312 INDUCTION. 



flower, and fruit, are mere modifications of one general phenomenon ; 

 or (which is only another expression for the same idea) joint results of 

 one common tendency and of several partial causes combining with it. 



§ 8. In the preceding discussion we haye recognized two kinds of 

 empirical laws : those known to be laws of causation, but presumed 

 to be resolvable into simpler laws ; and those not known to be laws of 

 causation at all. Both these kinds of laws agree in the demand which 

 they make for being explained by deduction, and agi-ee in being the 

 appropriate means of verifying such deduction, since they represent 

 the experience with which the result of the deduction must be com- 

 pared. They agree, further, in this, that until explained, and con- 

 nected with the ultimate laws from which they result, they have not 

 attained the highest degi-ee of certainty of which laws are susceptible. 

 It has been shown on a fonner occasion that laws of causation which 

 are derivative, and compounded of simpler laws, are not only, as the 

 nature of the case implies, less general, but even less certain, than the 

 simpler laws from which they result ; not so positively to be relied upon 

 as universally true. The inferiority of evidence, however, which 

 attaches to this class of laws, is trifling compared with that which is 

 inherent in unifonnities not kno^vn to be laws of causation at all. So 

 long as these are unresolved, we cannot tell upon how many colloca- 

 tions, as well as laws, their truth may be dependent ; and can never, 

 therefore, extend them with perfect confidence to cases in which we 

 have not assured ourselves, by trial, that the necessary collocation of 

 causes, whatever it may be, exists. It is to this class of laws alone 

 that the property, which philosophers usually consider as characteristic 

 of empirical laws, belongs in all its strictness ; the property of being 

 unfit to be relied on beyond the limits of time, place, and circumstance, 

 in which the observations have been made. These are empirical laws 

 in a more emphatic senses and when I employ that term (except 

 where the context manifestly indicates the reverse) I shall generally 

 mean to designate those uniformities only, whether of succession or 

 of coexistence, which are not knovm to be laws of causation. 



CHAPTER XVII. 



OF CHANCE, AND ITS ELIMINATION. 



§ 1. Considering, then, as empirical laws only those observed uni- 

 formities respecting which the question whether they are laws of causa- 

 tion must remain undecided until they can be explained deductively, 

 or until some means are found of applying the Method of Difference to 

 the case ; it has been shown in the preceding chapter, that until an 

 uniformity can, in one or the other of these modes, be taken out of the 

 class of empirical laws, and brought either into that of laws of causa- 

 tion or of the demonstrated results of laws of causation, it cannot with 

 any assurance be pronounced true beyond the local and other limits 

 within which it has been found so by actual observation. It remains to 

 consider how we are to assure ourselves of its truth even within those 



