§ 3. There are, therefore, only two kinds of propositions which assert uniformity of coexistence between properties. Either the properties depend on causes, or they do not. If they do, the proposition which affirms them to be coexistent is a derivative law of coexistence between effects, and until resolved into the laws of causation on which it depends, is an empirical law, and to be tried by the principles of induction to which such laws are amenable. If, on the other hand, the properties do not depend on causes, but are ultimate properties; then if it be true that they invariably coexist, they must all be ultimate properties of one and the same Kind; and it is of these only that the coexistences can be classed as a peculiar sort of laws of nature. When we affirm that all crows are black, or that all negroes have woolly hair, we assert an uniformity of coexistence. We assert that the property of blackness, or of having woolly hair, invariably coexists with the properties which, in common language, or in the scientific classification that we adopt, are taken to constitute the class crow, or the class negro. Now, supposing blackness to be an ultimate property of black objects, or woolly hair an ultimate property of the animals which possess it; supposing that these properties are not results of causation, are not connected with antecedent phenomena by any law; then if all crows are black, and all negroes have woolly hair, these must be ultimate properties of the Kind _crow_, or _negro_, or of some Kind which includes them. If, on the contrary, blackness or woolly hair be an effect depending on causes, these general propositions are manifestly empirical laws; and all that has already been said respecting that class of generalizations may be applied without modification to these. Now, we have seen that in the case of all compounds--of all things, in short, except the elementary substances and primary powers of nature--the presumption is, that the properties do really depend upon causes; and it is impossible in any case whatever to be certain that they do not. We therefore should not be safe in claiming for any generalization respecting the coexistence of properties, a degree of certainty to which, if the properties should happen to be the result of causes, it would have no claim. A generalization respecting coexistence, or in other words respecting the properties of Kinds, may be an ultimate truth, but it may, also, be merely a derivative one; and since, if so, it is one of those derivative laws which are neither laws of causation, nor have been resolved into the laws of causation on which they depend, it can possess no higher degree of evidence than belongs to an empirical law.