LAW OF CAUSATION. 423 



but look upon the revival, on English soil, ot the 

 doctrine (not only refuted by the school of Locke and 

 Hume,, but given up by their great rivals Reid and 

 Stewart) that efficient causes are within the reach of 

 human knowledge, as a remarkable instance of what 

 has been aptly called " the peculiar zest which the 

 spirit of reaction against modern tendencies gives to 

 ancient absurdities." 



Yet the distinction between those constant rela- 

 tions of succession or coexistence which Mr. Whe- 

 well terms Laws of Phenomena, and those which 

 he terms, as I do, Laws of Causation, is grounded 

 (however incorrectly expressed) upon a real difference. 

 It is no doubt with great injustice that Mr. Whewell 

 (who has evidently given only a most partial and 

 cursory inspection to M. Comte's work,) assumes that 

 M. Comte has overlooked this fundamental distinction, 

 and that by excluding the investigation of causes, he 

 excludes that of all the most general truths. No one 

 really acquainted with M. Comte's admirable specu- 

 lations could have so completely misapprehended their 

 whole spirit and purport. But it does appear to me 

 that his disinclination to employ the word Cause has 

 occasionally led him to attach less importance than it 

 deserves to this great distinction, upon which alone, 

 I am convinced, the possibility rests of framing a 

 rigorous Canon of Induction. Nor do I see what is 

 gained by avoiding this particular word, when M. 

 Comte is forced, like other people, to speak continually 

 of the properties of things, of agents and their action, 

 of forces and the like ; terms equally liable to per- 

 version, and which are partial and inadequate expres- 

 sions for what no word that we possess, except Cause, 

 expresses in its full generality. I believe, too, that 

 when the ideas which a word is commonly used to 



