560 INDUCTION. 



parlance. But the process with which we are here 

 concerned often does the very contrary; it resolves a 

 phenomenon with which we are familiar, into one of 

 which we previously knew little or nothing ; as when 

 the common fact of the fall of heavy bodies is 

 resolved into a tendency of all particles of matter 

 towards one another. It must be kept constantly in 

 view, therefore, that when philosophers speak of 

 explaining any of the phenomena of nature, they 

 always mean, pointing out not some more familiar 

 but merely some more general phenomenon of which 

 it is a partial exemplification, or some laws of causa- 

 tion which produce it by their joint or successive 

 action, and from which, therefore, its conditions may 

 be determined deductively. Every such operation 

 brings us a step nearer towards answering the ques- 

 tion, which was stated some time ago as compre- 

 hending the whole problem of the investigation of 

 nature, viz.. What are the fewest assumptions which 

 being granted, the order of nature as it exists would 

 be the result ? What are the fewest general proposi- 

 tions from which all the uniformities existing in 

 nature could be deduced ? 



The laws, thus explained or resolved, are some- 

 times said to be accounted for; but the expression is 

 incorrect, if taken to mean anything more than what 

 has been already stated. In minds not habituated to 

 accurate thinking, there is often a confused notion 

 that the general laws are the causes of the partial 

 ones; that the law of general gravitation, for example, 

 causes the phenomenon of the fall of bodies to the 

 earth. But to assert this, would be a misuse of the 

 word cause : terrestrial gravity is not an effect of 

 general gravitation, but a case of it ; that is, one kind 



