EVIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL, CAUSATION. 341 



rigorously consequent upon any antecedents, does not necessarily, 

 even in the present state of our experience, appear an inadmissible 

 paradt)x. 



The truth is, as M. Comte has well })ointod out, that (although the 

 generalizing propensity must have prom})tcd mankind from almost the 

 beginning of their experience to ascribe all events to some cause more 

 or less mysterious) the conviction that phcnomtnia have invariable laws, 

 and follow with regularity certain antecedent i)hcnomcna, was only 

 acquired gradually; and extended itself, as knowledge advanced, from 

 one order of ])heuomena to another, beginning with those whose laws 

 were most accessible to observation. This progress has not yet 

 attained its ultimate point; there being still, as before obser\'ed, one 

 cla^s of phenomena, the subjection of which to invariable laws is not 

 yet universally recognized. So long as any doubt hung over this 

 fundamental principle, the various Methods of Induction which took 

 that principle for granted could only afford results which wei'e admissi- 

 ble conditionally ; as showing what law the phenomenon under inves- 

 tigation must follow if it followed any fixed law at all. As, however, 

 when the rules of correct induction had been conformed to, the result 

 obtained never failed to be verified by all subsequent experience ; 

 every such inductive operation had the effect of extending the acknowl- 

 edged dominion of general laws, and bringing an additional portion 

 of the experience of mankind to strengthen the evidence of the uni- 

 versality of the law of causation : until now at length we are fully 

 waiTanted in considering that law, as applied to all phenomena within 

 the range of human observation, to stand on an equal footing in respect 

 to evidence with the axioms of geometiy itself. 



§ 4. I apprehend that the considerations which give, at the present 

 day, to the proof of the law of uniformity of succession as true of all 

 phenomena without exception, this character of completeness and 

 conclusiveness, are the following : — First ; that we now know it directly 

 to be ti-ue of far the gi'eatest number of phenomena ; that there are 

 none of which we know it not to be true, the utmost that can be said 

 being that of some we cannot positively from direct evidence affirm its 

 truth ; while phenomenon after phenomenon, as they become better 

 known to us, are constantly passing from the latter class into the 

 former ; and in all cases in which that transition has not yet taken 

 place, the absence of direct proof is accounted for by the rarity or the 

 obscurity of the jjhenomena, our deficient means of observing them, 

 or the logical difficulties arising from the complication of the circum- 

 stances in which they occur; insomuch that, notwithstanding as rigid 

 a dependence upon given conditions as exists in the case of any other 

 phenomenon, it was not likely that we should l)e better acquainted 

 vrith those conditions than we are, Jiesides this first class of con- , 

 siderations there is a second, which still further corroborates the 

 conclusion, and from the recognition of which the com])lete establish- 

 ment of the universal law may i-easonably be datcid. Although there 

 are phenomena, the ])roduction and changes of which elude all our 

 attempts to reduce them universally to any ascertained law ; yet in 

 every such case, the phenomenrm, or the objects concerned in it, are 

 found in some instances to obey the known laws of nature. The wind, 

 for example, is the type of uncertainty and caprice, yet we find it in 



