422 INDUCTION. 



beyond the reach of the human faculties, and that all 

 which is accessible to us is their laws, or, as he ex- 

 plains the term, their constant relations of succession 

 or of similarity. Accordingly M. Comte sedulously 

 abstains, in the subsequent part of his work, from the 

 use of the word Cause: an example which I have not 

 followed, for reasons which I will proceed to state. 

 I most fully agree with M. Comte that ultimate, or, in 

 the phraseology of metaphysicians, efficient causes, 

 which are conceived as not being phenomena, nor per- 

 ceptible by the senses at all, are radically inaccessible 

 to the human faculties : and that the " constant 

 relations of succession or of similarity" which exist 

 among phenomena themselves, (not forgetting, so far 

 as any constancy can be traced, their relations of 

 coexistence,) are the only subjects of rational investi- 

 gation. When I speak of causation, I have nothing 

 in view, other than those constant relations : but I 

 think the terms causation, and cause and effect, 

 important to be preserved, for the purpose of dis- 

 tinctively designating one class of those relations, 

 namely the relations of succession which so far as 

 we know are unconditional; as contrasted with those 

 which, like the succession of day and night, depend 

 upon the existence or upon the coexistence of other 

 antecedent facts. This distinction corresponds to the 

 great division which Mr. Whewell and other writers 

 have made of the field of science, into the investigation 

 of what they term the Laws of Phenomena, and the 

 investigation of causes ; a phraseology, as I conceive, 

 altogether vicious, inasmuch as the ascertainment of 

 causes, such causes as the human faculties can ascer- 

 tain, namely causes which are themselves phenomena, 

 is, therefore, merely the ascertainment of other and 

 more universal Laws of Phenomena. And I cannot 



