COEXISTENCES INDEPENDENT OF CAUSATION. 115 



tion of one great deficiency, which precludes the application 

 to the ultimate uniformities of coexistence, of a system of 

 rigorous scientific induction, such as the uniformities in the 

 succession of phenomena have been found to admit of. The 

 basis of such a system is wanting : there is no general axiom, 

 standing in the same relation to the uniformities of coexistence 

 as the law of causation does to those of succession. The 

 Methods of Induction applicable to the ascertainment of causes 

 and effects, are grounded on the principle that everything 

 which has a beginning must have some cause or other ; that 

 among the circumstances which actually existed at the time of 

 its commencement, there is certainly some one combination, 

 on which the effect in question is unconditionally consequent, 

 and on the repetition of which it would certainly again recur. 

 But in an inquiry whether some kind (as crow) universally 

 possesses a certain property (as blackness), there is no room 

 for any assumption analogous to this. We have no previous 

 certainty that the property must have something which con- 

 stantly coexists with it ; must have an invariable coexistent, in 

 the same manner as an event must have an invariable ante- 

 cedent. When we feel pain, we must be in some circumstances 

 under which if exactly repeated we should always feel pain. 

 But when we are conscious of blackness, it does not follow that 

 there is something else present of which blackness is a constant 

 accompaniment. There is, therefore, no room for elimination ; 

 no Method of Agreement or Difference, or of Concomitant 

 Variations (which is but a modification either of the Method 

 of Agreement or of the Method of Difference). We cannot 

 conclude that the blackness we see in crows must be an inva- 

 riable property of crows, merely because there is nothing else 

 present of which it can be an invariable property. We there- 

 fore inquire into the truth of a proposition like " All crows are 

 black," under the same disadvantage as if, in our inquiries into 

 causation, we were compelled to let in, as one of the possi- 

 bilities, that the effect may in that particular instance have 

 arisen without any cause at all. 



To overlook this grand distinction was, as it seems to me, 

 the capital error in Bacon's view of inductive philosophy. 



82 



