Whether such a succession is a causation or not, must then always be doubtful; and the doubt must be, from the nature of things, incapable of solution. So that to select from the endless maze of successive phenomena certain of them as Cause and Effect, must be mere guess-work, without the slightest scientific value. We know beforehand that an immense mass of phenomena precede any given one, (and many of them invariably precede it,)-which must either all be causes of it, or else some of them not causes. But if all are causes, the principle will be useless to Science; and if some only are causes, we cannot distinguish them. "In making chemical experiments, we do not think it necessary to note the position of the planets; because experience has shown, as a very superficial experience is sufficient to show, that in such cases that circumstance is not material to the result." On the contrary, by his own showing, nothing less than an experience coextensive with the existence of the planets, and reaching beyond them, could be sufficient. Or by what process are their possible influences to be eliminated? Nor if we forsake the principle, and trust to invariable experience merely, is the difficulty lessened. Many phenomena as the fixed starsare constant, and have assisted, in the French sense, throughout History; are we, therefore, to conclude that they have assisted also in the sense of Causation? The confusion of post hoc with propter hoc is, indeed, a matter of daily experience, but will hardly be maintained as a scientific principle.

And it cannot be allowed, even as a matter of common experience or opinion, that Cause and Effect are always related as antecedent and consequent. On the contrary, Mr. Mill's own definition of Cause implies coexistence. He says, (I. 404,) "The cause, philosophically speaking, is the sum total of the conditions, positive and negative, taken together; the whole of the contingencies of every description, which being realized, the consequence invariably follows." The cause, then, does not exist until all the conditions are assembled. But what interval can there be between the assemblage of all the conditions and the existence of the effect? Clearly only an imaginary one. Not merely will the interval of time be too small to be appreciated by the senses, but more than this, there will be an absolute coincidence. You cannot assemble the conditions of water, without at the same instant producing it. The chemical combination of oxygen and hydrogen, is equally a description of the cause and of the effect. If the

effect is not produced, it is because some of the positive conditions are wanting, or some of the negative present. This, indeed, Mr. Mill (I. 413,) seems to admit, but thinks it unimportant. "Whether the cause and its effect be necessarily successive or not, causation is still the law of the succession of phenomena. Every thing which begins to exist must have a cause." That is, all that the common notion of Causation demands, is some necessary connection between the phenomena, in which it is undoubtedly right. Only there is not the slightest ground for attributing any weight to Succession, which, instead of giving, receives all its importance from the ulterior fact of a real connection.

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What this connection is, then, or how it is to be known, is left undecided. This principle of Causation, therefore, will not accomplish what it is brought forward to do. As before, its application shows its deficiencies. Thus, (I. 506,)" In the first place, it is not true that the same phenomenon is always produced by the same cause; the effect a may sometimes arise from A, sometimes from B. And, secondly, the effects of different causes are often not dissimilar, but homogeneous, and marked out by no assignable boundaries from one another." "One fact may be the consequent in several invariable sequences; it may follow, with equal uniformity, any one of sev eral antecedents, or collections of antecedents." So that, (I. 543,)"Where, in every single instance, a multitude, often an unknown multitude of agencies are clashing and combining, what security have we that in our computation a priori we have taken all these into one reckoning? How many must we not generally be ignorant of? Among those we know, how probable that some have been overlooked; and even were all included, how vain the pretence of summing up the effects of many causes, unless we know accurately the numerical law of each,-a condition in most cases not to be fulfilled; and even when fulfilled, to make the calculation transcends, in any but very simple cases, the utmost power of mathematical science with its most modern improvements." These difficulties Mr. Mill supposes confined to certain classes of investigations; but, as remarked on a former occasion, even allowing this, the trouble is that we can never be sure whether or not any given case belongs to one of these classes. This uncertainty, therefore, must extend to all our results.

As a remedy for these deficiencies of Induction, Mr. Mill

proposes the Deductive Method. (I. 534.) "The mode of investigation which, from the proved inapplicability of direct methods of observation and experiment, remains to us as the main source of the knowledge we possess. . . of the more complex phenomena, is called . . . the Deductive Method; and consists of three operations: the first, one of direct induction; the second, of ratiocination; and the third, of verification." "The problem of the Deductive Method is, to find the law of an effect from the laws of the different tendencies of which it is the joint result. The first requisite, therefore, is to know the laws of these tendencies; the law of each of the concurrent causes; and this supposes a previous process of observation or experiment upon each cause separately; or else a previous deduction, which also must depend for its ultimate premisses upon observation or experiment." This being accomplished," the second part follows; that of determining, from the laws of the causes, what effect any given combination of those causes will produce.' Thus far there is nothing peculiar in the method; its essential characteristic is the third process, Verification, whereby the general conclusions formed by deduction are compared with the results of direct observation. Without Verification it is acknowledged (I. 544,) that all the results of the Deductive Method "have little other value than that of guess-work." It is upon Verification, therefore, that the validity of all scientific results must at last depend. "That the advances henceforth to be expected even in physical, and still more in mental and social science, will be chiefly the result of deduction, is evident from the general considerations already adduced."

But it is not a sufficient verification, that the supposed cause "accounts for all the known phenomena, since this is a condition often fulfilled equally well by two conflicting hypotheses." It is sufficient only "provided the case be such that a false law cannot lead to a true result;-provided no law, except the very one we have assumed, can lead deductively to the same conclusions which that leads to."

Here the whole difficulty is provided for in advance, in a summary manner. The uncertainty whether our investigation has been sufficiently ample to exclude all possibility of influence from unsuspected causes, is disposed of, but by a postulate, for the admissibility of which we can see no grounds. Previously to Verification we have no means of obtaining such knowledge concerning the law in question, except through In

duction, and reasoning founded thereon. Unless by attributing some additional efficacy to Induction on account of its forming part of the deductive process, we see no chance that the proviso can ever be complied with. Mr. Mill, however, is of a different opinion. He thinks it may "often be realized," and gives as an instance Newton's demonstration that the law governing the motion of the planets is Gravitation. But in all mathematical demonstrations, as our author himself remarks, (I. 297, 300,) the result is already implied in the premisses, and the premisses (II. 112, 162,) empirically derived from simple enumeration. That the proviso can ever be complied with in cases other than mathematical, he does not show. And he is obliged to admit that in order that Verification shall be proof, it is necessary that "the supposed cause should not only be a real phenomenon, . . . but should be already known to have some influence upon the supposed effect; the precise degree and manner of the influence being the only point undetermined." And "that what is an hypothesis at the beginning of the inquiry becomes a proved law of nature before its close... can only happen when the inquiry has for its object, not to detect an unknown cause, but to determine the precise law of a cause already ascertained." (II. 17, 14.)

...

Verification, therefore, is a subordinate matter, and does not help us at all in the main point; namely, the discovery of Cause. For this we are referred back to Induction. Observation and Experiment (II. 18,) furnish the independent evidence aliunde on which Verification depends. "The hypothesis, by suggesting observations and experiments, puts us upon the road to that independent evidence, if it be really attainable; and until it be attained, the hypothesis ought not to count for more than a suspicion."

In this account of Verification, it may be observed we have throughout assumed that the preliminary induction is in all cases an hypothesis; since, from what has already been shown, it must always answer to Mr. Mill's definition of an hypothesis; namely, a supposition made upon insufficient evidence. If it is not an hypothesis, there is no need of Verification; if it is, Verification is no more possible than before. Deduction is thus only an inverted Induction;- Verification, with which it ends, being nothing more than Experience, with which Induction begins.

It results, therefore, that the "connecting link" of phenomena cannot be discovered; the passage from the Particular to

the General remains unexplained and inexplicable. We must remain content with particulars; and not only this, but also, as the particular testifies only of itself and not of other particulars, we must be content with a partial or empirical Knowledge. "Experimental philosophers" (II. 41, 46, 93,) “ usually give the name of Empirical Laws to those uniformities which observation or experiment has shown to exist, but upon which they hesitate to rely in cases varying much from those which have been actually observed, for want of seeing any reason why such a law should exist. It is implied, therefore, in the notion of an empirical law, that it is not an ultimate law; that if true at all, its truth is capable of being, and requires to be, accounted for. It is a derivative law, the derivation of which is not yet known." "Empirical laws, therefore, can only be held true within the limits of time and place in which they have been found true by observation; and not merely the limits of time and place, but of time, place, and circumstance; for since it is the very meaning of an empirical law that we do not know the ultimate laws of causation upon which it is dependent, we cannot foresee, without actual trial, in what manner or to what extent the introduction of any new circumstance may affect it." "In proportion, therefore, to our ignorance of the causes on which the empirical law depends, we can be less assured that it will continue to hold good; and the further we look into futurity, the less improbable is it that some one of the causes whose existence gives rise to the derivative uniformity, may be destroyed or counteracted."

The nearest that the Inductive Philosophy can come to Truth, therefore, is Probability. Universal experience being impossible, Knowledge must be so also. Its first principles must be assumptions. "The whole problem of the investigation of nature is, What are the fewest assumptions, which, being granted, the order of nature as it exists would be the result.' (I. 560.) It cannot aspire to know the nature or the reason of any thing, but must content itself with the bare fact. It divides the universe into two mysteries- the mystery of Existence and the mystery of Knowledge. Body is the "unknown exciting cause of sensations;" the "mysterious something which excites the mind to feel;" and mind "the unknown recipient or percipient" of sensations; "the mysterious something which feels and thinks." "On the inmost nature of the thinking principle, as well as on the inmost nature of matter, we are, and with our human faculties must