To this must be added, that when we know the causes, we may be able to judge whether there exists any known cause capable of counteracting them; while as long as they are unknown, we cannot be sure but that if we did know them, we could predict their destruction from causes actually in existence. A bedridden savage, who had never seen the cataract of Niagara, but who lived within hearing of it, might imagine that the sound he heard would endure for ever; but if he knew it to be the effect of a rush of waters over a barrier of rock which is progressively wearing away, he would know that within a number of ages which may be calculated, it will be heard no more. In proportion, therefore, to our ignorance of the causes on which the empirical law depends, we can be less assured that it will continue to hold good; and the farther we look into futurity, the less improbable is it that some one of the causes, whose coexistence gives rise to the derivative uniformity, may be destroyed or counteracted. With every prolongation of time, the chances multiply of such an event, that is to say, its non-occurrence hitherto becomes a less guarantee of its not occurring within the given time. If, then, it is only to cases which in point of time are adjacent (or nearly adjacent) to those which we have actually observed, that _any_ derivative law, not of causation, can be extended with an assurance equivalent to certainty, much more is this true of a merely empirical law. Happily, for the purposes of life it is to such cases alone that we can almost ever have occasion to extend them.