OPINIONS OF MR. STUART MILL. 147 



menon after phenomenon, as they become better knoicn 

 to us, are constantly passing from the latter class into 

 the former ; and in all cases in which that transi- 

 tion has not yet taken place, the absence of direct 

 proof is accounted for by the rarity or the obsciuity 

 of the phenomena, our deficient means of observ- 

 ing them, or the logical difficulties arising from the 

 complication of the circumstances in which they 

 occur ; insomuch that, notwithstanding as rigid a 

 dependence upon given conditions as exists in the 

 case of any other phenomenon, it was not likely 

 that we should be better acquainted with those 

 conditions than we are. Besides this first class of 

 considerations, there is a second, which still fur- 

 ther corroborates the conclusion, and from the 

 recognition of which the complete establishment 

 of the universal law may reasonably be dated. 

 Although there are phenomena, the production 

 and changes of which elude all our attempts to 

 reduce them universally to any ascertained law ; 

 yet in every such case, the phenomenon, or the objects 

 concerned in it, are found in some instances to obey the 

 known laiDS of nature. The wind, for example, is 

 the type of uncertainty and caprice, yet we find it 

 some cases obeying with as much constancy as 

 ly phenomena in nature the law of the tendency 

 A2 



