370 THE CAUSES OF THE X l 



something has opened the window. A second 

 general law that you have arrived at in the same 

 way is, that tea-pots and spoons do not go out of 

 a window spontaneously, and you are satisfied that, 

 as they are not now where you left them, they 

 have been removed. In the third place, you look 

 at the marks on the window-sill, and the shoe- 

 marks outside, and you say that in all previous 

 experience the former kind of mark has never 

 been produced by anything else but the hand of a 

 human being ; and the same experience shows that 

 no other animal but man at present wears shoes 

 with hob-nails in them such as would produce the 

 marks in the gravel. I do not know, even if we 

 could discover any of those " missing links " that 

 are talked about, that they would help us to any 

 other conclusion ! At any rate the law which 

 states our present experience is strong enough for 

 my present purpose. You next reach the con- 

 clusion, that as these kinds of marks have not been 

 left by any other animals than men, or are liable 

 to be formed in any other way than by a man's 

 hand and shoe, the marks in question have been 

 formed by a man in that way. You have, further, 

 a general law, founded on observation and experi- 

 ence, and that, too, is, I am sorry to say, a very 

 universal and unimpeachable one, that some men 

 are thieves ; and you assume at once from all these 

 premisses and that is what constitutes your 

 hypothesis that the man who made the marks 



