uniformity, the conclusion can never go beyond the limits of this
evidence, and generality can never be confounded with universality. The
certainty that Nature is uniform is not at all, and never can be, a
certainty of the same kind as the certainty that four times five are
twenty.

We can assert that the general character of Nature is uniformity, but we
cannot go beyond this. Every separate law of nature is established by
induction from the facts, and so too is the general uniformity. Every
separate law of Nature is a working hypothesis. So too is the uniformity
of Nature a working hypothesis, and it never can be more. It is true
that there is far more evidence for the uniformity of Nature as a whole
than for any one law of Nature; because a law of Nature is established
by the uniformity of sequences in those phenomena to which it applies;
whereas every uniformity of sequence, of whatever kind, is an evidence
of the general uniformity. The evidence for the uniformity of nature is
the accumulated evidence for all the separate uniformities. But, however
much greater the quantity of evidence, the kind ever remains the same.
There is no means by which we can demonstrate this uniformity. We can
only make it probable. We can say that in almost every case all the
evidence is one way; but whenever there is evidence to the contrary we
cannot refuse to examine it.

If a miracle were worked science could not prove that it was a miracle,
nor of course prove that it was not a miracle. To prove it to be a
miracle would require not a vast range of knowledge, but absolutely
universal knowledge, which it is entirely beyond our faculties to
attain. To say that any event was a miracle would be to say that we knew
that there was no higher law that could explain it, and this we could
not say unless we knew all laws: to say that it was not a miracle would