COEXISTENCES INDEPENDENT OF CAUSATION. 121 



be doubted that between phenomena which are them- 

 selves effects, the coexistences must necessarily 

 depend upon the causes of those phenomena. If 

 they are effects immediately or remotely of the same 

 cause, they cannot coexist except by virtue of some 

 laws or properties of that cause : if they are effects of 

 different causes, they cannot coexist unless it be 

 because their causes coexist ; and the uniformity of 

 coexistence, if such there be, between the effects, 

 proves that in the original collocation those particular 

 causes, within the limits of our observation, have 

 uniformly been coexistent. 



2. But these same considerations compel us to 

 recognise that there must be one class of coexistences 

 which cannot depend upon causation; the coexist- 

 ences between the ultimate properties of things : 

 between those properties which are the causes of all 

 phenomena, but are not themselves caused by any 

 phenomenon, and to find a cause for which,, we must 

 ascend to the origin of all things. Yet among these 

 ultimate properties there are not only coexistences, 

 but uniformities of coexistence. General propositions 

 may be, and are, formed, which assert that whenever 

 certain properties are found, certain others are found 

 along with them. We perceive an object; say, for 

 instance, water. We recognise it to be water, of course 

 by certain of its properties. Having recognised it, we, 

 are able to affirm of it innumerable other properties ; 

 which we could not do unless it were a general truth, 

 a law or uniformity in nature, that the set of proper- 

 ties by which we identified the substance as water, 

 always have those other properties conjoined with 

 them. 



In a chapter of a former book, it has been 



