48 INDUCTION. 



Agreement (and therefore almost all the truths ob- 

 tained by simple observation without experiment) 

 must be considered, until either confirmed by the 

 Method of Difference, or explained deductively, in 

 other words, accounted for a priori. 



These empirical laws may be of greater or of less 

 authority, according as there is reason to presume 

 that they are resolvable into laws only, or into laws 

 and collocations together. The sequences which we 

 observe in the production and subsequent life of an 

 animal or a vegetable, resting upon the Method of 

 Agreement only, are mere empirical laws ; but though 

 the antecedents in those sequences may not be the 

 causes of the consequents, both the one and the other 

 are probably, in the main, successive stages of a pro- 

 gressive effect originating in a common cause, and 

 therefore independent of collocations. The uni- 

 formities, on the other hand, in the order of super- 

 position of strata on the earth, are empirical laws of a 

 much weaker kind, since they are not only not laws 

 of causation, but there is no reason to believe that 

 they depend upon any common cause : all appear- 

 ances are in favour of their depending upon the 

 particular collocation of natural agents which pri- 

 mitively existed on our globe, and from which no 

 inference can be drawn as to the collocation which 

 exists or has existed in any other portion of the 

 universe. 



6. Our definition of an empirical law including 

 mot only those uniformities which are not known to 

 be laws of causation, but also those which are, pro- 

 vided there be reason to presume that they are not 

 ultimate laws ; this is the proper place to consider 

 by what signs we may judge that even if an observed 



