116 INDUCTION. 



the circumstances in which they occur; insomuch 

 that, notwithstanding as rigid a dependence upon given 

 conditions as exists in the case of any other pheno- 

 menon, it was not likely that we should be better 

 acquainted with those conditions than we are. Be- 

 sides, this first class of considerations there is a second, 

 which still further corroborates the conclusion, and 

 from the recognition of which the complete establish- 

 ment of the universal law may reasonably be dated. 

 Although there are phenomena, the production and 

 changes of which elude all our attempts to reduce 

 them universally to any ascertained law ; yet in every 

 such case, the phenomenon, or the objects concerned 

 in it, are found in some instances to obey the known 

 laws of nature. The wind, for example, is the type 

 of uncertainty and caprice, yet we find it in some 

 cases obeying with as much constancy as any phe- 

 nomena in nature the law of the tendency of fluids to 

 distribute themselves so as to equalize the pressure 

 on every side of each of their particles ; as in the case 

 of the trade winds, and the monsoons. Lightning 

 might once have been supposed to obey no laws; 

 but since it has been ascertained to be identical with 

 electricity, we know that the very same phenomenon 

 in some of its manifestations is implicitly obedient to 

 the action of fixed causes. I do not believe that there 

 is now one object or event in all our experience of 

 nature, within the bounds of the solar system at least, 

 which has not either been ascertained by direct obser- 

 vation to follow laws of its own, or been proved to be 

 exactly similar to objects and events which, in more 

 familiar manifestations, or on a more limited scale, 

 follow strict laws: our inability to trace the same 

 laws on the larger scale and in the more recondite 



