A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive, 7th Edition, Vol. II
John Stuart Mill · en
Generalizing the result, we may say, that if A occurs in a larger
proportion of the cases where B is, than of the cases where B is not;
then will B also occur in a larger proportion of the cases where A is,
than of the cases where A is not; and there is some connexion, through
causation, between A and B. If we could ascend to the causes of the two
phenomena, we should find, at some stage, either proximate or remote,
some cause or causes common to both; and if we could ascertain what
these are, we could frame a generalization which would be true without
restriction of place or time: but until we can do so, the fact of a
connexion between the two phenomena remains an empirical law.
§ 3. Having considered in what manner it may be determined whether any
given conjunction of phenomena is casual, or the result of some law; to
complete the theory of chance, it is necessary that we should now
consider those effects which are partly the result of chance and partly
of law, or, in other words, in which the effects of casual conjunctions
of causes are habitually blended in one result with the effects of a
constant cause.
This is a case of Composition of Causes; and the peculiarity of it is,
that instead of two or more causes intermixing their effects in a
regular manner with those of one another, we have now one constant
cause, producing an effect which is successively modified by a series of
variable causes. Thus, as summer advances, the approach of the sun to a
vertical position tends to produce a constant increase of temperature;
but with this effect of a constant cause, there are blended the effects
of many variable causes, winds, clouds, evaporation, electric agencies
and the like, so that the temperature of any given day depends in part
on these fleeting causes, and only in part on the constant cause. If the
effect of the constant cause is always accompanied and disguised by
effects of variable causes, it is impossible to ascertain the law of the
constant cause in the ordinary manner, by separating it from all other
causes and observing it apart. Hence arises the necessity of an
additional rule of experimental inquiry.