342 INDUCTION. 



some cases obeying with as much constancy as any phenomena in 

 nature the law of the tendency of fluids to distribute themselves so as 

 to equalize tlie pressiu'e on every side of each of their particles ; as 

 in the case of the trade winds, and the monsoons. Lightning might 

 once hav« been supposed to obey no laws; but since it has been ascer- 

 tained to be identical with electricity, we know that the very same 

 phenomenon in some of its manifestations is implicitly obedient to the 

 action of fixed causes. I do not believe that there is now one object 

 or event in all our experience of nature, within the bounds of the solar 

 system at least, which has not either been ascertained by direct 

 observation to follow laws of its Own, or been proved to be exactly 

 similar to objects and events which, in more familiar manifestations, or 

 on a more limited scale, follow strict laws: our inability to trace the 

 same laws on the larger scale and in the more recondite instances 

 being accounted for by the number and complication of the modifying 

 causes, or by their inaccessibility to observation. 



The progress of experience, therefore, has dissipated the doubt 

 which must have rested upon the universality of the law of causation 

 while there were phenomena which seemed to be stii generis, not sub- 

 ject to the same laws with any other class of phenomena, and not a,s 

 yet ascertained to have peculiar laws of their own. This great gener- 

 alization, however, might reasonably have been, as it in fact was by 

 all great thinkers, acted upon as a probability of the highest order, be- 

 fore there were sufficient grounds for receiving it as a certainty. For, 

 whatever has been found true in innumerable instances, and never 

 found to be false after due examination in any, we are safe in acting 

 upon as universal provisionally, until-an undoubted exception appears ; 

 provided the nature of the case be such jhat a real exception could 

 scarcely have escaped our notice. When every phenomenon that we 

 ever knew sufficiently well to be able to answer the question, had a 

 cause on which it was invariably consequent, it was more rational to 

 suppose that our inability to assign the causes of other phenomena 

 arose from our ignorance, than that there were phenomena which were 

 uncaused, and Avhich happened accidentally to be exactly those which 

 we had hitherto had no sufficient opportunity of studying. 



§ 5. It must, at the same time, be remarked, that the reasons for this 

 reliance do not hold in circumstances unknown to us, and beyond the 

 possible range of our experience. In distant parts of the stellar 

 regions, where the phenomena may be entirely unlike those with 

 which we are acquainted, it would be folly to affirm confidently dial 

 this general law prevails, any more than those special ones which we 

 have found to. hold universally on our own planet. The uniformity in 

 the succession of events, otherwise called the law of causation, must be 

 received not as a law of the universe, but of that portion of it only 

 which is within the range of our means of sure observation, with a 

 reasonable degree of extension to adjacent cases. To extend it 

 further is to make a supposition without evidence, and to which in 

 the absence of any ground from experience for estimating its degi'ee 

 of probability, it would be ridiculous to affect to assign any. 



But, on the other hand, within the bounds of human experience, this 

 fundamental law, though itself obtained by induction from particular 

 laws of causation cannot be deemed less certain, but on the contrary 



