OPINIONS OF MR STUART MILL. 



275 



upon every fresh attempt to reduce the phenomena of 

 nature to general laws, and to limit those occasions on 

 which it is necessary to conceive of a direct and separate 

 interposition of Divine pow r er, as a fresh encroachment 

 on the prerogatives of the Deity, or a concealed attack 

 upon his very existence. And yet these very same men 

 are daily appealing to such laws of the creation as have 

 been already established for their great proofs of the ex- 

 istence and wisdom of God! . . ." He adds, "No, there 

 is nothing atheistic, nothing irreligious, in the attempt to 

 conceive creation, as well as reproduction, carried on by 

 universal laws."* 



There is, however, no more interesting or valuable tes- 

 timony to universal causation than that presented in the 

 System of Logic of Mr. Stuart Mill. If, in the following 

 extract, we were to substitute the creation of organisms 

 for human volitions, it would apply remarkably well to 

 the state of the argument presented in the present vol- 

 ume : 



" The conviction that phenomena have invariable laws, 

 and follow with regularity certain antecedent phenomena, 

 was only acquired gradually, and extended itself, as 

 knowledge advanced, from one order of phenomena to 

 another, beginning with those whose laws were most ac- 

 cessible to observation. This progress has not yet at- 

 tained its ultimate point ; there being still one class of 

 phenomena [human volitions,] the subjection of which 

 to invariable laws is not yet universally recognized. So 

 long as any doubt hung over this fundamental principle, 

 the various methods of induction which took that princi- 

 ple for granted could only afford results which were ad- 

 missible conditionally, as showing what law the phe- 

 nomenon under investigation must follow if it followed 

 any fixed law at all. As, however, when the rules of 

 correct induction had been conformed to, the result ob- 

 tained never failed to be verified by all subsequent expe- 

 rience, every such inductive operation had the effect of 

 extending the acknowledged dominion of general laws, 

 and bringing an additional portion of the experience of 

 mankind to strengthen the evidence of the universality 

 of the law of causation ; until now at length we are fully 

 warranted in considering that laiv, as applied to all phe- 

 nomena within the range of human observation, to stand 

 * Review of Vestiges, Blackwood's Magazine, April, 1846. 



