6. Dr. Whewell has expressed a very unfavourable opinion of the utility of the Four Methods, as well as of the aptness of the examples by which I have attempted to ill.u.s.trate them. His words are these:--[42]
"Upon these methods, the obvious thing to remark is, that they take for granted the very thing which is most difficult to discover, the reduction of the phenomena to formul such as are here presented to us.
When we have any set of complex facts offered to us; for instance, those which were offered in the cases of discovery which I have mentioned,--the facts of the planetary paths, of falling bodies, of refracted rays, of cosmical motions, of chemical a.n.a.lysis; and when, in any of these cases, we would discover the law of nature which governs them, or, if any one chooses so to term it, the feature in which all the cases agree, where are we to look for our A, B, C, and _a_, _b_, _c_?
Nature does not present to us the cases in this form; and how are we to reduce them to this form? You say, _when_ we find the combination of A B C with _a b c_ and A B D with _a b d_, then we may draw our inference.
Granted; but when and where are we to find such combinations? Even now that the discoveries are made, who will point out to us what are the A, B, C, and _a_, _b_, _c_ elements of the cases which have just been enumerated? Who will tell us which of the methods of inquiry those historically real and successful inquiries exemplify? Who will carry these formul through the history of the sciences, as they have really grown up; and show us that these four methods have been operative in their formation; or that any light is thrown upon the steps of their progress by reference to these formul?"
He adds that, in this work, the methods have not been applied "to a large body of conspicuous and undoubted examples of discovery, extending along the whole history of science;" which ought to have been done in order that the methods might be shown to possess the "advantage" (which he claims as belonging to his own) of being those "by which all great discoveries in science have really been made."--(p. 277.)
There is a striking similarity between the objections here made against Canons of Induction, and what was alleged, in the last century, by as able men as Dr. Whewell, against the acknowledged Canon of Ratiocination. Those who protested against the Aristotelian Logic said of the Syllogism, what Dr. Whewell says of the Inductive Methods, that it "takes for granted the very thing which is most difficult to discover, the reduction of the argument to formul such as are here presented to us." The grand difficulty, they said, is to obtain your syllogism, not to judge of its correctness when obtained. On the matter of fact, both they and Dr. Whewell are right. The greatest difficulty in both cases is first that of obtaining the evidence, and next, of reducing it to the form which tests its conclusiveness. But if we try to reduce it without knowing _to what_, we are not likely to make much progress. It is a more difficult thing to solve a geometrical problem, than to judge whether a proposed solution is correct: but if people were not able to judge of the solution when found, they would have little chance of finding it. And it cannot be pretended that to judge of an induction when found, is perfectly easy, is a thing for which aids and instruments are superfluous; for erroneous inductions, false inferences from experience, are quite as common, on some subjects much commoner, than true ones. The business of Inductive Logic is to provide rules and models (such as the Syllogism and its rules are for ratiocination) to which if inductive arguments conform, those arguments are conclusive, and not otherwise. This is what the Four Methods profess to be, and what I believe they are universally considered to be by experimental philosophers, who had practised all of them long before any one sought to reduce the practice to theory.
The a.s.sailants of the Syllogism had also antic.i.p.ated Dr. Whewell in the other branch of his argument. They said that no discoveries were ever made by syllogism; and Dr. Whewell says, or seems to say, that none were ever made by the four Methods of Induction. To the former objectors, Archbishop Whately very pertinently answered, that their argument, if good at all, was good against the reasoning process altogether; for whatever cannot be reduced to syllogism, is not reasoning. And Dr.
Whewell"s argument, if good at all, is good against all inferences from experience. In saying that no discoveries were ever made by the four Methods, he affirms that none were ever made by observation and experiment; for a.s.suredly if any were, it was by processes reducible to one or other of those methods.
This difference between us accounts for the dissatisfaction which my examples give him; for I did not select them with a view to satisfy any one who required to be convinced that observation and experiment are modes of acquiring knowledge: I confess that in the choice of them I thought only of ill.u.s.tration, and of facilitating the _conception_ of the Methods by concrete instances. If it had been my object to justify the processes themselves as means of investigation, there would have been no need to look far off, or make use of recondite or complicated instances. As a specimen of a truth ascertained by the Method of Agreement, I might have chosen the proposition "Dogs bark." This dog, and that dog, and the other dog, answer to A B C, A D E, A F G. The circ.u.mstance of being a dog, answers to A. Barking answers to _a_. As a truth made known by the Method of Difference, "Fire burns" might have sufficed. Before I touch the fire I am not burnt; this is B C; I touch it, and am burnt; this is A B C, _a_ B C.
Such familiar experimental processes are not regarded as inductions by Dr. Whewell; but they are perfectly h.o.m.ogeneous with those by which, even on his own showing, the pyramid of science is supplied with its base. In vain he attempts to escape from this conclusion by laying the most arbitrary restrictions on the choice of examples admissible as instances of Induction: they must neither be such as are still matter of discussion (p. 265), nor must any of them be drawn from mental and social subjects (p. 269), nor from ordinary observation and practical life (pp. 241-247). They must be taken exclusively from the generalizations by which scientific thinkers have ascended to great and comprehensive laws of natural phenomena. Now it is seldom possible, in these complicated inquiries, to go much beyond the initial steps, without calling in the instrument of Deduction, and the temporary aid of hypotheses; as I myself, in common with Dr. Whewell, have maintained against the purely empirical school. Since therefore such cases could not conveniently be selected to ill.u.s.trate the principles of mere observation and experiment, Dr. Whewell is misled by their absence into representing the Experimental Methods as serving no purpose in scientific investigation; forgetting that if those methods had not supplied the first generalizations, there would have been no materials for his own conception of Induction to work upon.
His challenge, however, to point out which of the four methods are exemplified in certain important cases of scientific inquiry, is easily answered. "The planetary paths," as far as they are a case of induction at all,[43] fall under the Method of Agreement. The law of "falling bodies," namely that they describe s.p.a.ces proportional to the squares of the times, was historically a deduction from the first law of motion; but the experiments by which it was verified, and by which it might have been discovered, were examples of the Method of Agreement; and the apparent variation from the true law, caused by the resistance of the air, was cleared up by experiments _in vacuo_, const.i.tuting an application of the Method of Difference. The law of "refracted rays"
(the constancy of the ratio between the sines of incidence and of refraction for each refracting substance) was ascertained by direct measurement, and therefore by the Method of Agreement. The "cosmical motions" were determined by highly complex processes of thought, in which Deduction was predominant, but the Methods of Agreement and of Concomitant Variations had a large part in establishing the empirical laws. Every case without exception of "chemical a.n.a.lysis" const.i.tutes a well-marked example of the Method of Difference. To any one acquainted with the subjects--to Dr. Whewell himself, there would not be the smallest difficulty in setting out "the A B C and _a b c_ elements" of these cases.
If discoveries are ever made by observation and experiment without Deduction, the four methods are methods of discovery: but even if they were not methods of discovery, it would not be the less true that they are the sole methods of Proof; and in that character, even the results of deduction are amenable to them. The great generalizations which begin as Hypotheses, must end by being proved, and are in reality (as will be shown hereafter) proved, by the Four Methods. Now it is with Proof, as such, that Logic is princ.i.p.ally concerned. This distinction has indeed no chance of finding favour with Dr. Whewell; for it is the peculiarity of his system, not to recognise, in cases of Induction, any necessity for proof. If, after a.s.suming an hypothesis and carefully collating it with facts, nothing is brought to light inconsistent with it, that is, if experience does not _disprove_ it, he is content: at least until a simpler hypothesis, equally consistent with experience, presents itself.
If this be Induction, doubtless there is no necessity for the four methods. But to suppose that it is so, appears to me a radical misconception of the nature of the evidence of physical truths.
So real and practical is the need of a test for induction, similar to the syllogistic test of ratiocination, that inferences which bid defiance to the most elementary notions of inductive logic are put forth without misgiving by persons eminent in physical science, as soon as they are off the ground on which they are conversant with the facts, and not reduced to judge only by the arguments; and as for educated persons in general, it may be doubted if they are better judges of a good or a bad induction than they were before Bacon wrote. The improvement in the results of thinking has seldom extended to the processes; or has reached, if any process, that of investigation only, not that of proof.
A knowledge of many laws of nature has doubtless been arrived at, by framing hypotheses and finding that the facts corresponded to them; and many errors have been got rid of by coming to a knowledge of facts which were inconsistent with them, but not by discovering that the mode of thought which led to the errors was itself faulty, and might have been known to be such independently of the facts which disproved the specific conclusion. Hence it is, that while the thoughts of mankind have on many subjects worked themselves practically right, the thinking power remains as weak as ever: and on all subjects on which the facts which would check the result are not accessible, as in what relates to the invisible world, and even, as has been seen lately, to the visible world of the planetary regions, men of the greatest scientific acquirements argue as pitiably as the merest ignoramus. For though they have made many sound inductions, they have not learnt from them (and Dr.
Whewell thinks there is no necessity that they should learn) the principles of inductive _evidence_.
CHAPTER X.
OF PLURALITY OF CAUSES; AND OF THE INTERMIXTURE OF EFFECTS.
1. In the preceding exposition of the four methods of observation and experiment, by which we contrive to distinguish among a ma.s.s of coexistent phenomena the particular effect due to a given cause, or the particular cause which gave birth to a given effect; it has been necessary to suppose, in the first instance, for the sake of simplification, that this a.n.a.lytical operation is enc.u.mbered by no other difficulties than what are essentially inherent in its nature; and to represent to ourselves, therefore, every effect, on the one hand as connected exclusively with a single cause, and on the other hand as incapable of being mixed and confounded with any other coexistent effect. We have regarded _a b c d e_, the aggregate of the phenomena existing at any moment, as consisting of dissimilar facts, _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, and _e_, for each of which one, and only one, cause needs be sought; the difficulty being only that of singling out this one cause from the mult.i.tude of antecedent circ.u.mstances, A, B, C, D, and E. The cause indeed may not be simple; it may consist of an a.s.semblage of conditions; but we have supposed that there was only one possible a.s.semblage of conditions, from which the given effect could result.
If such were the fact, it would be comparatively an easy task to investigate the laws of nature. But the supposition does not hold, in either of its parts. 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 h.o.m.ogeneous, and marked out by no a.s.signable boundaries from one another: A and B may produce not _a_ and _b_, but different portions of an effect _a_. The obscurity and difficulty of the investigation of the laws of phenomena is singularly increased by the necessity of adverting to these two circ.u.mstances; Intermixture of Effects, and Plurality of Causes. To the latter, being the simpler of the two considerations, we shall first direct our attention.
It is not true, then, that one effect must be connected with only one cause, or a.s.semblage of conditions; that each phenomenon can be produced only in one way. There are often several independent modes in which the same phenomenon could have originated. One fact may be the consequent in several invariable sequences; it may follow, with equal uniformity, any one of several antecedents, or collections of antecedents. Many causes may produce motion: many causes may produce some kinds of sensation: many causes may produce death. A given effect may really be produced by a certain cause, and yet be perfectly capable of being produced without it.
2. One of the princ.i.p.al consequences of this fact of Plurality of Causes is, to render the first of the inductive methods, that of Agreement, uncertain. To ill.u.s.trate that method, we supposed two instances, A B C followed by _a b c_, and A D E followed by _a d e_.
From these instances it might apparently be concluded that A is an invariable antecedent of _a_, and even that it is the unconditional invariable antecedent, or cause, if we could be sure that there is no other antecedent common to the two cases. That this difficulty may not stand in the way, let us suppose the two cases positively ascertained to have no antecedent in common except A. The moment, however, that we let in the possibility of a plurality of causes, the conclusion fails. For it involves a tacit supposition, that _a_ must have been produced in both instances by the same cause. If there can possibly have been two causes, those two may, for example, be C and E: the one may have been the cause of _a_ in the former of the instances, the other in the latter, A having no influence in either case.
Suppose, for example, that two great artists, or great philosophers, that two extremely selfish, or extremely generous characters, were compared together as to the circ.u.mstances of their education and history, and the two cases were found to agree only in one circ.u.mstance: would it follow that this one circ.u.mstance was the cause of the quality which characterized both those individuals? Not at all; for the causes which may produce any type of character are innumerable; and the two persons might equally have agreed in their character, though there had been no manner of resemblance in their previous history.
This, therefore, is a characteristic imperfection of the Method of Agreement; from which imperfection the Method of Difference is free. For if we have two instances, A B C and B C, of which B C gives _b c_, and A being added converts it into _a b c_, it is certain that in this instance at least, A was either the cause of _a_, or an indispensable portion of its cause, even though the cause which produces it in other instances may be altogether different. Plurality of Causes, therefore, not only does not diminish the reliance due to the Method of Difference, but does not even render a greater number of observations or experiments necessary: two instances, the one positive and the other negative, are still sufficient for the most complete and rigorous induction. Not so, however, with the Method of Agreement. The conclusions which that yields, when the number of instances compared is small, are of no real value, except as, in the character of suggestions, they may lead either to experiments bringing them to the test of the Method of Difference, or to reasonings which may explain and verify them deductively.
It is only when the instances, being indefinitely multiplied and varied, continue to suggest the same result, that this result acquires any high degree of independent value. If there are but two instances, A B C and A D E, though these instances have no antecedent in common except A, yet as the effect may possibly have been produced in the two cases by different causes, the result is at most only a slight probability in favour of A; there may be causation, but it is almost equally probable that there was only a coincidence. But the oftener we repeat the observation, varying the circ.u.mstances, the more we advance towards a solution of this doubt. For if we try A F G, A H K, &c., all unlike one another except in containing the circ.u.mstance A, and if we find the effect _a_ entering into the result in all these cases, we must suppose one of two things, either that it is caused by A, or that it has as many different causes as there are instances. With each addition, therefore, to the number of instances, the presumption is strengthened in favour of A. The inquirer, of course, will not neglect, if an opportunity present itself, to exclude A from some one of these combinations, from A H K for instance, and by trying H K separately, appeal to the Method of Difference in aid of the Method of Agreement. By the Method of Difference alone can it be ascertained that A is the cause of _a_; but that it is either the cause, or another effect of the same cause, may be placed beyond any reasonable doubt by the Method of Agreement, provided the instances are very numerous, as well as sufficiently various.
After how great a multiplication, then, of varied instances, all agreeing in no other antecedent except A, is the supposition of a plurality of causes sufficiently reb.u.t.ted, and the conclusion that _a_ is connected with A divested of the characteristic imperfection, and reduced to a virtual certainty? This is a question which we cannot be exempted from answering: but the consideration of it belongs to what is called the Theory of Probability, which will form the subject of a chapter hereafter. It is seen, however, at once, that the conclusion does amount to a practical certainty after a sufficient number of instances, and that the method, therefore, is not radically vitiated by the characteristic imperfection. The result of these considerations is only, in the first place, to point out a new source of inferiority in the Method of Agreement as compared with other modes of investigation, and new reasons for never resting contented with the results obtained by it, without attempting to confirm them either by the Method of Difference, or by connecting them deductively with some law or laws already ascertained by that superior method. And, in the second place, we learn from this the true theory of the value of mere _number_ of instances in inductive inquiry. The Plurality of Causes is the only reason why mere number is of any importance. The tendency of unscientific inquirers is to rely too much on number, without a.n.a.lysing the instances; without looking closely enough into their nature, to ascertain what circ.u.mstances are or are not eliminated by means of them.
Most people hold their conclusions with a degree of a.s.surance proportioned to the mere _ma.s.s_ of the experience on which they appear to rest; not considering that by the addition of instances to instances, all of the same kind, that is, differing from one another only in points already recognised as immaterial, nothing whatever is added to the evidence of the conclusion. A single instance eliminating some antecedent which existed in all the other cases, is of more value than the greatest mult.i.tude of instances which are reckoned by their number alone. It is necessary, no doubt, to a.s.sure ourselves, by repet.i.tion of the observation or experiment, that no error has been committed concerning the individual facts observed; and until we have a.s.sured ourselves of this, instead of varying the circ.u.mstances, we cannot too scrupulously repeat the same experiment or observation without any change. But when once this a.s.surance has been obtained, the multiplication of instances which do not exclude any more circ.u.mstances is entirely useless, provided there have been already enough to exclude the supposition of Plurality of Causes.
It is of importance to remark, that the peculiar modification of the Method of Agreement, which, as partaking in some degree of the nature of the Method of Difference, I have called the Joint Method of Agreement and Difference, is not affected by the characteristic imperfection now pointed out. For, in the joint method, it is supposed not only that the instances in which _a_ is, agree only in containing A, but also that the instances in which _a_ is not, agree only in not containing A. Now, if this be so, A must be not only the cause of _a_, but the only possible cause: for if there were another, as for example B, then in the instances in which _a_ is not, B must have been absent as well as A, and it would not be true that these instances agree _only_ in not containing A. This, therefore, const.i.tutes an immense advantage of the joint method over the simple Method of Agreement. It may seem, indeed, that the advantage does not belong so much to the joint method, as to one of its two premises, (if they may be so called,) the negative premise. The Method of Agreement, when applied to negative instances, or those in which a phenomenon does _not_ take place, is certainly free from the characteristic imperfection which affects it in the affirmative case.
The negative premise, it might therefore be supposed, could be worked as a simple case of the Method of Agreement, without requiring an affirmative premise to be joined with it. But though this is true in principle, it is generally altogether impossible to work the Method of Agreement by negative instances without positive ones: it is so much more difficult to exhaust the field of negation than that of affirmation. For instance, let the question be, what is the cause of the transparency of bodies; with what prospect of success could we set ourselves to inquire directly in what the multifarious substances which are _not_ transparent, agree? But we might hope much sooner to seize some point of resemblance among the comparatively few and definite species of objects which _are_ transparent; and this being attained, we should quite naturally be put upon examining whether the _absence_ of this one circ.u.mstance be not precisely the point in which all opaque substances will be found to resemble.
The Joint Method of Agreement and Difference, therefore, or, as I have otherwise called it, the Indirect Method of Difference (because, like the Method of Difference properly so called, it proceeds by ascertaining how and in what the cases where the phenomenon is present, differ from those in which it is absent) is, after the Direct Method of Difference, the most powerful of the remaining instruments of inductive investigation; and in the sciences which depend on pure observation, with little or no aid from experiment, this method, so well exemplified in the speculation on the cause of dew, is the primary resource, so far as direct appeals to experience are concerned.
3. We have thus far treated Plurality of Causes only as a possible supposition, which, until removed, renders our inductions uncertain; and have only considered by what means, where the plurality does not really exist, we may be enabled to disprove it. But we must also consider it as a case actually occurring in nature, and which, as often as it does occur, our methods of induction ought to be capable of ascertaining and establishing. For this, however, there is required no peculiar method.
When an effect is really producible by two or more causes, the process for detecting them is in no way different from that by which we discover single causes. They may (first) be discovered as separate sequences, by separate sets of instances. One set of observations or experiments shows that the sun is a cause of heat, another that friction is a source of it, another that percussion, another that electricity, another that chemical action is such a source. Or (secondly) the plurality may come to light in the course of collating a number of instances, when we attempt to find some circ.u.mstance in which they all agree, and fail in doing so. We find it impossible to trace, in all the cases in which the effect is met with, any common circ.u.mstance. We find that we can eliminate _all_ the antecedents; that no one of them is present in all the instances, no one of them indispensable to the effect. On closer scrutiny, however, it appears that though no one is always present, one or other of several always is. If, on further a.n.a.lysis, we can detect in these any common element, we may be able to ascend from them to some one cause which is the really operative circ.u.mstance in them all. Thus it is now thought that in the production of heat by friction, percussion, chemical action, &c., the ultimate source is one and the same. But if (as continually happens) we cannot take this ulterior step, the different antecedents must be set down provisionally as distinct causes, each sufficient of itself to produce the effect.
We here close our remarks on the Plurality of Causes, and proceed to the still more peculiar and more complex case of the Intermixture of Effects, and the interference of causes with one another: a case const.i.tuting the princ.i.p.al part of the complication and difficulty of the study of nature; and with which the four only possible methods of directly inductive investigation by observation and experiment, are for the most part, as will appear presently, quite unequal to cope. The instrument of Deduction alone is adequate to unravel the complexities proceeding from this source; and the four methods have little more in their power than to supply premises for, and a verification of, our deductions.
4. A concurrence of two or more causes, not separately producing each its own effect, but interfering with or modifying the effects of one another, takes place, as has already been explained, in two different ways. In the one, which is exemplified by the joint operation of different forces in mechanics, the separate effects of all the causes continue to be produced, but are compounded with one another, and disappear in one total. In the other, ill.u.s.trated by the case of chemical action, the separate effects cease entirely, and are succeeded by phenomena altogether different, and governed by different laws.
Of these cases the former is by far the more frequent, and this case it is which, for the most part, eludes the grasp of our experimental methods. The other and exceptional case is essentially amenable to them.
When the laws of the original agents cease entirely, and a phenomenon makes its appearance, which, with reference to those laws, is quite heterogeneous; when, for example, two gaseous substances, hydrogen and oxygen, on being brought together, throw off their peculiar properties, and produce the substance called water; in such cases the new fact may be subjected to experimental inquiry, like any other phenomenon; and the elements which are said to compose it may be considered as the mere agents of its production; the conditions on which it depends, the facts which make up its cause.
The _effects_ of the new phenomenon, the _properties_ of water, for instance, are as easily found by experiment as the effects of any other cause. But to discover the _cause_ of it, that is, the particular conjunction of agents from which it results, is often difficult enough.
In the first place, the origin and actual production of the phenomenon are most frequently inaccessible to our observation. If we could not have learned the composition of water until we found instances in which it was actually produced from oxygen and hydrogen, we should have been forced to wait until the casual thought struck some one of pa.s.sing an electric spark through a mixture of the two gases, or inserting a lighted taper into it, merely to try what would happen. Besides, many substances, though they can be a.n.a.lysed, cannot by any known artificial means be recompounded. Further, even if we could have ascertained, by the Method of Agreement, that oxygen and hydrogen were both present when water is produced, no experimentation on oxygen and hydrogen separately, no knowledge of their laws, could have enabled us deductively to infer that they would produce water. We require a specific experiment on the two combined.
Under these difficulties, we should generally have been indebted for our knowledge of the causes of this cla.s.s of effects, not to any inquiry directed specifically towards that end, but either to accident, or to the gradual progress of experimentation on the different combinations of which the producing agents are susceptible; if it were not for a peculiarity belonging to effects of this description, that they often, under some particular combination of circ.u.mstances, reproduce their causes. If water results from the juxtaposition of hydrogen and oxygen whenever this can be made sufficiently close and intimate, so, on the other hand, if water itself be placed in certain situations, hydrogen and oxygen are reproduced from it: an abrupt termination is put to the new laws, and the agents reappear separately with their own properties as at first. What is called chemical a.n.a.lysis is the process of searching for the causes of a phenomenon among its effects, or rather among the effects produced by the action of some other causes upon it.
Lavoisier, by heating mercury to a high temperature in a close vessel containing air, found that the mercury increased in weight, and became what was then called red precipitate, while the air, on being examined after the experiment, proved to have lost weight, and to have become incapable of supporting life or combustion. When red precipitate was exposed to a still greater heat, it became mercury again, and gave off a gas which did support life and flame. Thus the agents which by their combination produced red precipitate, namely the mercury and the gas, reappear as effects resulting from that precipitate when acted upon by heat. So, if we decompose water by means of iron filings, we produce two effects, rust and hydrogen: now rust is already known by experiments upon the component substances, to be an effect of the union of iron and oxygen: the iron we ourselves supplied, but the oxygen must have been produced from the water. The result therefore is that water has disappeared, and hydrogen and oxygen have appeared in its stead: or in other words, the original laws of these gaseous agents, which had been suspended by the superinduction of the new laws called the properties of water, have again started into existence, and the causes of water are found among its effects.
Where two phenomena, between the laws or properties of which considered in themselves no connexion can be traced, are thus reciprocally cause and effect, each capable in its turn of being produced from the other, and each, when it produces the other, ceasing itself to exist (as water is produced from oxygen and hydrogen, and oxygen and hydrogen are reproduced from water); this causation of the two phenomena by one another, each being generated by the other"s destruction, is properly transformation. The idea of chemical composition is an idea of transformation, but of a transformation which is incomplete; since we consider the oxygen and hydrogen to be present in the water _as_ oxygen and hydrogen, and capable of being discovered in it if our senses were sufficiently keen: a supposition (for it is no more) grounded solely on the fact, that the weight of the water is the sum of the separate weights of the two ingredients. If there had not been this exception to the entire disappearance, in the compound, of the laws of the separate ingredients; if the combined agents had not, in this one particular of weight, preserved their own laws, and produced a joint result equal to the sum of their separate results; we should never, probably, have had the notion now implied by the words chemical composition: and, in the facts of water produced from hydrogen and oxygen, and hydrogen and oxygen produced from water, as the transformation would have been complete, we should have seen only a transformation.
The very promising generalization now commonly known as the Conservation or Persistence of Force, bears a close resemblance to what the conception of chemical composition would become, if divested of the one circ.u.mstance which now distinguishes it from simple transformation. It has long been known that heat is capable of producing electricity, and electricity heat; that mechanical motion in numerous cases produces and is produced by them both; and so of all other physical forces. It has of late become the general belief of scientific inquirers that mechanical force, electricity, magnetism, heat, light, and chemical action (to which has subsequently been added vital action) are not so much causes of one another as convertible into one another; and they are now generally spoken of as forms of one and the same force, varying only in its manifestations. This doctrine may be admitted, without by any means implying that Force is a real ent.i.ty, a Thing in itself, distinct from all its phenomenal manifestations to our organs. Supposing the doctrine true, the several kinds of phenomena which it identifies in respect of their origin would nevertheless remain different facts; facts which would be causes of one another--reciprocally causes and effects, which is the first element in the form of causation properly called transformation. What the doctrine contains more than this, is, that in each of these cases of reciprocal causation, the causes are reproduced without alteration in quant.i.ty. This is what takes place in the transformations of matter: when water has been converted into hydrogen and oxygen, these can be reconverted into precisely the same quant.i.ty of water from which they were produced. To establish a corresponding law in regard to Force, it has to be proved that heat is capable of being converted into electricity, electricity into chemical action, chemical action into mechanical force, and mechanical force back again into the exact quant.i.ty of heat which was originally expended; and so through all the interchanges. Were this proved, it would establish what const.i.tutes transformation, as distinguished from the simple fact of reciprocal causation. The fact in issue is simply the quant.i.tative equivalence of all these natural agencies; whereby a given quant.i.ty of any one is convertible into, and interchangeable with, a given, and always the same, quant.i.ty of any other: this, no less, but also no more.
It cannot yet be said that the law has been fully proved of any case, except that of interchange between heat and mechanical motion. It does seem to be ascertained, not only that these two are convertible into each other, but that after any number of conversions the original quant.i.ties reappear without addition or diminution, like the original quant.i.ties of hydrogen and oxygen after pa.s.sing through the condition of water. If the same thing comes to be proved true of all the other forces, in relation to these two and to one another, the law of Conservation will be established; and it will be a legitimate mode of expressing the fact, to speak of Force, as we already speak of Matter, as indestructible. But Force will not the less remain, to the philosopher, a mere abstraction of the mind. All that will have been proved is, that in the phenomena of Nature, nothing actually ceases without generating a calculable, and always the same, quant.i.ty of some other natural phenomenon, which again, when it ceases, will in its turn either generate a calculable, and always the same, quant.i.ty of some third phenomenon, or reproduce the original quant.i.ty of the first.
In these cases, where the heteropathic effect (as we called it in a former chapter)[44] is but a transformation of its cause, or in other words, where the effect and its cause are reciprocally such, and mutually convertible into each other; the problem of finding the cause resolves itself into the far easier one of finding an effect, which is the kind of inquiry that admits of being prosecuted by direct experiment. But there are other cases of heteropathic effects to which this mode of investigation is not applicable. Take, for instance, the heteropathic laws of mind; that portion of the phenomena of our mental nature which are a.n.a.logous to chemical rather than to dynamical phenomena; as when a complex pa.s.sion is formed by the coalition of several elementary impulses, or a complex emotion by several simple pleasures or pains, of which it is the result without being the aggregate, or in any respect h.o.m.ogeneous with them. The product, in these cases, is generated by its various factors; but the factors cannot be reproduced from the product; just as a youth can grow into an old man, but an old man cannot grow into a youth. We cannot ascertain from what simple feelings any of our complex states of mind are generated, as we ascertain the ingredients of a chemical compound, by making it, in its turn, generate them. We can only, therefore, discover these laws by the slow process of studying the simple feelings themselves, and ascertaining synthetically, by experimenting on the various combinations of which they are susceptible, what they, by their mutual action upon one another, are capable of generating.
5. It might have been supposed that the other, and apparently simpler variety of the mutual interference of causes, where each cause continues to produce its own proper effect according to the same laws to which it conforms in its separate state, would have presented fewer difficulties to the inductive inquirer than that of which we have just finished the consideration. It presents, however, so far as direct induction apart from deduction is concerned, infinitely greater difficulties. When a concurrence of causes gives rise to a new effect, bearing no relation to the separate effects of those causes, the resulting phenomenon stands forth undisguised, inviting attention to its peculiarity, and presenting no obstacle to our recognising its presence or absence among any number of surrounding phenomena. It admits therefore of being easily brought under the canons of Induction, provided instances can be obtained such as those canons require: and the non-occurrence of such instances, or the want of means to produce them artificially, is the real and only difficulty in such investigations; a difficulty not logical, but in some sort physical. It is otherwise with cases of what, in a preceding chapter, has been denominated the Composition of Causes. There, the effects of the separate causes do not terminate and give place to others, thereby ceasing to form any part of the phenomenon to be investigated; on the contrary, they still take place, but are intermingled with, and disguised by, the h.o.m.ogeneous and closely allied effects of other causes. They are no longer _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, _e_, existing side by side, and continuing to be separately discernible; they are + _a_, - _a_, 1/2 _b_, - _b_, 2 _b_, &c., some of which cancel one another, while many others do not appear distinguishably, but merge in one sum: forming altogether a result, between which and the causes whereby it was produced there is often an insurmountable difficulty in tracing by observation any fixed relation whatever.
The general idea of the Composition of Causes has been seen to be, that though two or more laws interfere with one another, and apparently frustrate or modify one another"s operation, yet in reality all are fulfilled, the collective effect being the exact sum of the effects of the causes taken separately. A familiar instance is that of a body kept in equilibrium by two equal and contrary forces. One of the forces if acting alone would carry the body in a given time a certain distance to the west, the other if acting alone would carry it exactly as far towards the east; and the result is the same as if it had been first carried to the west as far as the one force would carry it, and then back towards the east as far as the other would carry it, that is, precisely the same distance; being ultimately left where it was found at first.
All laws of causation are liable to be in this manner counteracted, and seemingly frustrated, by coming into conflict with other laws, the separate result of which is opposite to theirs, or more or less inconsistent with it. And hence, with almost every law, many instances in which it really is entirely fulfilled, do not, at first sight, appear to be cases of its operation at all. It is so in the example just adduced: a force, in mechanics, means neither more nor less than a cause of motion, yet the sum of the effects of two causes of motion may be rest. Again, a body solicited by two forces in directions making an angle with one another, moves in the diagonal; and it seems a paradox to say that motion in the diagonal is the sum of two motions in two other lines. Motion, however, is but change of place, and at every instant the body is in the exact place it would have been in if the forces had acted during alternate instants instead of acting in the same instant; (saving that if we suppose two forces to act successively which are in truth simultaneous, we must of course allow them double the time.) It is evident, therefore, that each force has had, during each instant, all the effect which belonged to it; and that the modifying influence which one of two concurrent causes is said to exercise with respect to the other, may be considered as exerted not over the action of the cause itself, but over the effect after it is completed. For all purposes of predicting, calculating, or explaining their joint result, causes which compound their effects may be treated as if they produced simultaneously each of them its own effect, and all these effects coexisted visibly.
Since the laws of causes are as really fulfilled when the causes are said to be counteracted by opposing causes, as when they are left to their own undisturbed action, we must be cautious not to express the laws in such terms as would render the a.s.sertion of their being fulfilled in those cases a contradiction. If, for instance, it were stated as a law of nature that a body to which a force is applied moves in the direction of the force, with a velocity proportioned to the force directly, and to its own ma.s.s inversely; when in point of fact some bodies to which a force is applied do not move at all, and those which do move (at least in the region of our earth) are, from the very first, r.e.t.a.r.ded by the action of gravity and other resisting forces, and at last stopped altogether; it is clear that the general proposition, though it would be true under a certain hypothesis, would not express the facts as they actually occur. To accommodate the expression of the law to the real phenomena, we must say, not that the object moves, but that it _tends_ to move, in the direction and with the velocity specified. We might, indeed, guard our expression in a different mode, by saying that the body moves in that manner unless prevented, or except in so far as prevented, by some counteracting cause. But the body does not only move in that manner unless counteracted; it _tends_ to move in that manner even when counteracted; it still exerts, in the original direction, the same energy of movement as if its first impulse had been undisturbed, and produces, by that energy, an exactly equivalent quant.i.ty of effect. This is true even when the force leaves the body as it found it, in a state of absolute rest; as when we attempt to raise a body of three tons weight with a force equal to one ton. For if, while we are applying this force, wind or water or any other agent supplies an additional force just exceeding two tons, the body will be raised; thus proving that the force we applied exerted its full effect, by neutralizing an equivalent portion of the weight which it was insufficient altogether to overcome. And if while we are exerting this force of one ton upon the object in a direction contrary to that of gravity, it be put into a scale and weighed, it will be found to have lost a ton of its weight, or in other words, to press downwards with a force only equal to the difference of the two forces.
These facts are correctly indicated by the expression _tendency_. All laws of causation, in consequence of their liability to be counteracted, require to be stated in words affirmative of tendencies only, and not of actual results. In those sciences of causation which have an accurate nomenclature, there are special words which signify a tendency to the particular effect with which the science is conversant; thus _pressure_, in mechanics, is synonymous with tendency to motion, and forces are not reasoned on as causing actual motion, but as exerting pressure. A similar improvement in terminology would be very salutary in many other branches of science.
The habit of neglecting this necessary element in the precise expression of the laws of nature, has given birth to the popular prejudice that all general truths have exceptions; and much unmerited distrust has thence accrued to the conclusions of science, when they have been submitted to the judgment of minds insufficiently disciplined and cultivated. The rough generalizations suggested by common observation usually have exceptions; but principles of science, or in other words, laws of causation, have not. "What is thought to be an exception to a principle," (to quote words used on a different occasion,) "is always some other and distinct principle cutting into the former; some other force which impinges[45] against the first force, and deflects it from its direction. There are not a law and an exception to that law, the law acting in ninety-nine cases, and the exception in one. There are two laws, each possibly acting in the whole hundred cases, and bringing about a common effect by their conjunct operation. If the force which, being the less conspicuous of the two, is called the _disturbing_ force, prevails sufficiently over the other force in some one case, to const.i.tute that case what is commonly called an exception, the same disturbing force probably acts as a modifying cause in many other cases which no one will call exceptions.