Is it, then, never allowable, in a scientific hypothesis, to assume a cause; but only to ascribe an assumed law to a known cause? I do not assert this. I only say, that in the latter case alone can the hypothesis be received as true merely because it explains the phenomena: in the former case it is only useful by suggesting a line of investigation which may possibly terminate in obtaining real proof. For this purpose, as is justly remarked by M. Comte, it is indispensable that the cause suggested by the hypothesis should be in its own nature susceptible of being proved by other evidence. This seems to be the philosophical import of Newton's maxim, (so often cited with approbation by subsequent writers,) that the cause assigned for any phenomenon must not only be such as if admitted would explain the phenomenon, but must also be a _vera causa_. What he meant by a _vera causa_ Newton did not indeed very explicitly define; and Dr. Whewell, who dissents from the propriety of any such restriction upon the latitude of framing hypotheses, has had little difficulty in showing[3] that his conception of it was neither precise nor consistent with itself: accordingly his optical theory was a signal instance of the violation of his own rule. It is certainly not necessary that the cause assigned should be a cause already known; else how could we ever become acquainted with any new cause? But what is true in the maxim is, that the cause, though not known previously, should be capable of being known thereafter; that its existence should be capable of being detected, and its connexion with the effect ascribed to it should be susceptible of being proved, by independent evidence. The hypothesis, by suggesting observations and experiments, puts us on the road to that independent evidence if it be really attainable; and till it be attained, the hypothesis ought not to count for more than a conjecture.