COEXISTENCES INDEPENDENT OF CAUSATION. L25 



all negroes have woolly hair, we assert an uniformity 

 of coexistence. We assert that the property of 

 blackness, or of having woolly hair, invariably 

 coexists with the properties which, in common lan- 

 guage, or in the scientific classification that we adopt, 

 are taken to constitute the class crow, or the class 

 negro. Now, supposing blackness to be an ultimate 

 property of black objects, or woolly hair an ultimate 

 property of the animals which possess it; supposing 

 that these properties are not results of causation, are 

 not connected with antecedent phenomena by any 

 law; then if all crows are black, and all negroes have 

 woolly hair, those must be ultimate properties of 

 the Kind crow, or negro, or of some Kind which in- 

 cludes them. If, on the contrary, blackness or 

 woolly hair be an effect depending on causes, these 

 general propositions are manifestly empirical laws ; 

 and all that has already been said respecting that 

 class of generalizations may be applied without modi- 

 cation to these. 



Now, we have seen that in the case of all compounds, 

 of all things, in short, except the elementary sub- 

 stances and primary powers of nature the presumption 

 is, that the properties do really depend upon causes ; 

 and it is impossible in any case whatever to be certain 

 that they do not. We therefore should not be safe in 

 claiming for any generalization respecting the co- 

 existence of properties, a degree of certainty to which, 

 if the properties should happen to be the result of 

 causes, it would have no claim. A generalization 

 respecting coexistence, or in other words respecting 

 the properties of Kinds, may be an ultimate truth, but 

 it may, also, be merely a derivative one; and since, if 

 so, it is one of those derivative laws which are neither 

 laws of causation, nor have been resolved into the 



