INDUCTION. 



was drawn. It adds to them as much proof as it receives from 

 them. For there is probably no one even of the best esta- 

 blished laws of causation which is not sometimes counteracted, 

 and to which, therefore, apparent exceptions do not present 

 themselves, which would have necessarily and justly shaken 

 the confidence of mankind in the universality of those laws, if 

 inductive processes founded on the universal law had not 

 enabled us to refer those exceptions to the agency of counter- 

 acting causes, and thereby reconcile them with the law with 

 which they apparently conflict. Errors, moreover, may have 

 slipped into the statement of any one of the special laws, 

 through inattention to some material circumstance : and in- 

 stead of the true proposition, another may have been enun- 

 ciated, false as an universal law, though leading, in all cases 

 hitherto observed, to the same result. To the law of causation, 

 on the contrary, we not only do not know of any exception, 

 but the exceptions which limit or apparently invalidate the 

 special laws, are so far from contradicting the universal one, 

 that they confirm it ; since in all cases which are sufficiently 

 open to our observation, we are able to trace the difference of 

 result, either to the absence of a cause which had been present 

 in ordinary cases, or to the presence of one which had been 

 absent. 



The law of cause and effect, being thus certain, is capable 

 of imparting its certainty to all other inductive propositions 

 which can be deduced from it ; and the narrower inductions 

 may be regarded as receiving their ultimate sanction from 

 that law, since there is no one of them which is not rendered 

 more certain than it was before, when we are able to connect 

 it with that larger induction, and to show that it cannot be 

 denied, consistently with the law that everything which 

 begins to exist has a cause. And hence we are justified in 

 the seeming inconsistency, of holding induction by simple 

 enumeration to be good for proving this general truth, the 

 foundation of scientific induction, and yet refusing to rely on 

 it for any of the narrower inductions. I fully admit that if the 

 law of causation were unknown, generalization in the more 

 obvious cases of uniformity in phenomena would neverthless 



