340 INDUCTION. 



be dependent upon the accidental absence of counteracting agencies, 

 which any variation of time, or the smallest change of circumstances, 

 may possibly bring into play. If we suppose, then, the subject matter 

 of any generahzation to be so widely dittused that there is no time, no 

 place, and no combination of circumstances, but must afford an exam- 

 ple either of its truth or of its falsity, and if it be never found otherwise 

 than true, its truth cannot depend upon any collocation unless such as 

 exist at all times and places; nor can it be frustrated by any counter- 

 acting agencies, unless by such as never actually occur. It is, therefore, 

 an empirical law coextensive \vith all human experience ; at which point 

 the distinction between empirical laws and lav/s of nature vanishes, and 

 the proposition takes its place in the highest order of truths accessible 

 to science. Such a character sti'ictly belongs to the law of universal 

 causation, and to the ultimate principles of mathematics. The induc- 

 tion by which they are estabhshed is of that kind which can -establish 

 nothing but empirical laws ; an empirical law, however, of which the 

 truth is exemplified at every moment of time and in every variety of 

 place or circumstance, has an evidence which surpasses that of the 

 most rigid induction, even if the foundation of scientific induction were 

 not itself laid (as we have seen that it is) in a generalization of. this 

 very description. 



§ 3. With respect to the general law of causation, it does appear 

 that there must have been a time when the universal prevalence of 

 that law throughout nature could not have been affirmed in the same 

 confident and unqualified manner as at present. There was a time 

 when many of the phenomena of nature must have appeared altogether 

 capricious and in-egular, not governed by any laws, nor steadily con- 

 sequent upon any causes. Such phenomena, indeed, were commonly, 

 in that early stage of human knowledge, ascribed to the direct inter- 

 vention of the will of some supernatural being, and therefore still to 

 a cause. This shows the strong tendency of the human mind to 

 ascribe every phenomenon to some cause or other ; but it shows also 

 that experience had not, at that time, pointed out any regular order in 

 the occurrence of those particular phenomena, nor proved them to be, 

 as we now know that they are, dependent upon prior phenomeiia as 

 their proximate causes. There have been sects of philosophers who 

 have admitted what they teniied Chance as one of the agents in the 

 order of nature, by which certain classes of events were entirely regu- 

 lated ; which could only mean that those events did not occur in any 

 fixed order, or depend upon imiform laws of causation. Finally, there 

 is one class of phenomena which, even in our o-\\ni day, at least one- 

 half of the speculative world do not admit to be governed by causes; 

 I mean human volitions. These are believed, by the metaphysicians 

 who espouse the fi-ee-wiU doctrine, to be self-determining, self-causing; 

 that is, not caused by anything external to themselves, not determined 

 by any prior fact. It is true that the real opinion of these philosophers 

 does not go quite so far as their words seem to imply ; they do not in 

 reality claim for this class of phenomena much more than the absence 

 of that mystical tie which the word necessity seems to involve, and the 

 existence of which, even in the case of inorganic rtlatter, is but an 

 illusion produced by language. But their system of philosophy does 

 not the less prove that the existence of phenomena wliich are not 



