374 



INDtrcTION. 



established laws of causation which 

 is not sometimes counteracted, and 

 to which, therefore, apparent excep- 

 tions do not present themselves, which 

 would have necessarily and justly 

 shaken the confidence of mankind in 

 the universality of those laws, if in- 

 ductive processes founded on the uni- 

 versal law had not enabled us to refer 

 those exceptions to the agency of 

 counteracting causes, and thereby re- 

 concile them with the law with which 

 they apparently conflict. Errors, 

 moreover, may have slipped into the 

 statement of any one of the special 

 laws, through inattention to some 

 material circumstance ; and instead 

 of the true proposition, another may 

 have been enunciated, false as an 

 universal law, though leading, in all 

 cases hitherto observed, to the same 

 result. To the law of causation, on 

 the contrary, we not only do not know 

 of any exception, but the exceptions 

 which limit or apparently invalidate 

 the special laws, are so far from con- 

 tradicting the universal one, that 

 they confirm it ; since in all cases 

 which are sufficiently open to our 

 observation, we are able to trace the 

 difference of result, either to the ab- 

 sence of a cause which had been 

 present in ordinary cases, or to the 

 presence of one which had been 

 absent. 



The law of cause and effect, being 

 thus certain, is capable of imparting 

 its certainty to all other inductive 

 propositions which can be deduced 

 from it ; and the narrower inductions 

 may be regarded as receiving their 

 ultimate sanction from that law, since 

 there is no one of them which is not 

 rendered more certain than it was 

 before, when we are able to connect 

 it with that larger induction, and to 

 show that it cannot be denied, con- 

 sistently with the law that everything 

 which begins to exist has a caiise. 

 And hence we are justified in the 

 Beeming inconsistency of holding in- 

 duction by simple enumeration to be 

 good for proving this general truth, 

 the foundation of scientific induction, 



and yet refusing to rely on it for any 

 of the narrower inductions. I fully 

 admit that if the law of causation 

 were unknown, generalisation in the 

 more obvious cases of uniformity in 

 phenomena would nevertheless be 

 possible, and though in all cases more 

 or less precarious, and in some ex- 

 tremely so, would suffice to constitute 

 a certain measure of probability ; but 

 what the amount of this probability 

 might be we are dispensed from esti- 

 mating, since it never could amount 

 to the degree of assurance which the 

 proposition acquires, when, by the 

 application to it of the Four Methods, 

 the supposition of its falsity is shown 

 to be inconsistent with the Law of 

 Causation. We are therefore logi- 

 cally entitled, and, by the necessities 

 of scientific induction, required to 

 disregard the probabilities derived 

 from the early rude method of gene- 

 ralising, and to consider no minor 

 generalisation as proved except so far 

 as the law of causation confirms it, 

 nor probable except so far as it may 

 reasonably be expected to be so con- 

 firmed. 



§ 4. The assertion that our in- 

 ductive processes assume tie law of 

 causation, while the law of causation 

 is itself a case of induction, is a para- 

 dox, only on the old theory of reason- 

 ing, which supposes the universal 

 truth, or major premise, in a ratioci- 

 nation, to be the real proof of the 

 particular truths which are ostensibly 

 inferred from it. According to the 

 doctrine maintained in the present 

 treatise,* the major premise is not 

 the proof of the conclusion, but is 

 itself proved, along with the conclu- 

 sion, from the same evidence. "All 

 men are mortal" is not the proof 

 that 7ord Palmerston is mortal ; but 

 our past experience of mortality 

 authorises us to infer both the general 

 truth and the particular fact, and the 

 one with exactly the same degree of 

 assurance as the other. The mor- 



* Book ii. chap. iii. 



