LAW OF CAUSATION. 209 



of the pi-esent Book, under the name of the Specific Properties of 

 Kinds. 



§ 9. Before concluding this chapter, it seems desirable to take 

 notice of an apparent, but not a real opposition between the doctrines 

 which I have laid down respecting causation, and those maintained in 

 a work which I hold to be far the greatest yet produced on the Phi- 

 losophy of the Sciences, ]M. Comte's Cours dc Phdosophie Positive. 

 M. Comte asserts as his first principle, that the causes of phenomena 

 are beyond the reach of the human faculties, and that all which is ac- 

 cessible to us is their laws, or, as he explains the term, their constant 

 relations of succession or of similarity. Accordingly M. Comte sedu- 

 lously abstains, in the subsequent part of his work, from the use of the 

 word Cause : an example which I have not followed, for reasons which 

 I will proceed to state. I most fully agree with M. Comte that ulti- 

 niatc, or, in the phraseology of metaphysicians, efficient causes, which 

 ai'e conceived as liot being jjhenoraena, nor perceptible by the senses 

 at all, are radically inaccessible to the human faculties : and that the 

 " constant relations of succession or of similarity" which exist among 

 phenomena themselves, (not forgetting, so far as any constancy can be 

 traced, their relations of coexistence,) are the only subjects of rational 

 investigation. When I speak of causation, I have nothing in view, 

 other than those constant relations : but I think the terms causation, 

 and cause and effect, important to be preserved, for the purpose of 

 distinctively designating one class of those relations, namely, the rela- 

 tions of succession which so far as we know are unconditional ; as 

 contrasted with those which, like the succession of day and night, de- 

 pend upon the existence or upon the coexistence of other antecedent 

 facts. This distinction corresponds to the great division which Mr. 

 Whewell and other writers have made of the field of science, into the 

 investigation of what they term the Laws of Phenomena, and the 

 investigation of causes ; a phraseology, as I conceive, altogether 

 vicious, inasmuch as the ascertainment of causes, sucli causes as the 

 human faculties can ascertain, namely, causes which are themselves 

 phenomena, is, therefore, merely the asceitaiimicnt of other and more 

 universal Laws of Phenomena. And I cannot but look upon the 

 revival, on English soil, of the doctrine (not only refuted by the school 

 of Locke and Hume, but given up by their great rivals Reid and 

 Stewart) tliat efficient causes are within the reach of human knowl- 

 edge, as a remarkable instance of what hag been aptly called " the 

 peculiar zest which the spirit of reaction against modern tendencies 

 gives to ancient absurdities." 



Yet the distinction between those constant relations of succession or 

 coexistence which Mr. Whewell tenns Laws of Phenomena, and 

 those which he tenns, as I do. Laws of Causation, is grounded (how- 

 ever incorrectly expressed) upon a real difference. It is no doubt 

 with great injustice that Mr. Wliewell (who has evidently given only 

 a most partial and cursory inspection to M. Comte's work,) assumes 

 that M. Comte has overlocdced this fundamental distinction, and that 

 by excluding the investigation of causes, he excludes that of all the 

 most general truths. No one really acfjuainted with M. Comte's 

 admirable speculations could have so completely misapj)rehended their 

 whole spirit and purpoit. But it does appear to me tlaat his disinclina- 

 Dd 



