208 INDUCTION. 



universe should ever recur a second time, (which, however, all experi- 

 ence combines to assure us will never happen,) all subsequent states 

 would retui-n too, and history would, Uke a circulating decimal of many- 

 figures, periodically repeat itself: — 



Jam redit et \irgo, redeunt Saturnia regna 



Alter eiit turn Tiphvs, et altera quae vehat Argo 

 Delectos heroas ; eruntqooque altera bella, 

 Atque iterum ad TrOiam magnus mittetur Achilles. 



And though things do not really revolve in this eternal round, the whole 

 series of events in the history of the universe, past and future, is not the 

 less capable, in its own nature, of being constructed a priori by any 

 one whom we can suppose acquainted with the original distribution of 

 all natural agents, and with the whole of their properties, that is, the 

 laws of succession existing between them and their effects : saving the 

 infinitely more than human powers of combination and calculation 

 which would be required, even in one possessing the data, for the actual 

 performance of the task. 



§ 8. Since everything which occurs in the universe is determined by 

 laws of causation and collocations of the original causes, it follows that 

 the coexistences which are obsei-vable among effects cannot be them- 

 selves the subject of any similar set of laws, distinct from laws of causa- 

 tion. Uniformities there are, as well of coexistence as of succession, 

 among the effects; but these must in all cases be a mere result either 

 of the identity or of the coexistence of their causes : if the causes did 

 not coexist, neither could the effects. And these causes being also 

 effects of prior causes, and these of others, until we reach the primeval 

 causes, it follows that (except in the case of effects which can be traced 

 immediately or remotely to one and the same cause), the coexistences 

 of phenomena can in no case be universal, unless the coexistences of 

 the pi-imeval causes to which the effects are ultimately traceable, can 

 be reduced to an universal law : but we have seen that' they cannot. 

 There are, accordingly, no original and independent, in other words, 

 no unconditional, uniformities of coexistence between effects of different 

 causes ; if they coexist, it is only because the causes have casually coex- 

 isted. The only independent and unconditional coexistences which are 

 sufficiently invai'iable to have any claim to the character of laws, are 

 between diff'erent and mutually independent effects of the same cause; 

 in other words, between different properties of the same natural agent. 

 This portion of the Laws of Nature will be ti-eatedof in the latter part 



causes called motives, according to as strict laws as those which they suppose to exist in 

 the world of mere matter. This controverted point will undergo a special examination 

 when we come to treat particularly of the Logic of the Moral Sciences (Book vi., ch. 3). 

 In the mean time I may remark that these metaphysicians, who, it must be observed, ground 

 the main part of their objection upon the supposed repugnance of the doctrine in question 

 to our consciousness, seem to me to mistake the fact which consciousness testifies against. 

 What is really in contradiction to consciousness, they would, I think, on strict self-e.xam- 

 ination, find to be, the application to human actions and volitions of the ideas involved in 

 the common use of the term Necessity ; which I agree with them in thinking highly objec- 

 tionable. But if they would consider that by saying that a man's actions necessarily follow 

 from his character, all that is really meant (for no more is meant in any case whatever of 

 causation) is that he invariably does act in conformity to his character, ahd that any one who 

 thoroughly knew his character could certainly predict how he would act in any supposable 

 case ; they probably would not find this doctrine either contrary to their experience or 

 revolting to their feelings. And no more than this is contended for by any one but an 

 Asiatic fatalist. 



