REMAINING LAWS OF NATURE. 425 



CHAPTER XXIY. 



OF THE EEMAIJSriNG LAWS OF NATURE. 



§ 1. In the First Book we found that all the assertions which can be 

 conveyed by language, express some one or more of five different things : 

 Existence ; Order in Place ; Order in Time ; Causation ; and Resemblance.* 

 Of these, Causation, in our view of the subject, not being fundamentally 

 different from Order in Time, the five species of possible assertions are 

 reduced to four. The propositions which affirm Order in Time in either 

 of its two modes, Co-existence and Succession, have formed, thus far, the 

 subject of the present Book. And we have now concluded the exposition, 

 so far as it falls within the limits assigned to this work, of the nature of 

 the evidence on which these propositions rest, and the processes of investi- 

 gation by which they are ascertained and proved. There remain three 

 classes of facts : Existence, Order in Place, and Resemblance ; in regard to 

 which the same questions are now to be resolved. 



Regarding the first of these, very little needs be said. Existence in 

 general, is a subject not for our science, but for metaphysics. To deter- 

 mine what things can be recognized as really existing, independently of our 

 own sensible or other impressions, and in what meaning the term is, in that 

 case, predicated of them, belongs to the consideration of " Things in them- 

 selves," from which, throughout this work, we have as much as possible 

 kept aloof. Existence, so far as Logic is concerned about it, has reference 

 only to phenomena; to actual, or possible, states of external or internal 

 consciousness, in ourselves or others. Feelings of sensitive beings, or pos- 

 sibilities of having such feelings, are the only things the existence of which 

 can be a subject of logical induction, because the only things of which the 

 existence in individual cases can be a subject of experience. 



It is true that a thing is said by us to exist, even when it is absent, and 

 therefore is not and can not be perceived. But even then, its existence is 

 to us only another word for our conviction that we should perceive it on a 

 certain supposition ; namely, if we were in the needful circumstances of 

 time and place, and endowed with the needful perfection of organs. My 

 belief that the Emperor of China exists, is simply my belief that if I were 

 ti'ansported to the imperial palace or some other locality in Pekin, I should 

 see him. My belief that Julius Caesar existed, is my belief that I should 

 have seen him if I had been present in the field of Pharsalia, or in the 

 senate-house at Rome. When I believe that stars exist beyond the utmost 

 range of my vision, though assisted by the most powerful telescopes yet 

 invented, my belief, philosophically expressed, is, that with still better tele- 

 scopes, if such existed, I could see them, or that they may be perceived by 

 beings less remote from them in space, or whose capacities of perception 

 are superior to mine. 



The existence, therefore, of a phenomenon, is but another word for its 

 being perceived, or for the inferred possibility of perceiving it. When the 

 phenomenon is within the range of present observation, by present obser- 



* Supra, book i. , chap, v. 



