EVIDENCE OF tJNIVERSAL CAUSATION. 



375 



tality of Lord Palmerston is not an 

 inference from the mortality of all 

 men, but from the experience which 

 proves the mortality of all men ; and 

 is a correct inference from experience, 

 if that general truth is so too. This 

 relation between our general beliefs 

 and their particular application holds 

 equally true in the more compre- 

 hensive case which we are now dis- 

 cussing. Any new fact of causation 

 inferred by induction is rightly in- 

 ferred, if no other objection can be 

 made to the inference than can be 

 made to the general truth that every 

 event has a cause. The utmost cer- 

 tainty which can be given to a con- 

 clusion arrived at in the way of in- 

 ference stops at this point. When 

 we have ascertained that the parti- 

 cular conclusion must stand or fall 

 with the general uniformity of the 

 laws of nature — that it is liable to 

 no doubt except the doubt whether 

 every event has a cause — we have 

 done all that can be done for it. The 

 strongest assurance we can obtiiin of 

 any theory respecting the cause of a 

 given phenomenon is that the pheno- 

 menon has either that cause or none. 



The latter supposition might have 

 been an admissible one in a very 

 early period of our study of nature. 

 But we have been able to perceive 

 that in the stage which mankind 

 have now reached the generalisation 

 which gives the Law of Universal 

 Causation has grown into a stronger 

 and better induction, one deserving 

 of greater reliance than any of the 

 subordinate generalisations. We may 

 even, I think, go a step farther than 

 this, and regard the certainty of that 

 great induction as not merely com- 

 parative, but, for all practical pur- 

 poses, complete. 



The considerations which, as I ap- 

 prehend, 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 true of far the 



greatest 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 transi- 

 tion has not yet taken place, the 

 absence of direct proof is accounted 

 for by the rarity or the obscurity of 

 the phenomena, our deficient means 

 of observing them, or the logical diffi- 

 culties arising from the complication 

 of the circumstances in which they 

 occur ; insomuch that, notwithstand- 

 ing as rigid a dependence on given 

 conditions as exists in the case of any 

 other phenomenon, it was not likely 

 that we should be better acquainted 

 with those conditions than we are. 

 Besides this first class of considera- 

 tions, there is a second, which still 

 further corroborates the conclusion. 

 Although there are phenomena the 

 production and changes of which 

 elude all our attempts to reduce 

 them universally to any ascertained 

 law ; yet in every such case the phe- 

 nomenon, 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 un- 

 certainty and caprice, yet we find it 

 in some cases obeying with as much 

 constancy as any phenomenon in 

 nature the law of the tendency of 

 fluids to distribute themselves so as 

 to equalise the pressure on every side 

 of each of their particles ; as in the 

 case of the trade winds and the mon- 

 soons. Lightning might once have 

 been supposed to obey no laws ; but 

 since it has been ascertained to be 

 identical with electricity, we know 

 that the very same phenomenon in 

 some of its manifestations is impli- 

 citly 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, 



