370 METHODOLOGY OF SCIENCE 



according to past experience, and that we henceforth carry over 

 to not yet observed events as far as these prove in conformity with 

 it, and in this way verify the anticipation contained in our general 

 assertion. The same holds of the assertion through which Mill en- 

 deavors to meet the above-mentioned objection of Reid, namely, that 

 the unchanging sequence must at the same time be demonstrably 

 an " unconditional " one. The language in which experience speaks to 

 us knows the term "the unconditioned" as little as the term "the 

 unchangeable," even though this have, as Mill explains, the mean- 

 ing that the effect " will be, whatever supposition we may make in 

 regard to all other things," or that the sequence will "be subject to 

 no other than negative conditions." For in these determinations there 

 does not lie exclusively, according to Mill, a probable prediction of 

 the future. "It is necessary to our using the word cause, that we 

 should believe not only that the antecedent always has been fol- 

 lowed by the consequent, but that as long as the present constitution 

 of things endures, it always mil be so." Likewise, Mill, the man of 

 research, not the empiristic logician, asserts that there belongs to 

 the causal law, besides this generality referring to all possible events 

 of uniform sequence, also an "undoubted assurance;" although he 

 could have here referred to a casual remark of Hume. 1 Such an 

 undoubted assurance, " that for every event . . . there is a law to 

 be found, if we only know where to find it," evidently does not know 

 of a knowledge referred exclusively to experience. 



Hence, if the causal law is, as empiricism to be consistent must 

 maintain, only a general hypothesis which is necessarily subject to 

 verification as experience progresses, then it is not impossible that in 

 the course of experience events will appear that are not preceded or 

 followed uniformly by others, and that accordingly cannot be re- 

 garded as causes or effects. According to this interpretation of the 

 causal law, such exceptional events, whether in individual or in 

 repeated cases of perception, must be just as possible as those which 

 in the course of preceding experience have proved themselves to be 

 members of series of constant sequence. On the basis of previous 

 experience, we should only have the right to say that such exceptional 

 cases are less probable; and we might from the same ground expect 

 that, if they could be surely determined, they would only have to be 

 regarded as exceptions to the rule and not, possibly, as signs of a 

 misunderstood universal non-uniformity of occurrence. No one 

 wants to maintain an empirical necessity, that is, a statement that 

 so comprehends a present experience or an hypothesis developed 



1 Logic, bk. m, ch. v, 6, and end of 2. Hume says in a note to section vi of his 

 Enquiry concerning Human Understanding : " We ought to divide arguments into 

 demonstrations, proofs, and probabilities. By proofs meaning such arguments from 

 experience as leave no room for doubt or opposition." The note stands in evident 

 contrast to the well-known remarks at the beginning of section iv, pt. i. 



