CHAPTER XIV. 



OF THE LIMITS TO THE EXPLANATION OF LAWS 

 OF NATURE; AND OF HYPOTHESES. 



1. THE preceding considerations have led us to 

 recognise a distinction between two kinds of laws, or 

 observed uniformities ID., nature : ultimate laws, and 

 what may be termed derivative- laws. Derivative laws 

 are such as are deduxible ; . sroni;;aati;iga,y, m any of 

 the modes which we have pointed out, be resolved 

 into, other and more general ones. Ultimate laws are 

 those which cannot. We are not sure that any of the 

 uniformities which we are yet acquainted with are 

 ultimate laws ; but we know that there must be ulti- 

 mate laws ; and that every resolution of a derivative 

 law, into more general laws, brings us nearer to 

 them. 



Since we are continually discovering that unifor- 

 mities, not previously known to be other than ulti- 

 mate, are derivative, and resolvable into more general 

 laws ; since (in other words) we are continually dis- 

 covering an explanation of some sequence, which was 

 previously known only as a fact ; it becomes an 

 interesting question whether there are any necessary 

 limits to this philosophical operation, or whether it 

 may proceed until all the uniform sequences in nature 

 are resolved into some one universal law. For this 

 seems, at first sight, to be the ultimatum towards 

 which the progress of induction, by the Deductive 

 Method resting on a basis of observation and experi- 

 ment, is progressively tending. Projects of this kind 

 were universal in the infancy of philosophy ; any 



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