418 INDUCTION. 



causes coexist, would, if the coexistence terminated, 

 terminate along with it, we do not class as cases of 

 causation, or laws of nature : we can only calculate 

 upon finding these sequences or coexistences where we 

 know, by direct evidence, that the natural agents on 

 the properties of which they ultimately depend, are 

 distributed in the requisite manner. These Perma- 

 nent Causes are not always objects ; they are some- 

 times events, that is to say, periodical cycles of events, 

 that being the only mode in which events can possess 

 the property of permanence. Not only, for instance, 

 is the earth itself a permanent cause, or primitive 

 natural agent, but the earth's rotation is so too : it is 

 a cause which has produced, from the earliest period, 

 (by the aid of other necessary conditions) the succes- 

 sion of day and night, the ebb and flow of the sea, 

 and many other effects, while, as we can assign no 

 cause (except conjecturally) for the rotation 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 

 permanence of rectilineal motion once impressed) 

 combined with the gravitation of the parts of the 

 earth towards 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 primitive 

 facts, or of some combination of them. There is no 

 Thing produced, no event happening, in the universe, 

 which is not connected by an uniformity, or invariable 

 . sequence, with some one or more of the phenomena 

 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 counter- 



