A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive · John Stuart Mill
§ 1. In the last four chapters we have traced the general outlines of the theory of the generation of derivative laws from ultimate ones. In the present chapter our attention will be directed to a particular case of the derivation of laws from other laws, but a case so general, and so important as not only to repay, but to require, a separate examination. This is the case of a complex phenomenon resulting from one simple law, by the continual addition of an effect to itself.
There are some phenomena, some bodily sensations, for example, which are essentially instantaneous, and whose existence can only be prolonged by the prolongation of the existence of the cause by which they are produced. But most phenomena are in their own nature permanent; having begun to exist, they would exist forever unless some cause intervened having a tendency to alter or destroy them. Such, for example, are all the facts of phenomena which we call bodies. Water, once produced, will not of itself relapse into a state of hydrogen and oxygen; such a change requires some agent having the power of decomposing the compound. Such, again, are the positions in space and the movements of bodies. No object at rest alters its position without the intervention of some conditions extraneous to itself; and when once in motion, no object returns to a state of rest, or alters either its direction or its velocity, unless some new external conditions are superinduced. It, therefore, perpetually happens that a temporary cause gives rise to a permanent effect. The contact of iron with moist air for a few hours, produces a rust which may endure for centuries; or a projectile force which launches a cannon-ball into space, produces a motion which would continue forever unless some other force counteracted it.
Between the two examples which we have here given, there is a difference worth pointing out. In the former (in which the phenomenon produced is a substance, and not a motion of a substance), since the rust remains forever and unaltered unless some new cause supervenes, we may speak of the contact of air a hundred years ago as even the proximate cause of the rust which has existed from that time until now. But when the effect is motion, which is itself a change, we must use a different language. The permanency of the effect is now only the permanency of a series of changes. The second foot, or inch, or mile of motion is not the mere prolonged duration of the first foot, or inch, or mile, but another fact which succeeds, and which may in some respects be very unlike the former, since it carries the body through a different region of space. Now, the original projectile force which set the body moving is the remote cause of all its motion, however long continued, but the proximate cause of no motion except that which took place at the first instant. The motion at any subsequent instant is proximately caused by the motion which took place at the instant preceding. It is on that, and not on the original moving cause, that the motion at any given moment depends. For, suppose that the body passes through some resisting medium, which partially counteracts the effect of the original impulse, and retards the motion; this counteraction (it need scarcely here be repeated) is as strict an example of obedience to the law of the impulse, as if the body had gone on moving with its original velocity; but the motion which results is different, being now a compound of the effects of two causes acting in contrary directions, instead of the single effect of one cause. Now, what cause does the body obey in its subsequent motion? The original cause of motion, or the actual motion at the preceding instant? The latter; for when the object issues from the resisting medium, it continues moving, not with its original, but with its retarded velocity. The motion having once been diminished, all that which follows is diminished. The effect changes, because the cause which it really obeys, the proximate cause, the real cause in fact, has changed. This principle is recognized by mathematicians when they enumerate among the causes by which the motion of a body is at any instant determined the force generated by the previous motion; an expression which would be absurd if taken to imply that this “force” was an intermediate link between the cause and the effect, but which really means only the previous motion itself, considered as a cause of further motion. We must, therefore, if we would speak with perfect precision, consider each link in the succession of motions as the effect of the link preceding it. But if, for the convenience of discourse, we speak of the whole series as one effect, it must be as an effect produced by the original impelling force; a permanent effect produced by an instantaneous cause, and possessing the property of self-perpetuation.
Let us now suppose that the original agent or cause, instead of being instantaneous, is permanent. Whatever effect has been produced up to a given time, would (unless prevented by the intervention of some new cause) subsist permanently, even if the cause were to perish. Since, however, the cause does not perish, but continues to exist and to operate, it must go on producing more and more of the effect; and instead of a uniform effect, we have a progressive series of effects, arising from the accumulated influence of a permanent cause. Thus, the contact of iron with the atmosphere causes a portion of it to rust; and if the cause ceased, the effect already produced would be permanent, but no further effect would be added. If, however, the cause, namely, exposure to moist air, continues, more and more of the iron becomes rusted, until all which is exposed is converted into a red powder, when one of the conditions of the production of rust, namely, the presence of unoxidized iron, has ceased, and the effect can not any longer be produced. Again, the earth causes bodies to fall toward it; that is, the existence of the earth at a given instant causes an unsupported body to move toward it at the succeeding instant; and if the earth were annihilated, as much of the effect as is already produced would continue; the object would go on moving in the same direction, with its acquired velocity, until intercepted by some body or deflected by some other force. The earth, however, not being annihilated, goes on producing in the second instant an effect similar and of equal amount with the first, which two effects being added together, there results an accelerated velocity; and this operation being repeated at each successive instant, the mere permanence of the cause, though without increase, gives rise to a constant progressive increase of the effect, so long as all the conditions, negative and positive, of the production of that effect continue to be realized.
It is obvious that this state of things is merely a case of the Composition of Causes. A cause which continues in action must on a strict analysis be considered as a number of causes exactly similar, successively introduced, and producing by their combination the sum of the effects which they would severally produce if they acted singly. The progressive rusting of the iron is in strictness the sum of the effects of many particles of air acting in succession upon corresponding particles of iron. The continued action of the earth upon a falling body is equivalent to a series of forces, applied in successive instants, each tending to produce a certain constant quantity of motion; and the motion at each instant is the sum of the effects of the new force applied at the preceding instant, and the motion already acquired. In each instant a fresh effect, of which gravity is the proximate cause, is added to the effect of which it was the remote cause; or (to express the same thing in another manner), the effect produced by the earth’s influence at the instant last elapsed is added to the sum of the effects of which the remote causes were the influences exerted by the earth at all the previous instants since the motion began. The case, therefore, comes under the principle of a concurrence of causes producing an effect equal to the sum of their separate effects. But as the causes come into play not all at once, but successively, and as the effect at each instant is the sum of the effects of those causes only which have come into action up to that instant, the result assumes the form of an ascending series; a succession of sums, each greater than that which preceded it; and we have thus a progressive effect from the continued action of a cause.
Since the continuance of the cause influences the effect only by adding to its quantity, and since the addition takes place according to a fixed law (equal quantities in equal times), the result is capable of being computed on mathematical principles. In fact, this case, being that of infinitesimal increments, is precisely the case which the differential calculus was invented to meet. The questions, what effect will result from the continual addition of a given cause to itself, and what amount of the cause, being continually added to itself, will produce a given amount of the effect, are evidently mathematical questions, and to be treated, therefore, deductively. If, as we have seen, cases of the Composition of Causes are seldom adapted for any other than deductive investigation, this is especially true in the case now examined, the continual composition of a cause with its own previous effects; since such a case is peculiarly amenable to the deductive method, while the undistinguishable manner in which the effects are blended with one another and with the causes, must make the treatment of such an instance experimentally still more chimerical than in any other case.
§ 2. We shall next advert to a rather more intricate operation of the same principle, namely, when the cause does not merely continue in action, but undergoes, during the same time, a progressive change in those of its circumstances which contribute to determine the effect. In this case, as in the former, the total effect goes on accumulating by the continual addition of a fresh effect to that already produced, but it is no longer by the addition of equal quantities in equal times; the quantities added are unequal, and even the quality may now be different. If the change in the state of the permanent cause be progressive, the effect will go through a double series of changes, arising partly from the accumulated action of the cause, and partly from the changes in its action. The effect is still a progressive effect, produced, however, not by the mere continuance of a cause, but by its continuance and its progressiveness combined.
A familiar example is afforded by the increase of the temperature as summer advances, that is, as the sun draws nearer to a vertical position, and remains a greater number of hours above the horizon. This instance exemplifies in a very interesting manner the twofold operation on the effect, arising from the continuance of the cause, and from its progressive change. When once the sun has come near enough to the zenith, and remains above the horizon long enough, to give more warmth during one diurnal rotation than the counteracting cause, the earth’s radiation, can carry off, the mere continuance of the cause would progressively increase the effect, even if the sun came no nearer and the days grew no longer; but in addition to this, a change takes place in the accidents of the cause (its series of diurnal positions), tending to increase the quantity of the effect. When the summer solstice has passed, the progressive change in the cause begins to take place the reverse way, but, for some time, the accumulating effect of the mere continuance of the cause exceeds the effect of the changes in it, and the temperature continues to increase.
Again, the motion of a planet is a progressive effect, produced by causes at once permanent and progressive. The orbit of a planet is determined (omitting perturbations) by two causes: first, the action of the central body, a permanent cause, which alternately increases and diminishes as the planet draws nearer to or goes farther from its perihelion, and which acts at every point in a different direction; and, secondly, the tendency of the planet to continue moving in the direction and with the velocity which it has already acquired. This force also grows greater as the planet draws nearer to its perihelion, because as it does so its velocity increases, and less, as it recedes from its perihelion; and this force as well as the other acts at each point in a different direction, because at every point the action of the central force, by deflecting the planet from its previous direction, alters the line in which it tends to continue moving. The motion at each instant is determined by the amount and direction of the motion, and the amount and direction of the sun’s action, at the previous instant; and if we speak of the entire revolution of the planet as one phenomenon (which, as it is periodical and similar to itself, we often find it convenient to do), that phenomenon is the progressive effect of two permanent and progressive causes, the central force and the acquired motion. Those causes happening to be progressive in the particular way which is called periodical, the effect necessarily is so too; because the quantities to be added together returning in a regular order, the same sums must also regularly return.
This example is worthy of consideration also in another respect. Though the causes themselves are permanent, and independent of all conditions known to us, the changes which take place in the quantities and relations of the causes are actually caused by the periodical changes in the effects. The causes, as they exist at any moment, having produced a certain motion, that motion, becoming itself a cause, reacts upon the causes, and produces a change in them. By altering the distance and direction of the central body relatively to the planet, and the direction and quantity of the force in the direction of the tangent, it alters the elements which determine the motion at the next succeeding instant. This change renders the next motion somewhat different; and this difference, by a fresh reaction upon the causes, renders the next motion again different, and so on. The original state of the causes might have been such that this series of actions modified by reactions would not have been periodical. The sun’s action, and the original impelling force, might have been in such a ratio to one another, that the reaction of the effect would have been such as to alter the causes more and more, without ever bringing them back to what they were at any former time. The planet would then have moved in a parabola, or an hyperbola, curves not returning into themselves. The quantities of the two forces were, however, originally such, that the successive reactions of the effect bring back the causes, after a certain time, to what they were before; and from that time all the variations continued to recur again and again in the same periodical order, and must so continue while the causes subsist and are not counteracted.
§ 3. In all cases of progressive effects, whether arising from the accumulation of unchanging or of changing elements, there is a uniformity of succession not merely between the cause and the effect, but between the first stages of the effect and its subsequent stages. That a body in vacuo falls sixteen feet in the first second, forty-eight in the second, and so on in the ratio of the odd numbers, is as much a uniform sequence as that when the supports are removed the body falls. The sequence of spring and summer is as regular and invariable as that of the approach of the sun and spring; but we do not consider spring to be the cause of summer; it is evident that both are successive effects of the heat received from the sun, and that, considered merely in itself, spring might continue forever without having the slightest tendency to produce summer. As we have so often remarked, not the conditional, but the unconditional invariable antecedent is termed the cause. That which would not be followed by the effect unless something else had preceded, and which if that something else had preceded, would not have been required, is not the cause, however invaluable the sequence may in fact be.
It is in this way that most of those uniformities of succession are generated, which are not cases of causation. When a phenomenon goes on increasing, or periodically increases and diminishes, or goes through any continued and unceasing process of variation reducible to a uniform rule or law of succession, we do not on this account presume that any two successive terms of the series are cause and effect. We presume the contrary; we expect to find that the whole series originates either from the continued action of fixed causes or from causes which go through a corresponding process of continuous change. A tree grows from half an inch high to a hundred feet; and some trees will generally grow to that height unless prevented by some counteracting cause. But we do not call the seedling the cause of the full-grown tree; the invariable antecedent it certainly is, and we know very imperfectly on what other antecedents the sequence is contingent, but we are convinced that it is contingent on something; because the homogeneousness of the antecedent with the consequent, the close resemblance of the seedling to the tree in all respects except magnitude, and the graduality of the growth, so exactly resembling the progressively accumulating effect produced by the long action of some one cause, leave no possibility of doubting that the seedling and the tree are two terms in a series of that description, the first term of which is yet to seek. The conclusion is further confirmed by this, that we are able to prove by strict induction the dependence of the growth of the tree, and even of the continuance of its existence, upon the continued repetition of certain processes of nutrition, the rise of the sap, the absorptions and exhalations by the leaves, etc.; and the same experiments would probably prove to us that the growth of the tree is the accumulated sum of the effects of these continued processes, were we not, for want of sufficiently microscopic eyes, unable to observe correctly and in detail what those effects are.
This supposition by no means requires that the effect should not, during its progress, undergo many modifications besides those of quantity, or that it should not sometimes appear to undergo a very marked change of character. This may be either because the unknown cause consists of several component elements or agents, whose effects, accumulating according to different laws, are compounded in different proportions at different periods in the existence of the organized being; or because, at certain points in its progress, fresh causes or agencies come in, or are evolved, which intermix their laws with those of the prime agent.
§ 1. Scientific inquirers give the name of Empirical Laws to those uniformities which observation or experiment has shown to exist, but on 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. To state the explanation, the why, of the empirical law, would be to state the laws from which it is derived--the ultimate causes on which it is contingent. And if we knew these, we should also know what are its limits; under what conditions it would cease to be fulfilled.
The periodical return of eclipses, as originally ascertained by the persevering observation of the early Eastern astronomers, was an empirical law, until the general laws of the celestial motions had accounted for it. The following are empirical laws still waiting to be resolved into the simpler laws from which they are derived: the local laws of the flux and reflux of the tides in different places; the succession of certain kinds of weather to certain appearances of sky; the apparent exceptions to the almost universal truth that bodies expand by increase of temperature; the law that breeds, both animal and vegetable, are improved by crossing; that gases have a strong tendency to permeate animal membranes; that substances containing a very high proportion of nitrogen (such as hydrocyanic acid and morphia) are powerful poisons; that when different metals are fused together the alloy is harder than the various elements; that the number of atoms of acid required to neutralize one atom of any base is equal to the number of atoms of oxygen in the base; that the solubility of substances in one another depends,(171) at least in some degree, on the similarity of their elements.
An empirical law, then, is an observed uniformity, presumed to be resolvable into simpler laws, but not yet resolved into them. The ascertainment of the empirical laws of phenomena often precedes by a long interval the explanation of those laws by the Deductive Method; and the verification of a deduction usually consists in the comparison of its results with empirical laws previously ascertained.
§ 2. From a limited number of ultimate laws of causation, there are necessarily generated a vast number of derivative uniformities, both of succession and co-existence. Some are laws of succession or of co-existence between different effects of the same cause; of these we had examples in the last chapter. Some are laws of succession between effects and their remote causes, resolvable into the laws which connect each with the intermediate link. Thirdly, when causes act together and compound their effects, the laws of those causes generate the fundamental law of the effect, namely, that it depends on the co-existence of those causes. And, finally, the order of succession or of co-existence which obtains among effects necessarily depends on their causes. If they are effects of the same cause, it depends on the laws of that cause; if on different causes, it depends on the laws of those causes severally, and on the circumstances which determine their co-existence. If we inquire further when and how the causes will co-exist, that, again, depends on their causes; and we may thus trace back the phenomena higher and higher, until the different series of effects meet in a point, and the whole is shown to have depended ultimately on some common cause; or until, instead of converging to one point, they terminate in different points, and the order of the effects is proved to have arisen from the collocation of some of the primeval causes, or natural agents. For example, the order of succession and of co-existence among the heavenly motions, which is expressed by Kepler’s laws, is derived from the co-existence of two primeval causes, the sun, and the original impulse or projectile force belonging to each planet.(172) Kepler’s laws are resolved into the laws of these causes and the fact of their co-existence.
Derivative laws, therefore, do not depend solely on the ultimate laws into which they are resolvable; they mostly depend on those ultimate laws, and an ultimate fact; namely, the mode of co-existence of some of the component elements of the universe. The ultimate laws of causation might be the same as at present, and yet the derivative laws completely different, if the causes co-existed in different proportions, or with any difference in those of their relations by which the effects are influenced. If, for example, the sun’s attraction, and the original projectile force, had existed in some other ratio to one another than they did (and we know of no reason why this should not have been the case), the derivative laws of the heavenly motions might have been quite different from what they are. The proportions which exist happen to be such as to produce regular elliptical motions; any other proportions would have produced different ellipses, or circular, or parabolic, or hyperbolic motions, but still regular ones; because the effects of each of the agents accumulate according to a uniform law; and two regular series of quantities, when their corresponding terms are added, must produce a regular series of some sort, whatever the quantities themselves are.
§ 3. Now this last-mentioned element in the resolution of a derivative law, the element which is not a law of causation, but a collocation of causes, can not itself be reduced to any law. There is, as formerly remarked,(173) no uniformity, no norma, principle, or rule, perceivable in the distribution of the primeval natural agents through the universe. The different substances composing the earth, the powers that pervade the universe, stand in no constant relation to one another. One substance is more abundant than others, one power acts through a larger extent of space than others, without any pervading analogy that we can discover. We not only do not know of any reason why the sun’s attraction and the force in the direction of the tangent co-exist in the exact proportion they do, but we can trace no coincidence between it and the proportions in which any other elementary powers in the universe are intermingled. The utmost disorder is apparent in the combination of the causes, which is consistent with the most regular order in their effects; for when each agent carries on its own operations according to a uniform law, even the most capricious combination of agencies will generate a regularity of some sort; as we see in the kaleidoscope, where any casual arrangement of colored bits of glass produces by the laws of reflection a beautiful regularity in the effect.
§ 4. In the above considerations lies the justification of the limited degree of reliance which scientific inquirers are accustomed to place in empirical laws.
A derivative law which results wholly from the operation of some one cause, will be as universally true as the laws of the cause itself; that is, it will always be true except where some one of those effects of the cause, on which the derivative law depends, is defeated by a counteracting cause. But when the derivative law results not from different effects of one cause, but from effects of several causes, we can not be certain that it will be true under any variation in the mode of co-existence of those causes, or of the primitive natural agents on which the causes ultimately depend. The proposition that coal-beds rest on certain descriptions of strata exclusively, though true on the earth, so far as our observation has reached, can not be extended to the moon or the other planets, supposing coal to exist there; because we can not be assured that the original constitution of any other planet was such as to produce the different depositions in the same order as in our globe. The derivative law in this case depends not solely on laws, but on a collocation; and collocations can not be reduced to any law.
Now it is the very nature of a derivative law which has not yet been resolved into its elements, in other words, an empirical law, that we do not know whether it results from the different effects of one cause, or from effects of different causes. We can not tell whether it depends wholly on laws, or partly on laws and partly on a collocation. If it depends on a collocation, it will be true in all the cases in which that particular collocation exists. But, since we are entirely ignorant, in case of its depending on a collocation, what the collocation is, we are not safe in extending the law beyond the limits of time and place in which we have actual experience of its truth. Since within those limits the law has always been found true, we have evidence that the collocations, whatever they are, on which it depends, do really exist within those limits. But, knowing of no rule or principle to which the collocations themselves conform, we can not conclude that because a collocation is proved to exist within certain limits of place or time, it will exist beyond those limits. Empirical laws, therefore, can only be received as 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 on which it is dependent, we can not foresee, without actual trial, in what manner or to what extent the introduction of any new circumstance may affect it.
§ 5. But how are we to know that a uniformity ascertained by experience is only an empirical law? Since, by the supposition, we have not been able to resolve it into any other laws, how do we know that it is not an ultimate law of causation?
I answer that no generalization amounts to more than an empirical law when the only proof on which it rests is that of the Method of Agreement. For it has been seen that by that method alone we never can arrive at causes. The utmost that the Method of Agreement can do is, to ascertain the whole of the circumstances common to all cases in which a phenomenon is produced; and this aggregate includes not only the cause of the phenomenon, but all phenomena with which it is connected by any derivative uniformity, whether as being collateral effects of the same cause, or effects of any other cause which, in all the instances we have been able to observe, co-existed with it. The method affords no means of determining which of these uniformities are laws of causation, and which are merely derivative laws, resulting from those laws of causation and from the collocation of the causes. None of them, therefore, can be received in any other character than that of derivative laws, the derivation of which has not been traced; in other words, empirical laws: in which light all results obtained by the Method of Agreement (and therefore almost all truths obtained by simple observation without experiment) must be considered, until either confirmed by the Method of Difference, or explained deductively; in other words, accounted for a priori.
These empirical laws may be of greater or less authority, according as there is reason to presume that they are resolvable into laws only, or into laws and collocations together. The sequences which we observe in the production and subsequent life of an animal or a vegetable, resting on the Method of Agreement only, are mere empirical laws; but though the antecedents in those sequences may not be the causes of the consequents, both the one and the other are doubtless, in the main, successive stages of a progressive effect originating in a common cause, and therefore independent of collocations. The uniformities, on the other hand, in the order of superposition of strata on the earth, are empirical laws of a much weaker kind, since they not only are not laws of causation, but there is no reason to believe that they depend on any common cause; all appearances are in favor of their depending on the particular collocation of natural agents which at some time or other existed on our globe, and from which no inference can be drawn as to the collocation which exists or has existed in any other portion of the universe.
§ 6. Our definition of an empirical law, including not only those uniformities which are not known to be laws of causation, but also those which are, provided there be reason to presume that they are not ultimate laws; this is the proper place to consider by what signs we may judge that even if an observed uniformity be a law of causation, it is not an ultimate, but a derivative law.
The first sign is, if between the antecedent a and the consequent b there be evidence of some intermediate link; some phenomenon of which we can surmise the existence, though from the imperfection of our senses or of our instruments we are unable to ascertain its precise nature and laws. If there be such a phenomenon (which may be denoted by the letter x), it follows that even if a be the cause of b, it is but the remote cause, and that the law, a causes b, is resolvable into at least two laws, a causes x, and x causes b. This is a very frequent case, since the operations of nature mostly take place on so minute a scale, that many of the successive steps are either imperceptible, or very indistinctly perceived.
Take, for example, the laws of the chemical composition of substances; as that hydrogen and oxygen being combined, water is produced. All we see of the process is, that the two gases being mixed in certain proportions, and heat or electricity being applied, an explosion takes place, the gases disappear, and water remains. There is no doubt about the law, or about its being a law of causation. But between the antecedent (the gases in a state of mechanical mixture, heated or electrified), and the consequent (the production of water), there must be an intermediate process which we do not see. For if we take any portion whatever of the water, and subject it to analysis, we find that it always contains hydrogen and oxygen; nay, the very same proportions of them, namely, two-thirds, in volume, of hydrogen, and one-third oxygen. This is true of a single drop; it is true of the minutest portion which our instruments are capable of appreciating. Since, then, the smallest perceptible portion of the water contains both those substances, portions of hydrogen and oxygen smaller than the smallest perceptible must have come together in every such minute portion of space; must have come closer together than when the gases were in a state of mechanical mixture, since (to mention no other reasons) the water occupies far less space than the gases. Now, as we can not see this contact or close approach of the minute particles, we can not observe with what circumstances it is attended, or according to what laws it produces its effects. The production of water, that is, of the sensible phenomena which characterize the compound, may be a very remote effect of those laws. There may be innumerable intervening links; and we are sure that there must be some. Having full proof that corpuscular action of some kind takes place previous to any of the great transformations in the sensible properties of substances, we can have no doubt that the laws of chemical action, as at present known, are not ultimate, but derivative laws; however ignorant we may be, and even though we should forever remain ignorant, of the nature of the laws of corpuscular action from which they are derived.
In like manner, all the processes of vegetative life, whether in the vegetable properly so called or in the animal body, are corpuscular processes. Nutrition is the addition of particles to one another, sometimes merely replacing other particles separated and excreted, sometimes occasioning an increase of bulk or weight so gradual that only after a long continuance does it become perceptible. Various organs, by means of peculiar vessels, secrete from the blood fluids, the component particles of which must have been in the blood, but which differ from it most widely both in mechanical properties and in chemical composition. Here, then, are abundance of unknown links to be filled up; and there can be no doubt that the laws of the phenomena of vegetative or organic life are derivative laws, dependent on properties of the corpuscles, and of those elementary tissues which are comparatively simple combinations of corpuscles.
The first sign, then, from which a law of causation, though hitherto unresolved, may be inferred to be a derivative law, is any indication of the existence of an intermediate link or links between the antecedent and the consequent. The second is, when the antecedent is an extremely complex phenomenon, and its effects, therefore, probably in part at least, compounded of the effects of its different elements; since we know that the case in which the effect of the whole is not made up of the effects of its parts is exceptional, the Composition of Causes being by far the more ordinary case.
We will illustrate this by two examples, in one of which the antecedent is the sum of many homogeneous, in the other of heterogeneous, parts. The weight of a body is made up of the weights of its minute particles; a truth which astronomers express in its most general terms when they say that bodies, at equal distances, gravitate to one another in proportion to their quantity of matter. All true propositions, therefore, which can be made concerning gravity, are derivative laws; the ultimate law into which they are all resolvable being, that every particle of matter attracts every other. As our second example, we may take any of the sequences observed in meteorology; for instance, a diminution of the pressure of the atmosphere (indicated by a fall of the barometer) is followed by rain. The antecedent is here a complex phenomenon, made up of heterogeneous elements; the column of the atmosphere over any particular place consisting of two parts, a column of air, and a column of aqueous vapor mixed with it; and the change in the two together manifested by a fall of the barometer, and followed by rain, must be either a change in one of these, or in the other, or in both. We might, then, even in the absence of any other evidence, form a reasonable presumption, from the invariable presence of both these elements in the antecedent, that the sequence is probably not an ultimate law, but a result of the laws of the two different agents; a presumption only to be destroyed when we had made ourselves so well acquainted with the laws of both, as to be able to affirm that those laws could not by themselves produce the observed result.
There are but few known cases of succession from very complex antecedents which have not either been actually accounted for from simpler laws, or inferred with great probability (from the ascertained existence of intermediate links of causation not yet understood) to be capable of being so accounted for. It is, therefore, highly probable that all sequences from complex antecedents are thus resolvable, and that ultimate laws are in all cases comparatively simple. If there were not the other reasons already mentioned for believing that the laws of organized nature are resolvable into simpler laws, it would be almost a sufficient reason that the antecedents in most of the sequences are so very complex.
§ 7. In the preceding discussion we have recognized two kinds of empirical laws: those known to be laws of causation, but presumed to be resolvable into simpler laws; and those not known to be laws of causation at all. Both these kinds of laws agree in the demand which they make for being explained by deduction, and agree in being the appropriate means of verifying such deduction, since they represent the experience with which the result of the deduction must be compared. They agree, further, in this, that until explained, and connected with the ultimate laws from which they result, they have not attained the highest degree of certainty of which laws are susceptible. It has been shown on a former occasion that laws of causation which are derivative, and compounded of simpler laws, are not only, as the nature of the case implies, less general, but even less certain, than the simpler laws from which they result; not in the same degree to be relied on as universally true. The inferiority of evidence, however, which attaches to this class of laws, is trifling, compared with that which is inherent in uniformities not known to be laws of causation at all. So long as these are unresolved, we can not tell on how many collocations, as well as laws, their truth may be dependent; we can never, therefore, extend them with any confidence to cases in which we have not assured ourselves, by trial, that the necessary collocation of causes, whatever it may be, exists. It is to this class of laws alone that the property, which philosophers usually consider as characteristic of empirical laws, belongs in all its strictness--the property of being unfit to be relied on beyond the limits of time, place, and circumstance in which the observations have been made. These are empirical laws in a more emphatic sense; and when I employ that term (except where the context manifestly indicates the reverse) I shall generally mean to designate those uniformities only, whether of succession or of co-existence, which are not known to be laws of causation.
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End of part 30 of 51
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