erved uniformities of
nature will continue. Such an observed uniformity--that All animals
have a nervous system, that All animals die, that Quinine cures
ague--is also called an Empirical Law.

But while we are justified in extending an empirical law beyond the
limits within which it has been observed to hold good, it is a
mistake to suppose that the main work of science is the collection
of empirical laws, and that the only scientific inference is the
inference from the observed prevalence of an empirical law to its
continuance. With science the collection of empirical laws is only
a preliminary: "the goal of science," in Herschel's phrase, "is
explanation". In giving such prominence to empirical laws in his
theory, Mill confined Induction to a narrower scope than science
ascribes to it. Science aims at reaching "the causes of things": it
tries to penetrate behind observed uniformities to the explanation
of them. In fact, as long as a science consists only of observed
uniformities, as long as it is in the empirical stage, it is a science
only by courtesy. Astronomy was in this stage before the discovery of
the Law of Gravitation. Medicine is merely empirical as long as its
practice rests upon such generalisations as that Quinine cures ague,
without knowing why. It is true that this explanation may consist only
in the discovery of a higher or deeper uniformity, a more recondite
law of connexion: the point is that these deeper laws are not always
open to observation, and that the method of reaching them is not
merely observing and recording.

In the body of his Inductive Logic, Mill gave a sufficient account of
the Method of Explanation as practised in scientific inquiry. It was
only his mode of approaching the subject that was confusing, and
made it appear as if the proper work of science were merely extending
observed generalities, as when we conclude that all men will die
because all men have died, or that all horned animals ruminate because
all hitherto observed have had this attribute. A minor source of
confusion incident to the same controversy was his refusing the
title of Induction proper to a mere summary of particulars. He seemed
thereby to cast a slight upon the mere summation of particulars. And
yet, according to his theory, it was those particulars that were the
basis of the Induction properly so called. That all men will die is an
inference from the observation summed up in the proposition that
all men h