DIFFICULTY OF GENERALISING WITH SAFETY. 403 



generalised consistency. At the end of a research it is 

 usual to generalise to the utmost extent that the facts will 

 warrant ; and thus embody the substance of the results in 

 the briefest collection of general statements. In drawing 

 up such statements we should carefully avoid all theoretical 

 language, and drawing conclusions which are larger than 

 the evidence warrants. 1 



CHAPTER XLVI. 



DISCOVERY OF DYNAMIC CAUSES. 



Through infinite time and space causation runs 

 Alike uninfluenced by the growth or fall of suns. 



We are surrounded on all sides by mysterious phenomena ; 

 and when we perceive an unexplained effect we feel a 

 natural curiosity to seek its cause. Thus, after having 

 made all the experiments of a research, classified all the 

 results of them in every conceivable way, and drawn from 

 those various classes the several general truths they mani- 

 fest, we proceed to find the relations of those truths to 

 each other and to other truths, i.e. we ascertain which of 

 them are invariably connected together and which are 

 not, and of those which are so connected we further pro- 

 ceed to determine which are related to each other merely 

 by coincidence, and which as cause and effect. 



The phenomena of the universe are not uncertain, and 

 therefore the Great Cause of all things is not capricious 

 or arbitrary. Neither the existence nor the regulation of 



1 Compare Whewell, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. ii. pp. 

 260-270. 



D D 2 



