EVIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL CAUSATION. 113 



mathematics. The induction by which they are esta- 

 blished is of that kind which can establish nothing but 

 empirical laws : an empirical law, however, of which 

 the truth is exemplified at every moment of time and 

 in every variety of place or circumstance, has an 

 evidence which surpasses that of the most rigid 

 induction, even if the foundation of scientific induc- 

 tion were not itself laid (as we have seen that it is) in 

 a generalization of this very description. 



3. With respect to the general law of causation, 

 it does appear that there must have been a time when 

 the universal prevalence of that law throughout nature 

 could not have been affirmed in the same confident 

 and unqualified manner as at present. There was a 

 time when many of the phenomena of nature must 

 have appeared altogether capricious and irregular, not 

 governed by any laws, nor steadily consequent upon 

 any causes. Such phenomena, indeed, were com- 

 monly, in that early stage of human knowledge, 

 ascribed to the direct intervention of the will of some 

 supernatural being, and therefore still to a cause. 

 This shows the strong tendency of the human mind 

 to ascribe every phenomenon to some cause or other ; 

 but it shows also that experience had not, at that 

 time, pointed out any regular order in the occurrence 

 of those particular phenomena, nor proved them to be, 

 as we now know that they are, dependent upon prior 

 phenomena as their proximate causes. There have 

 been sects of philosophers who have admitted what 

 they termed Chance as one of the agents in the order 

 of nature, by which certain classes of events were 

 entirely regulated; which could only mean that those 

 events did not occur in any fixed order, or depend 

 upon uniform laws of causation. Finally, there is 



VOL. II. I 



