164 INDUCTION. 



rence approximate generalizations usually have a large share. 

 If, therefore, we make our election to hold by the law, no 

 quantity of evidence whatever ought to persuade us that there 

 has occurred anything in contradiction to it. If, indeed, the 

 evidence produced is such that it is more likely that the set of 

 observations and experiments on which the law rests should 

 have been inaccurately performed or incorrectly interpreted, 

 than that the evidence in question should be false, we may 

 believe the evidence ; but then we must abandon the law. 

 And since the law was received on what seemed a complete 

 induction, it can only be rejected on evidence equivalent ; 

 namely, as being inconsistent not with any number of approxi- 

 mate generalizations, but with some other and better esta- 

 blished law of nature. This extreme case, of a conflict between 

 two supposed laws of nature, has probably never actually 

 occurred where, in the process of investigating both the laws, 

 the true canons of scientific induction had been kept in view ; 

 but if it did occur, it must terminate in the total rejection of 

 one of the supposed laws. It would prove that there must be 

 a flaw in the logical process by which either one or the other 

 was established : and if there be so, that supposed general truth 

 is no truth at all. We cannot admit a proposition as a law of 

 nature, and yet believe a fact in real contradiction to it. We 

 must disbelieve the alleged fact, or believe that we were mis- 

 taken in admitting the supposed law. 



But in order that any alleged fact should be contradictory 

 to a law of causation, the allegation must be, not simply that 

 the cause existed without being followed by the effect, for that 

 would be no uncommon occurrence ; but that this happened in 

 the absence of any adequate counteracting cause. Now in the 

 case of an alleged miracle, the assertion is the exact opposite of 

 this. It is, that the effect was defeated, not in the absence, 

 but in consequence of a counteracting cause, namely, a direct 

 interposition of an act of the will of some being who has 

 power over nature; and in particular of a Being, whose will 

 being assumed to have endowed all the causes with the 

 powers by which they produce their effects, may well be 

 supposed able to counteract them. A miracle (as was justly 



