OPINIONS OF MR. STUART MILL. 145 



and wisdom of God ! . . ." He adds, " No, there 

 is nothing atheistic, nothing irreligious, in the 

 attempt to conceive creation, as well as repro- 

 duction, carried on by universal laws."* 



There is, however, no more interesting or valu- 

 able testimony to universal causation than that 

 presented in the system of Logic of Mr. Stuart 

 ]Mill. If, in the following extract, we were to 

 substitute the creation of organisms for human 

 volitions, it would apply remarkably well to the 

 state of the argument presented in the present 

 volume : 



" The conviction that phenomena have invari- 

 able laws, and follow with regidarity certain ante- 

 cedent phenomena, was only acquired gradually, 

 and extended itself, as knowledge advanced, from 

 one order of phenomena to another, beginning 

 with those whose laws were most accessible to 

 I ibservation. This progress has not yet attained 

 its ultimate point ; there being still one class of 

 phenomena [hiunan volitions], the subjection of 

 which to invariable laws is not yet universally re- 



ignised. So long as any doubt hung over this 

 fundamental principle, the various methods of in- 

 duction which took that principle for granted could 



* Review of Vestiges, Blackwood's Magazine, April, 1845. 

 h 



