106 INDUCTION, 



made to the general truth that every event has a cause. The 

 utmost certainty which can be given to a conclusion arrived at 

 in the way of inference, stops at this point. When we have 

 ascertained that the particular conclusion must stand or fall 

 with the general uniformity of the laws of nature that it is 

 liahle to no doubt except the doubt whether every event has a 

 cause we have done all that can be done for it. The strongest 

 assurance we can obtain of any theory respecting the cause of 

 a given phenomenon, is that the phenomenon has either that 

 cause or none. 



The latter supposition might have been an admissible one in 

 a very early period of our study of nature. But we have been 

 able to perceive that in the stage which mankind have now 

 reached, the generalization which gives the Law of Universal 

 Causation has grown into a stronger and better induction, one 

 deserving of greater reliance, than any of the subordinate 

 generalizations. We may even, I think, go a step further 

 than this, and regard the certainty of that great induction 

 as not merely comparative, but, for all practical purposes, 

 absolute. 



The considerations which, as I apprehend, give, at the 

 present day, to the proof of the law of uniformity of succession 

 as true of all phenomena without exception, this character of 

 completeness and conclusiveness, are the following: First, 

 that we now know it directly to be true of far the greatest 

 number of phenomena ; that there are none of which we know 

 it not to be true, the utmost that can be said being, that of 

 some we cannot positively from direct evidence affirm its 

 truth ; while phenomenon after phenomenon, as they become 

 better known to us, are constantly passing from the latter 

 class into the former ; and in all cases in which that transition 

 has not yet taken place, the absence of direct proof is ac- 

 counted for by the rarity or the obscurity of the phenomena, 

 our deficient means of observing them, or the logical diffi* 

 culties arising from the complication of the circumstances in 

 which they occur ; insomuch that, notwithstanding as rigid a 

 dependence on given conditions as exists in the case of any 

 other phenomenon, it was not likely that we should be better 



