126 INDUCTION. 



laws of causation upon which they depend, it can 

 possess no higher degree of evidence than belongs to 

 an empirical law. 



4. This conclusion will be confirmed by the con- 

 sideration of one great deficiency, which precludes 

 the application to the ultimate uniformities of coex- 

 istence, of a system of rigorous and scientific induc- 

 tion, such as the uniformities in the succession of 

 phenomena have been found to be susceptible of. 

 The basis of such a system is wanting : there is no 

 general axiom, standing in the same relation to the 

 uniformities of coexistence as the law of causation does 

 to those of succession. The Methods of Induction 

 applicable to the ascertainment of causes and effects, 

 are grounded upon the principle that everything which 

 has a beginning must have some cause or other ; that 

 among the circumstances which actually existed at the 

 time of its commencement, there is certainly some 

 one or more, upon which the effect in question is 

 unconditionally consequent, and on the repetition of 

 which it would certainly again recur. But in an 

 inquiry whether some kind (as crow) universally pos- 

 sesses a certain property (as blackness), there is no 

 room for any assumption analogous to this. We 

 have no previous certainty that the property must 

 have something which constantly coexists with it ; 

 must have an invariable coexistent, in the same man- 

 ner as an event must have an invariable antecedent. 

 When we feel pain, we must be in some circumstances 

 under which if exactly repeated we should always feel 

 pain. But when we are conscious of blackness, it 

 does not follow that there is something present of 

 which blackness is a constant accompaniment. There 

 is, therefore, no room for elimination ; no Method of 



