Now look! I thought the same as youre thinking when I started out on this. I figured boy friend, the same as you do. But I’ve seen her several times, twice out there, and she’s always been with either her guards or her lawyer. And the lawyer’s no boy friend of hers. So get that out of your craw. It’s something else. Now did you meet any sixteen-year-old kids while you and Joey were painting the town? He stared at me. We were parked by that time and I could watch his face. He said: Why of course not. We were in bars and gambling places. Naturally I didn’t meet any children in those sort of places. He seems to want to avoid me, Trenton said. 268 She says she will sort out a platter of cold meats and cheeses, Cleo said. This is merely saying that we should put the instances, from which the law is to be inductively collected, into the order which is implied in one of the four Methods of Experimental Inquiry discussed in the preceding Book; the fourth Method, that of Concomitant Variations. As formerly remarked, this is often the only method to which recourse can be had, with assurance of a true conclusion, in cases in which we have but limited means of effecting, by artificial experiments, a separation of circumstances usually conjoined. The principle of the method is, that facts which increase or diminish together, and disappear together, are either cause and effect, or effects of a common cause. When it has been ascertained that this relation really subsists between the variations, a connection between the facts themselves may be confidently laid down, either as a law of nature or only as an empirical law, according to circumstances. I hugged her close. In order to see these remarks verified by the actual state of the sciences, we have only to think of the condition of natural history. In zoology, for example, there is an immense number of uniformities ascertained, some of co-existence, others of succession, to many of which, notwithstanding considerable variations of the attendant circumstances, we know not any exception: but the antecedents, for the most part, are such as we can not artificially produce; or if we can, it is only by setting in motion the exact process by which nature produces them; and this being to us a mysterious process, of which the main circumstances are not only unknown but unobservable, we do not succeed in obtaining the antecedents under known circumstances. What is the result? That on this vast subject, which affords so much and such varied scope for observation, we have made most scanty progress in ascertaining any laws of causation. We know not with certainty, in the case of most of the phenomena that we find conjoined, which is the condition of the other; which is cause, and which effect, or whether either of them is so, or they are not rather conjunct effects of causes yet to be discovered, complex results of laws hitherto unknown. It will be convenient to take the last part of this argument first. In every reasoning, according to Mr. Spencer, the assumption of the postulate is renewed at every step. At each inference we judge that the conclusion follows from the premises, our sole warrant for that judgment being that we can not conceive it not to follow. Consequently if the postulate is fallible, the conclusions of reasoning are more vitiated by that uncertainty than direct intuitions; and the disproportion is greater, the more numerous the steps of the argument. 12 Considering, however, in how accelerating a ratio the uncertainty of our conclusions increases as we attempt to take the effect of a greater number of concurrent causes into our calculations, the hypothetical combinations of circumstances on which we construct the general theorems of the science, can not be made very complex, without so rapidly accumulating aliability to error as must soon deprive our conclusions of all value. This mode of inquiry, considered as a means of obtaining general propositions, must, therefore, on pain of frivolity, be limited to those classes of social facts which, though influenced like the rest by all sociological agents, are under the immediate influence, principally at least, of a few only. Oh, she knows how to get hold of money, all right, Augusta says, and rolls her eyes. Little girl? he says. I loved him so much, she said. She came out of it all in a bunch. She bridged herself like a wrestler trying to break a hold and started kicking. Ill give him credit. He hung on, now with both hands, but it was a grasp of desperation. His mind had given away under the strain and he was whispering hoarsely: Puzzums! Puzzums! Puzzums! over and over again. Come, come, gentlemen, the judge said, lets get on with the trial. Yes, he is. Rob Trenton, who had been listening incredulously, said,Thats a lie! That whole statement is false. This man was one of the... Logic, i., 103-105..