A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive, 7th Edition, Vol. II
John Stuart Mill · en
no other than those of which we have treated in the preceding chapters
of this Book.
It is otherwise with the truths of mathematics. The laws of equality and
inequality between spaces, or between numbers, have no connexion with
laws of causation. That the angle of reflexion is equal to the angle of
incidence, is a statement of the mode of action of a particular cause;
but that when two straight lines intersect each other the opposite
angles are equal, is true of all such lines and angles, by whatever
cause produced. That the squares of the periodic times of the planets
are proportional to the cubes of their distances from the sun, is an
uniformity derived from the laws of the causes (or forces) which produce
the planetary motions; but that the square of any number is four times
the square of half the number, is true independently of any cause. The
only laws of resemblance, therefore, which we are called upon to
consider independently of causation, belong to the province of
mathematics.
§ 4. The same thing is evident with respect to the only one remaining of
our five categories, Order in Place. The order in place, of the effects
of a cause, is (like everything else belonging to the effects) a
consequence of the laws of that cause. The order in place, or, as we
have termed it, the collocation, of the primeval causes, is (as well as
their resemblance) in each instance an ultimate fact, in which no laws
or uniformities are traceable. The only remaining general propositions
respecting order in place, and the only ones which have nothing to do
with causation, are some of the truths of geometry; laws through which
we are able, from the order in place of certain points, lines, or
spaces, to infer the order in place of others which are connected with
the former in some known mode; quite independently of the particular
nature of those points, lines, or spaces, in any other respect than
position or magnitude, as well as independently of the physical cause
from which in any particular case they happen to derive their origin.