An introductory text-book of logic - Mellone, Sydney - Rare Books at ...

THE GENERAL NATURE OF INDUCTION. 255
will continue in the future. This belief is a late devel
opment. In early ages human beings believed that the
course of Nature was always being capriciously inter
rupted.
But the belief in the Universality and Uniform
ity of Causation is not a late development ;
it can be
traced, as we have seen, even in the speculations of
savages. And there is no evidence that it can be manu
factured by experience. It seems essentially impossible
that experience, with the irregularity that actually exists
in it, can of itself have produced a belief that every event
has a cause, and that the same cause will always produce
the same event. And if it were so, if the laws of
Causation are wholly based on experience as given to
our senses,
then this means that the whole of inductive
reasoning
be the weakest kind of induction,
is based on what Mill and all others admit to
of merely positive instances."
Professor Bain, following Mill, talks about
"
simple enumeration
"
the inductive
hazard," "the leap to the future"; but he is putting the diffi
culty in the wrong place. He speaks as if the mere lapse of
time could have an effect on the action of a cause. Time
might produce other causes which would counteract the first,
so the "hazard" certainly exists ; but if we have ascertained
the presence and action of the same cause in a subsequent
instance, the passage of time makes no difference to the
certainty of the effect.
7. How shall we define a Cause? From the stand
point of Inductive Logic, which aims at giving a general
account of scientific method, this question means, What
is the best definition of Cause in the scientific sense of
the word? Let us consider Mill s account (Logic, III.
ch. v.)
(a) He defines the Cause first as the invariable ante
cedent :
"
Invariability of succession is found by observ-