For even the greater generalizations, which embrace comprehensive Kinds containing under them a great number and variety of infimæ species, are only empirical laws, resting on induction by simple enumeration merely, and not on any process of elimination—a process wholly inapplicable to this sort of case. Such generalizations, therefore, ought to be grounded on an examination of all the infimæ species comprehended in them, and not of a [pg 415] portion only. We can not conclude (where causation is not concerned), because a proposition is true of a number of things resembling one another only in being animals, that it is therefore true of all animals. If, indeed, any thing be true of species which differ more from one another than either differs from a third, especially if that third species occupies in most of its known properties a position between the two former, there is some probability that the same thing will also be true of that intermediate species; for it is often, though by no means universally, found, that there is a sort of parallelism in the properties of different Kinds, and that their degree of unlikeness in one respect bears some proportion to their unlikeness in others. We see this parallelism in the properties of the different metals; in those of sulphur, phosphorus, and carbon; of chlorine, iodine, and bromine; in the natural orders of plants and animals, etc. But there are innumerable anomalies and exceptions to this sort of conformity; if indeed the conformity itself be any thing but an anomaly and an exception in nature.
Universal propositions, therefore, respecting the properties of superior Kinds, unless grounded on proved or presumed connection by causation, ought not to be hazarded except after separately examining every known sub-kind included in the larger Kind. And even then such generalizations must be held in readiness to be given up on the occurrence of some new anomaly, which, when the uniformity is not derived from causation, can never, even in the case of the most general of these empirical laws, be considered very improbable. Thus, all the universal propositions which it has been attempted to lay down respecting simple substances, or concerning any of the classes which have been formed among simple substances (and the attempt has been often made), have, with the progress of experience, either faded into inanity, or been proved to be erroneous; and each Kind of simple substance remains, with its own collection of properties apart from the rest, saving a certain parallelism with a few other Kinds, the most similar to itself. In organized beings, indeed, there are abundance of propositions ascertained to be universally true of superior genera, to many of which the discovery hereafter of any exceptions must be regarded as extremely improbable. But these, as already observed, are, we have every reason to believe, properties dependent on causation.4
Uniformities of co-existence, then, not only when they are consequences of laws of succession, but also when they are ultimate truths, must be ranked, for the purpose of logic, among empirical laws; and are amenable in every respect to the same rules with those unresolved uniformities which are known to be dependent on causation.5