EVIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL CAUSATION. 



105 



be possible, and though in all cases more or less precarious, 

 and in some extremely so, would suffice to constitute a certain 

 measure of probability : but what the amount of this proba- 

 bility might be, we are dispensed from estimating, since it 

 never could amount to the degree of assurance which the pro- 

 position acquires, when, by the application to it of the Four 

 Methods, the supposition of its falsity is shown to be incon- 

 sistent with the Law of Causation. We are therefore logically 

 entitled, and, by the necessities of scientific Induction, required, 

 to disregard the probabilities derived from the early rude 

 method of generalizing, and to consider no minor generaliza- 

 tion as proved except so far as the law of causation confirms 

 it, nor probable except so far as it may reasonably be expected 

 to be so confirmed. 



4. The assertion, that our inductive processes assume 

 the law of causation, while the law of causation is itself a 

 case of induction, is a paradox, only on the old theory of 

 reasoning, which supposes the universal truth, or major pre- 

 mise, in a ratiocination, to be the real proof of the particular 

 truths which are ostensibly inferred from it. According to the 

 doctrine maintained in the present treatise,* the major premise 

 is not the proof of the conclusion, but is itself proved, along 

 with the conclusion from the same evidence. " All men are 

 mortal" is not the proof that Lord Palmerston is mortal ; but 

 our past experience of mortality authorizes us to infer both 

 the general truth and the particular fact, and the one with 

 exactly the same degree of assurance as the other. The mortality 

 of Lord Palmerston is not an inference from the mortality of all 

 men, but from the experience which proves the mortality of all 

 men ; and is a correct inference from experience, if that general 

 truth is so too. This relation between our general beliefs 

 and their particular applications holds equally true in the 

 more comprehensive case which we are now discussing. Any 

 new fact of causation inferred by induction, is rightly inferred, 

 if no other objection can be made to the inference than can be 



* Book ii. chap. iii. 



