206 INDUCTION. 



origin of phenomena, and all the successions of phenomena must be 

 resolvable into causation. These are the axioms of our doctrine. If 

 these be gi-anted, we can afford, though I see no necessity for doing 

 so, to drop the words antecedent and consequent as applied to catrse 

 and effect. I have no objection to define a cause, the assemblage of 

 phenomena, which occuning, some otlier phenomenon invariably com- 

 mences, or has its origin. Whether the effect coincides in point of 

 time with, or immediately follows, the hindmost of its conditions, 

 is immaterial. At all events it does not precede it ; and when we are 

 in doubt, between two coexistent phenomena, which is cause and which 

 effect, we rightly deem the question solved if we can ascertain which 

 of them preceded the other. 



§ 7. It continually happens that several different phenomena, which 

 are not in the slightest degi-ee dependent or conditional upon one 

 another, are found all to depend, as the phrase is, upon one and the 

 same agent ; in other words, one and the same phenomenon is seen to 

 be followed by several sorts of effects quite heterogeneous, but w^hich 

 go on simultaneously one with another ; provided, of course, that all 

 other conditions requisite for each of them also exist. Thus, the sun 

 produces the celestial motions, it produces daylight, and it produces 

 heat. The earth causes the fall of heavy bodies, and it also, in its 

 capacity of an immense magnet, causes the phenomena of the magnetic 

 needle. A crystal of galena causes the sensations of hardness, of 

 weight, of cubical form, of gray color, and many others between w^hich 

 we can trace no interdependence. The pui-pose to which the phraseol- 

 ogy of Properties and Powers is specially adapted, is the expression of 

 this sort of cases. When the same phenomenon is followed (either 

 subject or not to the presence of other conditions) by effects of differ- 

 ent and dissimilar orders, it is usual to say that each different sort of 

 effect is produced by a different property of the cause. Thus we dis- 

 tinguish the attractive, or gravitative, property of the earth, and its 

 magnetic property ; the gravitative, luminiferous, and calorific proper- 

 ties of the sun ; the color, shape, weight, and hardness of the crys- 

 tal. These are mere phrases, wdiich explain nothing, and add nothing 

 to our knowdedge of the subject; but considered as absti'act names 

 denoting the connexion between the different effects produced and the 

 object which produces them, they are a very powerful instrument of 

 abridgment, and of that acceleration of the process of thought which 

 abridgment accomplishes. 



This class of considerations leads us to a conception which we shall 

 find of great importance in the interpretation of nature ; that of a Per- 

 manent Cause, or original natural agent. There exist in nature a num- 

 ber of permanent causes, which have subsisted ever since the human 

 race has been in existence, and for an indefinite and probably enonnous 

 length of time previous. The sun, the earth and jilanets, with their 

 various constituents, air, water, and the other distinguishable substances, 

 whether simple or compound, of which nature is made up, are such 

 Peraianent Causes. These have existed, and the effects or consequen- 

 ces which they were fitted to produce have taken place, (as often as the 

 other conditions of the production met,) from the very beginning of our 

 experience. But we can give, scientifically speaking, no account of the 

 origin of the Permanent Causes themselves. Wliy these particular nat- 



