added as aforesaid, that all real
inference as to events is from particulars, and that formal cogency
belongs only to mathematics. Mr. Balfour says he will not 'go so far' as
Mill. So that, whatever be Mill's inconsistencies--and they are
many--Mill was at this point somewhat less confident of belief than Mr.
Balfour.

2. Mr. Balfour impugns what he takes to be 'the most ordinary view of
scientific philosophy, ... that science, in so far as it consists of a
statement of the laws of phenomena, is founded entirely on observation
and experiment,' which 'furnish not only the occasions of scientific
discovery, but also the sole evidence of scientific truth--evidence,
however, which is considered by most men of science not only amply
sufficient, but also as good as any which can be well imagined.'[9] In
this statement there are obvious laxities, which may serve as openings
for idle dispute. No man of science, surely, holds that all statements
of the laws of phenomena are equally well 'proved' by observation and
experiment. They do hold that such a proposition as that of 'the
uniformity of nature,' considered as a 'law of phenomena,' is founded on
observation and experiment, as fully as any proposition of natural mode
can be. But there is obvious room for ambiguity, again, in the
expression 'laws of phenomena.' Let us consider, for instance,

3. Mr. Balfour's contention that the 'law of universal causation' is
incapable of proof, and cannot properly be said to be founded on
observation and experiment. Here the rationalist may safely grant him
his whole case--at least the present writer does. He is right, I submit,
in his criticism of Mill's ostensible attempt to prove that the
so-called 'law of universal causation' is deduced from observation and
experiment. I will further waive the question whether he rebuts the
proof offered by Kant for his proposition that 'the judgment of sequence
cannot be made without the presupposition of the judgment of causality,'
which, like many of Kant's formulas, seems to me very awkwardly phrased.
But I advance without hesitation the proposition that all reflection
upon events involves the conception of universal causation, and that all
reflection upon things involves the conception of them _in eventu_.[10]
And this necessary assumption is not as such a product of observation
and experiment, though we can never exactly say how far experience may
condition[11] our manner of making the assumption.