346 INDUCTION. 



of black objects, or woolly hair an ultimate property of the animals 

 which possess it; supposing that these properties are not results of 

 causation, are not connected with antecedent phenomena by any law; 

 then if all crows are black, and all negroes have woolly hair, those 

 must be ultimate properties of the Kind crow, or negro, or of some 

 Kind which includes them. If, on the contrary, blackness or woolly 

 hair be an effect depending on causes, these general propositions are 

 manifestly empirical laws ; and all that has already been said respect- 

 ing that class of generalizations may be applied without modification 

 to these. 



Now, we have seen that in the case of all compounds — of all things, 

 in short, except the elementary substances and primary powers of 

 nature — the presumption is, that the properties do really depend upon 

 causes ;' and it is impossible in any case whatever to be certain that 

 they do not. We therefore should not be safe in claiming for any 

 generalization respecting the coexistence of properties, a degree of 

 certainty to which, if the properties should happen to be the result of 

 causes, it would have no claim. A generalization respecting coexist- 

 ence, or in other words respecting the properties of Kinds, may be an 

 ultimate truth, but it may^ also, be merely a derivative one ; and since, 

 if so, it is one of those derivative laws which are neither laws of 

 caUsation, ndr have been resolved into the laws of causation upon 

 which they depend, it can possess no higher degree of evidence than 

 belongs to an empirical' law. 



§ 4. This conclusion will be confirmed by the consideration of one 

 great deficiency, which precludes the application to the ultimate uni- 

 formities of coexistence, of a system of rigorous and scientific induc- 

 tion, such as the uniformities in the succession of phenomena have 

 been found to be susceptible of. The basis of such a system is want- 

 ing : there is no general axiom, standing in the same relation to the 

 uniformities of coexistence as the law of causation does to those of suc- 

 cession. The Methods of Induction applicable to the ascertainment of 

 causes and effects, are grounded upon the pz'inciple that everything 

 which has a beginning must have some cause or other ; that among 

 the circumstances which actually existed at the time of its commence- 

 ment, there is certainly some one or more, upon which the effect in 

 question is unconditionally consequent, and on the repetition of which 

 it would certainly again recur. But in an inquiry whether some kind 

 (as crow) universally possesses a certain property (as blackness), there 

 is no room for any assumption analogous to this. We have no pre- 

 vious certainty that the property must have something which constant- 

 ly coexists with it ; must have an invariable coexistent, in the same 

 manner as an event must have an invariable antecedent. When we 

 feel pain, we must be in some circumstances under which if exactly 

 repeated we should always feel pain. But when we are conscious of 

 blackness, it does not follow that there is something pi'escnt of which 

 blackness is a constant accompaninient. There is, therefore, no room 

 for elimination ; no Method of Agreement or Difference, or of Con- 

 comitant Variations (which is but a modification either of the Method 

 of Agreement or of the Method of Difference). We cannot conclude 

 that the blackness we see in crows must be an invariable property of 

 crows, merely because there is nothing else present of which it can be 



