552 INDUCTION. 



B produces C. For B may have other causes besides 

 A ; and as A produces C only by means of B, while 

 B produces C whether it has itself been produced by 

 A or by anything else, the second law embraces a 

 greater number of instances, covers as it were a 

 greater space of ground, than the first. 



Thus, in our former example, the law that the 

 contact of an object causes a change in the state of 

 the nerve, is more general than the law that contact 

 with an object causes sensation, since, for aught we 

 know, the change in the nerve may equally take place 

 when, from a counteracting cause, as for instance 

 strong mental excitement, the sensation does not 

 follow ; as in a battle, where wounds are often re- 

 ceived without any consciousness of receiving them. 

 And again, the law that change in the state of a nerve 

 produces sensation, is more general than the law that 

 contact with an object produces sensation ; since the 

 sensation equally follows the change in the nerve when 

 not produced by contact with an object, but by some 

 other cause ; as in the well-known case, when a 

 person who has lost a limb feels the very sensation 

 which he has been accustomed to call a pain in the 

 limb. 



Not only are the laws of more immediate sequence 

 into which the law of a remote sequence is resolved, 

 laws of greater generality than that law is, but (as a 

 consequence of, or rather as implied in, their greater 

 generality,) they are more to be relied on ; there are 

 fewer chances of their being ultimately found not to 

 be universally true. From the moment when the 

 sequence of A and C is shown not to be immediate, 

 but to depend upon an intervening phenomenon, 

 then, however constant and invariable the sequence of 

 A and C has hitherto been found, possibilities arise 



