EMPIRICAL LAWS. 45 



ciple, or rule, perceivable in the distribution of the pri- 

 meval natural agents through the universe. The dif- 

 ferent substances composing the earth, the powers that 

 pervade the universe, stand in no constant relation to 

 one another. One substance is more abundant than 

 others, one power acts through a larger extent of 

 space than others, without any pervading analogy that 

 we can discover. We not only do not know of any 

 reason why the sun's attraction and the tangential 

 force coexist in the exact proportion they do, but we 

 can trace no coincidence between it and the proportions 

 in which any other elementary powers in the universe 

 are intermingled. The utmost disorder is apparent in 

 the combination of the causes ; which is consistent 

 with the most perfect order in their effects ; for when 

 each agent carries on its own operations according to 

 an uniform law, even the most capricious combina- 

 tion of agencies will generate a regularity of some 

 sort, as we see in the kaleidoscope, where any casual 

 arrangement of coloured bits of glass produces by 

 the laws of reflection a beautiful regularity in the 

 effect. 



4. In the above considerations lies the justifica- 

 tion of the limited degree of reliance which philoso- 

 phers are accustomed to place in empirical laws. 



A derivative law which results wholly from the 

 operation of some one cause, will be as universally 

 true as the laws of the cause itself; that is, it will 

 always be true except where some one of those effects 

 of the cause, on which the derivative law depends, is 

 defeated by a counteracting cause. But when the 

 derivative law results not from different effects of one 

 cause, but from effects of several causes, we cannot be 

 certain that it will be true under any variation in the 



