250 INDUCTION. 



cession of day and night, the ebb and flow of the sea, and many other ef- 

 fects, while, as we can assign no cause (except conjecturally) for the rota- 

 tion itself, it is entitled to be ranked as a primeval cause. It is, however, 

 only the origin of the rotation which is mysterious to us : once begun, its 

 continuance is accounted for by the first law of motion (that of the perma- 

 nence of rectilinear motion once impressed) combined with the gravitation 

 of the parts of the earth toward one another. 



All phenomena without exception which begin to exist, that is, all except 

 the primeval causes, are effects either immediate or remote of those primi- 

 tive facts, or of some combination of them. There is no Thing produced, 

 no event happening, in the known universe, which is not connected by a 

 uniformity, or invariable sequence, with some one or more of the phenom- 

 ena which preceded it; insomuch that it will happen again as often as 

 those phenomena occur again, and as no other phenomenon having the 

 character of a counteracting cause shall co-exist. These antecedent phe- 

 nomena, again, were connected in a similar manner with some that pre- 

 ceded them ; and so oh, until we reach, as the ultimate step attainable by 

 us, either the properties of some one primeval cause, or the conjunction of 

 several. The whole of the phenomena of nature were therefore the neces- 

 sary, or, in other words, the unconditional, consequences of some former col- 

 location of the Permanent Causes. 



The state of the whole universe at any instant, we believe to be the con- 

 sequence of its state at the previous instant ; insomuch that one who knew 

 all the agents which exist at the present moment, their collocation in space, 

 and all their properties, in other words, the laws of their agency, could pre- 

 dict the whole subsequent history of the universe, at least unless some new 

 volition of a power capable of controlling the universe should supervene.* 

 And if any particular state of the entire universe could ever recur a second 

 time, all subsequent states would return too, and history would, like a cir- 

 culating decimal of many figures, periodically repeat itself : 



Jam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia vegna 



Alter erit turn Tiphys, et altera qua; vehat Argo 

 Delectos heroas ; eruut quoque altera bella, 

 Atque iterum ad Trojam magnns mittetur Achilles. 



And though things do not really revolve in this eternal round, the whole 

 series of events in the history of the universe, past and future, is not the 

 less capable, in its own nature, of being constructed a priori by any one 



* To the universality which mankind are agreed in ascribing to the Law of Causation, there 

 is one claim of exception, one disputed case, that of the Human Will ; the determinations of 

 which, a large class of metaphysicians are not willing to regard as following the causes called 

 motives, according to as strict laws as those which they suppose to exist in the world of mere 

 matter. This controverted point will undergo a special examination when we come to treat 

 particularly of the Logic of the Moral Sciences (Book vi., chap. 2). In the mean time, I may 

 remark that these metaphysicians, who, it must be observed, ground the main part of their ob- 

 jection on the supposed repugnance of the doctrine in question to our consciousness, seem to 

 me to mistake the fact which consciousness testifies against. What is really in contradiction 

 to consciousness, they would, I think, on strict self-examination, find to be, the application to 

 human actions and volitions of the ideas involved in the common use of the term Necessity ; 

 which I agree with them in objecting to. But if they would consider that by saying that a 

 person's actions necessarily follow from his character, all that is really meant (for no more is 

 meant in any case whatever of causation) is that he invariably does act in conformity to his 

 character, and that any one who thoroughly knew his character could certainly predict how he 

 would act in any supposable case ; they probably would not find this doctrine either contrary 

 to their experience or revolting to their feelings. And no more than this is contended for by 

 any one but an Asiatic fatalist. 



