LAW OF CAUSATION. 395 



of force describes areas proportional to the times. 

 But unless there had been laws of succession in our 

 premisses, there could have been no truths of succes- 

 sion in our conclusions. A similar remark might be 

 extended to every other class of phenomena really 

 peculiar; and, had it been attended to, would have 

 prevented many chimerical attempts at demonstrations 

 of the indemonstrable, and explanations of what can- 

 not be explained. 



It is not, therefore, enough for us that the laws 

 of space, which are only laws of simultaneous phe- 

 nomena, and the laws of number, which though true 

 of successive phenomena do not relate to their suc- 

 cession, possess that rigorous certainty and univer- 

 sality of which we are in search. We must endeavour 

 to find some law of succession which has those same 

 attributes, and is therefore fit to be made the founda- 

 tion of processes for discovering, and of a test for 

 verifying, all other uniformities of succession. This 

 fundamental law must resemble the truths of geometry 

 in their most remarkable peculiarity, that of never 

 being, in any instance whatever, defeated or suspended 

 by any change of circumstances. 



Now among all those uniformities in the suc- 

 cession of phenomena, which common observation 

 is sufficient to bring to light, there are very few which 

 have any, even apparent, pretension to this rigorous 

 indefeasibility : and of those few, one only has been 

 found capable of completely sustaining it. In that 

 one, however, we recognise a law which is universal 

 also in another sense ; it is coextensive with the entire 

 field of successive phenomena, all instances whatever 

 of succession being examples of it. This law is the 

 Law of Causation. It is an universal truth that every 

 fact which has a beginning has a cause. 



