hich it is invariably and
unconditionally consequent. It is on the universality of this law that
the possibility rests of establishing a canon of Induction. A general
proposition inductively obtained is only then proved to be true, when
the instances on which it rests are such that if they have been
correctly observed, the falsity of the generalization would be
inconsistent with the constancy of causation; with the universality of
the fact that the phaenomena of nature take place according to
invariable laws of succession.[9] It is probable, therefore, that M.
Comte's determined abstinence from the word and the idea of Cause, had
much to do with his inability to conceive an Inductive Logic, by
diverting his attention from the only basis upon which it could be
founded.

We are afraid it must also be said, though shown only by slight
indications in his fundamental work, and coming out in full evidence
only in his later writings--that M. Comte, at bottom, was not so
solicitous about completeness of proof as becomes a positive
philosopher, and that the unimpeachable objectivity, as he would have
called it, of a conception--its exact correspondence to the realities of
outward fact--was not, with him, an indispensable condition of adopting
it, if it was subjectively useful, by affording facilities to the mind
for grouping phaenomena. This appears very curiously in his chapters on
the philosophy of Chemistry. He recommends, as a judicious use of "the
degree of liberty left to our intelligence by the end and purpose of
positive science," that we should accept as a convenient generalization
the doctrine that all chemical composition is between two elements only;
that every substance which our analysis decomposes, let us say into four
elements, has for its immediate constituents two hypothetical
substances, each compounded of two simpler ones. There would have been
nothing to object to in this as a scientific hypothesis, assumed
tentatively as a means of suggesting experiments by which its truth may
be tested. With this for its destination, the conception, would have
been legitimate and philosophical; the more so, as, if confirmed, it
would have afforded an explanation of the fact that some substances
which analysis shows to be composed of the same elementary substances
in the same proportions, differ in their general properties, as for
instance, sugar and gum.[10] And if, besides affording a reason for
difference between things