 

 some new volition of a power capable of controlling the 

 universe should supervene.* And if any particular state of the 



* To the universality which mankind are agreed in ascribing to the Law of 

 Causation, there is one claim of exception, one disputed case, that of the Human 

 Will ; the determinations of which, a large class of metaphysicians are not 

 willing to regard as following the causes called motives, according to as strict 

 laws as those which they suppose to exist in the world of mere matter. This 

 controverted point will undergo a special examination when we come to treat 

 particularly of the Logic of the Moral Sciences (Book vi. ch. 2). In the mean 

 time I may remark that these metaphysicians, who, it must be observed, ground 

 the main part of their objection on the supposed repugnance of the doctrine in 

 question to our consciousness, seem to me to mistake the fact which conscious- 

 ness testifies against. What is really in contradiction to consciousness, they 



VOL. I. 25 



