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 cannot be certain that it will be true under any variation in the mode of coexistence 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, cannot be extended to the moon or the other planets, supposing coal to exist there; because we cannot 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 cannot 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 cannot 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 cannot 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 cannot 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 an 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?