378 INDUCTION. 



Dutch travellers and the King of Siam. Facts of this description, 

 facts previously unheard of, but which could not from any known law 

 of causation be pronounced impossible, are what Hume characterizes 

 as not contrary to experience, but merely uncomfurmable to it ; and 

 Bentham, in his treatise on Evidence, denominates them facts discon- 

 formable in specie, as distinguished from such as are disconformable 

 in toto or in degree. 



In a case of this description, the fact asserted is the existence of a 

 new Kind ; which in itself is not in the slightest degree incredible, 

 and only to be rejected if the improbability that any variety of object 

 existing at the particular place and time should not have been discov- 

 ered sooner, be greater than that of error or mendacity in the witnesses. 

 Accordingly, sucb assertions, when made by credible persons, and of 

 unexplored places, are not disbelieved, but at most regarded as requiring 

 confirmation from subsequent observers ; unless the alleged properties 

 of the supposed new Kind are at variance with known properties of 

 some larger Kind which includes it ; or, in other words, unless, in the 

 new Kind which is asserted to exist, some properties are said to have 

 been found disjoined from others which have always been known to 

 accompany them ; as in the case of Pliny's men, or any other kind oi 

 animal of a structure diflierent from that which has always been found 

 to coexist with animal life. On the mode of dealing with any such 

 case, little needs be added to what has been said on the same topic in 

 the twenty-second chapter.* When the uniformities of coexistence 

 which the alleged fact would violate, are such as to raise a strong 

 presumption Of their being the result of causation, the fact which 

 conflicts with them is to be disbelieved, at least provisionally, and 

 subject t^ further investigation. When the presumption amounts to a 

 virtual certainty, as in the case of the general structure of organized 

 beings, the only question requiring consideration is whether, in phenom- 

 ena so little known, there may not be liabilities to counteraction from 

 causes hitherto unknown ; or whether the phenomena may not be 

 capable of originating in some other way, which would produce a 

 different set of derivative uniformities. Where (as in the case of the 

 flying-fish, or the ornithorhynchus) the generalization to which the 

 alleged fact would be an exception is very special and of limited range, 

 neither of the above suppositions can be deemed very improbable ; and 

 it is generally, in the case of such alleged anomalies, wise to suspend 

 our judgment, pending the subsequent inquiries which will not fail to 

 confirm the assertion if it be true. But when the generalization is very 

 comprehensive, embracing a vast number and variety of observations, 

 and covering a considerable province of the kingdom of nature ; then, 

 for reasons which have been fully explained, such an empirical law 

 comes near to the certainty of an ascertained law of causation : and 

 any alleged exception to it cannot be admitted, unless upon the evi- 

 dence of some law of causation proved by a still more complete 

 induction. 



Such uniformities in the course of nature as do not bear marks of 

 being the results of causation, are, as we have already seen, admissible 

 as universal truths with a degree of credence proportioned to their 

 generality. Those which are true of all things whatever, or at least 

 which are totally independent of the varieties of Kinds, namely, the 

 * Supra, pp. 349-351. 



