540 INDUCTION. 



much better informed as to the empirical laws of the 

 phenomena, that is, the uniformities respecting which 

 we cannot yet decide whether they are cases of 

 causation or mere results of it. Not only has the 

 order in which the facts of organization and life 

 successively manifest themselves, from the first germ 

 of existence to death, been found to be uniform, and 

 very accurately ascertainable ; but, moreover, by a 

 great application of the Method of Concomitant 

 Variations to the entire facts of comparative anatomy 

 and physiology, the conditions of organic structure 

 corresponding to each class of functions have been 

 determined with considerable precision*. Whether 

 these organic conditions are the whole of the condi- 

 tions, and whether they be conditions at all, or mere 

 collateral effects of some common cause, we are quite 

 ignorant : nor are we ever likely to know, unless we 

 could construct an organized body, and try whether it 

 would live. 



Under such disadvantages do we, in cases of this 

 description, attempt the initial, or inductive step, in 

 the application of the Deductive Method to complex 

 phenomena. Bat such, fortunately, is not the 

 common case. Tn general, the laws of the causes on 

 which the effect depends may be obtained by an 

 induction from comparatively simple instances, or, at 

 the worst, by deduction from the laws of simpler 

 causes so obtained By simple instances are meant, 

 of course, those in which the action of each cause was 

 not intermixed or interfered with, or not to any great 

 extent, by other causes whose laws were unknown. 



* This great philosophical operation has been admirably charac- 

 terized in the third volume of M. Comte's truly encyclopedical 

 work. 



