Derivative laws, therefore, do not depend solely on the ultimate laws into which they are resolvable: they mostly depend on those ultimate laws, and an ultimate fact; namely, the mode of coexistence of some of the component elements of the universe. The ultimate laws of causation might be the same as at present, and yet the derivative laws completely different, if the causes coexisted in different proportions, or with any difference in those of their relations by which the effects are influenced. If, for example, the sun's attraction, and the original projectile force, had existed in some other ratio to one another than they did (and we know of no reason why this should not have been the case), the derivative laws of the heavenly motions might have been quite different from what they are. The proportions which exist happen to be such as to produce regular elliptical motions; any other proportions would have produced different ellipses, or circular, or parabolic, or hyperbolic motions, but still regular ones; because the effects of each of the agents accumulate according to an uniform law; and two regular series of quantities, when their corresponding terms are added, must produce a regular series of some sort, whatever the quantities themselves are. § 3. Now this last-mentioned element in the resolution of a derivative law, the element which is not a law of causation, but a collocation of causes, cannot itself be reduced to any law. There is (as formerly remarked[14]) no uniformity, no _norma_, principle, or rule, perceivable in the distribution of the primeval natural agents through the universe. The different substances composing the earth, the powers that pervade the universe, stand in no constant relation to one another. One substance is more abundant than others, one power acts through a larger extent of space than others, without any pervading analogy that we can discover. We not only do not know of any reason why the sun's attraction and the force in the direction of the tangent coexist in the exact proportion they do, but we can trace no coincidence between it and the proportions in which any other elementary powers in the universe are intermingled. The utmost disorder is apparent in the combination of the causes; which is consistent with the most regular order in their effects; for when each agent carries on its own operations according to an uniform law, even the most capricious combination of agencies will generate a regularity of some sort; as we see in the kaleidoscope, where any casual arrangement of coloured bits of glass produces by the laws of reflection a beautiful regularity in the effect. § 4. In the above considerations lies the justification of the limited degree of reliance which scientific inquirers are accustomed to place in empirical laws.