EVIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL CAUSATION. 339 



must be sought elsewhere than in any supposed necessity of our intel- 

 lectual faculties. 



As was observed in a former place,* the belief we entertain in the 

 universality, throughout nature, of the law of cause and effect, is itself 

 an instance of induction ; and by no means one of the eai'liest which 

 any of us, or which mankind in general, can have made. We arrive 

 at this universal law, by generalization from many laws of inferior 

 generality. The generalizing propensity, which, instinctive or not, is 

 one of the most powerful principles of our nature, does not indeed 

 wait for the period when such a generalization becomes strictly legiti- 

 mate. The mere unreasoning propensity to expect what has been 

 often experienced, doubtless led men to believe that everythhig had a 

 cause, before they could have conclusive evidence of that truth. But 

 even this cannot be supposed to have happened until many cases of 

 causation, or, in other words, many partial uniformities of sequence, 

 had become familiar. The more obvious of the particular uniformi- 

 ties suggest and j^rQve the general uniformity, and that general uni- 

 formity, once' established, enables us to prove the remainder of the 

 particular uniformities of which it is made up. As, however, all rigor- 

 ous processes of induction presuppose the general uniformity, ouf 

 knowledge of the particular uniformities from which it was first in- 

 ferred was not, of course, derived from rigid induction, but from the 

 loose and uncertain mode of induction ^^er enumcrationtm simplicem ; 

 and the law of universal causation, being collected from results so ob- 

 tained, cannot itself rest upon any better foundation. 



§ 2. This opens to us a consideration of very great importance; 

 namely, that induction by simple enumeration, or, in other words, gen- 

 eralization of an observed fact from the mere absence of any known 

 instances to the contrary, is by no means the illicit logical j^rocess in 

 all cases which it is in most. It is delusive and insufficient exactly in 

 proportion as the subject-matter of the observation is special and lim- 

 ited in extent. As the sphere widens, this unscientific method becomes 

 less and less liable to mislead ; and the most universal class of truths, 

 the law of causation for instance, and the principles of number and of 

 geometry, are duly and satisfactorily proved by that method alone, 

 nor are they susceptible of any other proof 



With respect to all the class of generalizations of which we have 

 recently treated, the unifonnities which depend upon causation, the 

 truth of the remark just made follows by obvious inference from the 

 principles laid down in the preceding chapters. When a fact has 

 been observed a certain number of times to be true, and is not in any 

 instance known to be false ; if we at once affinn that fact as an uni- 

 versal truth or law of nature, without testing it by any of the four 

 methods of induction, nor deducing it- by reasoning from other known 

 laws, we shall in general err grossly : but wd are perfectly justified in 

 affirming it as an empirical law, true within certain limits of time, 

 place, and circumstance, provided the number of coincidOnces is greater 

 than can with any probability be ascribed to chance. The reason for 

 not extending it beyond those limits is, that the fact of its holding true 

 within them may be a consequence of collocations, which cannot bo 

 concluded to exist in one place because they exist in another ; or may 



* Supra, pp. 184-^. 



