years past, but they do not include the future. Yet we infer with confidence that the sun will rise to-morrow; and nobody doubts that we are entitled to do so. Let us consider what is the warrant for this confidence.
In the example in question, we know the causes on which the derivative uniformity depends. They are: the sun giving out light, the earth in a state of rotation and intercepting light. The induction which shows these to be the real causes, and not merely prior effects of a common cause, being complete, the only circumstances which could defeat the derivative law are such as would destroy or counteract one or other of the combined causes. While the causes exist and are not counteracted, the effect will continue. If they exist and are not counteracted to-morrow, the sun will rise to-morrow.
Since the causes, namely, the sun and the earth, the one in the state of giving out light, the other in a state of rotation, will exist until something destroys them, all depends on the probabilities of their destruction, or of their counteraction. We know by observation (omitting the inferential proofs of an existence for thousands of ages anterior) that these phenomena have continued for (say) five thousand years. Within that time there has existed no cause sufficient to diminish them appreciably, nor which has counteracted their effect in any appreciable degree. The chance, therefore, that the sun may not rise to-morrow amounts to the chance that some cause, which has not manifested itself in the smallest degree during five thousand years, will exist to-morrow in such intensity as to destroy the sun or the earth, the sun's light or the earth's rotation, or to produce an immense disturbance in the effect resulting from those causes.
Now, if such a cause will exist to-morrow, or at any future time, some cause, proximate or remote, of that cause must exist now, and must have existed during the whole of the five thousand years. If, therefore, the sun do not rise to-morrow, it will be because some cause has existed, the effects of which, though during five thousand years they have not amounted to a perceptible quantity, will in one day become overwhelming. Since this cause has not been recognized during such an interval of time by observers stationed on our earth, it must, if it be a single agent, be either one whose effects develop themselves gradually and very slowly, or one which existed in regions beyond our observation, and is now on the point of arriving in our part of the universe. Now all causes which we have experience of act according to laws incompatible with the supposition that their effects, after accumulating so slowly as to be imperceptible for five thousand years, should start into immensity in a single day. No mathematical law of proportion between an effect and the quantity or relations of its cause could produce such contradictory results. The sudden development of an effect of which there was no previous trace always arises from the coming together of several distinct causes, not previously conjoined; but if such sudden conjunction is destined to take place, the causes, or their causes, must have existed during the entire five thousand years; and their not having once come together during that period shows how rare that particular combination is. We have, therefore, the warrant of a rigid induction for considering it probable, in a degree undistinguishable from certainty, that the known conditions requisite for the sun's rising will exist to-morrow.
§ 3. But this extension of derivative laws, not causative, beyond the limits of observation can only be to adjacent cases. If, instead of to-morrow, we had said this day twenty thousand years, the inductions would have
