236 INDUCTION. 



Law of Causation. The truth that every fact which has a beginning has a 

 cause, is co-extensive with human experience. 



This generalization may appear to some minds not to amount to much, 

 since after all it asserts only this: "it is a law, that every event depends 

 on some law :" " it is a law, that there is a law for every thing." We must 

 not, however, conclude that the generality of the principle is merely verbal ; 

 it will be found on inspection to be no vague or unmeaning assertion, but 

 a most important and really fundamental truth. 



§ 2L The notion of Cause being the root of the whole theory of Induc- 

 tion, iris indispensable that this idea should, at the very outset of our in- 

 quiry, be, with the utmost practicable degree of precision, fixed and deter- 

 mined.^ If, indeed, it wei'e necessary for the purpose of inductive logic 

 that the strife should be quelled, which has so long raged among the differ- 

 ent schools of metaphysicians, respecting the origin and analysis of our idea 

 of causation ; the promulgation, or at least the general reception, of a true 

 theory of induction, might be considered desperate for a long time to come. 

 But the science of the Investigation of Truth by means of Evidence, is 

 happily independent of many of the controversies which perplex the sci- 

 ence of the ultimate constitution of the human mind, and is under no ne- 

 cessity of pushing the analysis of mental phenomenon to that extreme 

 limit which alone ought to satisfy a metaphysician. 



I premise, then, that when in the course of this inquiry I speak of the 

 cause of any phenomenon, I do not mean a cause which is not itself a phe- 

 nomenon ; I make no research into the ultimate or ontological cause of 

 any thing. To adopt a distinction familiar in the writings of the Scotch 

 metaphysicians, and especially of Reid, the causes with which I concern 

 myself are not efficient, hut physical causes. They are causes in that sense 

 alone, in which one physical fact is said to be the cause of another. Of 

 the efficient causes of phenomena, or whether any such causes exist at all, 

 I am not called upon to give an opinion. The notion of causation is deem- 

 ed, by the schools of metaphysics most in vogue at the present moment, to 

 imply a mysterious and most powerful tie, such as can not, or at least does 

 not, exist between any physical fact and that other physical fact on which 

 it is invariably consequent, and which is popularly termed its cause : and 

 thence is deduced the supposed necessity of ascending higher, into the es- 

 sences and inherent constitution of things, to find the true cause, the cause 

 which is not only followed by, but actually produces, the effect. No such 

 necessity exists for the purposes of the present inquiry, nor will any such 

 doctrine be found in the following pages. The only notion of a cause, 

 which the theory of induction requires, is such a notion as can be gained 

 from experience. The Law of Causation, the recognition of which is the 

 main pillar of inductive science, is but the familiar truth, that invariability 

 of succession is found by observation to obtain between every fact in na- 

 ture and some other fact which has preceded it ; independently of all con- 

 siderations respecting the ultimate mode of production of phenomena, and 

 of every other question regarding the nature of " Things in themselves." 



Between the phenomena, then, which exist at any instant, and the phe- 

 nomena which exist at the succeeding instant, there is an invariable order 

 of succession ; and, as we said in speaking of the general uniformity of the 

 course of nature, this web is composed of separate fibres ; this collective 

 order is made up of particular sequences, obtaining invariably among the 

 separate parts. To certain facts, certain facts always do, and, as we be- 



