DISCOURSE ON THE STUDY 



CHAP. VI. 



OF THE FIRST STAGE OF INDUCTION. THE DISCOVERY 

 OF PROXIMATE CAUSES, AND LAWS OF THE LOWEST 

 DEGREE OF GENERALITY, AND THEIR VERIFICATION. 



(137.) THE first thing that a philosophic mind 

 considers, when any new phenomenon presents 

 itself, is its explanation, or reference to an imme- 

 diate producing cause. If that cannot be ascer- 

 tained, the next is to generalize the phenomenon, 

 and include it, with others analogous to it, in the 

 expression of some law, in the hope that its con- 

 sideration, in a more advanced state of knowledge, 

 may lead to the discovery of an adequate proxi- 

 mate cause. 



(138.) Experience having shown us the manner 

 in which one phenomenon depends on another in a 

 great variety of cases, we find ourselves provided, 

 as science extends, with a continually increasing 

 stock of such antecedent phenomena, or causes 

 (meaning at present merely proximate causes), 

 competent, under different modifications, to the 

 production of a great multitude of effects, besides 

 those which originally led to a knowledge of them. 

 To such causes Newton has applied the term verce 

 causce; that is, causes recognized as having a real ex- 

 istence in nature, and not being mere hypotheses or 

 figments of the mind. To exemplify the distinc- 

 tion : The phenomenon of shells found hi rocks, at 



