4 INDUCTION. 



speculations which held out a less brilliant prospect, 

 being in those early times deemed not worth pursuing. 

 And the idea receives so much apparent countenance 

 from the nature of the most remarkable achievements 

 of modern science, that speculators are even now 

 constantly rising up (more often on the Continent of 

 Europe than in this island) who profess either to have 

 solved the problem, or to suggest modes in which it 

 may one day be solved. Even where pretensions of 

 this magnitude, are. not. jcnade, the character of the 

 solutions which' are-" given/ -or sought, of particular 

 classes of phepptiien]^ 'o!fte;rr involves such conceptions 

 of what constitutes explanation, as would render the 

 notion of explaining all phenomena whatever by means 

 of some one cause, or law, perfectly admissible. 



$2. It is, therefore, useful to remark, that the 

 ultimate Laws of Nature cannot possibly be less 

 numerous, than the distinguishable sensations or 

 other feelings of our nature ; those, I mean, which 

 are distinguishable from one another in quality, and 

 not merely in quantity or degree. For example ; 

 since there is a phenomenon sui generis, called colour, 

 which our consciousness testifies to be not a particular 

 degree of some other phenomenon, as heat, or odour, 

 or motion, but intrinsically unlike all others, it 

 follows that there are ultimate laws of colour ; that, 

 although the facts of colour may admit of explana- 

 tion, they never can be explained from laws of heat 

 or odour alone, or of motion alone, but that however 

 far the explanation may be carried, there will always 

 remain in it a law of colour. I do not mean that it 

 might not possibly be shown that some other pheno- 

 menon, some chemical or mechanical action for 

 example, invariably precedes, and is the cause of, 



