under similar circumstances and conditions. The Antecedent is thus declared. After careful observation and experiment, it not unfrequently becomes patent to the observing or experimentalizing student, that similar determinate effects arise from causes of the same species; although the said causes are themselves entitatively many, distinct, and widely separated from each other in time or space, or both. Thus, for instance, the electrical experiments of Franklin in America agree in their results with those of Faraday; and both, with the results of experiments being made, at this hour, in the various class-rooms of the civilized world. So, again, in the instance of projectiles, the trajectory is determined by the same laws, whether the experiment be made in England or Australia, -whether made in the last century or the present. Wheat has been sown annually, for some six thousand years, in nearly every quarter of the globe; yet the seed sown has never yielded anything but wheat. Having ascertained, then, that similar determinate effects are constantly produced by these causes which are specifically the same, the Principle of causality assists us in drawing the certain conclusion, that the above-named agents act on some uniform and constant principle. Now, this principle is either intrinsic to, and connatural with, each of the causes, or it is extrinsic and not connatural, i. e. it is a certain order or rule of energy to which these agents have been subjected. In the one case, we are in presence of a natural impulsion; in the other, of that which has been called a physical law.

So far, the proof has been given, more or less, in form. It may be worth while, however, considering the vital importance of the subject, to elaborate the argument by the easier method of analysis. Let us go, then, to the concrete; for it will facilitate the examination proposed. My mind is stimulated, we will say, to an act of thought by the phantasm, or sensile perception, of a cat. Though my mind has been thus aroused from its pure potentiality and native state of indifference by the presence of the phantasm, and though the phantasm has determined it to the special object which has been hic et nunc presented within its field of view; the intellect, nevertheless, intues, not the phantasm or sensile perception, (unless, indeed, its act is psychologically reflex; and this forms no element in the present analysis), but, through it and the material acts which it exhibits, the feline nature, however imperfectly, yet directly and in itself. At once it understands the object to be an entity, a sub

stance, a living substance, an animal substance, and an animal substance of such a definite type. By careful synthesis of the cat's acts, (the word is here used in its most generic sense), it cognizes its growth, its habits, its disposition. To put it yet more plainly: -There are certain acts of the cat, that have constantly and uniformly presented themselves to my mind through the medium of sensile perceptions, whenever that animal has come across me and, moreover, belong to it exclusively, so far as common experience and my own experience in particular have gone. Such are, for instance, its mewing, purring, stealthy advances on its prey, and other like properties, to say nothing of its peculiar configuration, and other distinctive notes of being. In the former class of peculiarities I recognize a spontaneity of act. In the latter I perceive the material properties of a common nature. In both, by help of the Principle of causality, I know that the beast is in act by virtue of a natural impulsion; and I thereby learn much about its nature. So much for an agent acting under natural impulsion. But, again, it has been concluded, from the testimony of sensile phenomena, that the earth moves round the sun. By my knowledge, though imperfect, of the earth's nature and of the nature of matter in general, I know that the orbital movement of the former does not flow from its essence. On the contrary, if at rest and left to itself, it would remain motionless by that property of indifference to rest or motion, apparently essential to bodies, which has been called by Kepler the ris inertia. If under the accidental direction of one force, I know that it would move in a straight line, supposing that it started from rest or was moving in the direction of the force. I know, further, that its orbital motion is due to the interaction and composition, as they say, of two forces or quasi forces. But no force external to the earth itself or any influence from the action of such force can flow from the earth's essential nature; otherwise, this latter could not have an antecedent indifference to motion. Yet, on the other hand, the motion, though variable in itself, follows a constant law, and has done so for as long a time as historic memory can recall. By virtue of the Principle of causality applied to these facts, I am justified in eliminating the agency of natural impulsion, and to realize to myself the presence of a physical order,—of that which, by common consent, has been called a physical law. If I am told, that all this durable order is the mere result of a fortuitous concourse of atoms, or that the sensile phenomena on which my mind

has, as it were, been working, are nothing but products of my own psychical activity,-or that the reigning order, apparent in an unknown to me and to me unenergizing object, is the pure creation of à priori concepts in my mind: the intuitions of my understanding proclaim war against the gratuitous assumptions, each and all; my primitive consciousness is wounded; my natural senses put in a demurrer; my common sense rises in rebellion; the general voice emphasizes a contradiction; the fautors of these empty dreams give the lie to them in their practical life. I pass them by with a smile. They are not worth a protest.

Before passing on, let it be again remembered, that the instances adduced in the course of the above analysis are merely used as illustrations. They are not intended to prejudge, one way or the other, physical theories of whatsoever kind.

II. THE SECOND MEMBER of this Proposition,-in which it is affirmed that, by virtue of the analytical Principle announced in the preceding Thesis, certain empirical Judgments assume a moral universality and are physically certain,-is thus declared.

It may be as well to premise, that by moral universality is to be understood that which has been practically accepted as universal in the common estimation of mankind. Well, then, if it has been evidently and certainly ascertained that certain material agents act in obedience to either a physical law or a necessary impulsion of their nature; it is plain as plain can be that, (unless the action of a superior cause should intervene), those same causes, under similar conditions and circumstances, will always produce similar results. For example, the sun has risen (to adopt an accepted phrase) every morning, during the entire length of the individual experience of each one among us. We have satisfactory and abundant moral

evidence that it has done the same, since the commencement of the historic period. Moreover, the time of sunrise is so nicely regulated by an established order, that it is prophetically given, each year, in the almanacs of every country. No one doubts, therefore, that the sun will rise again to-morrow, as before; and that it will rise at the time predicted. No one doubts either, that after midsummer the days will begin to draw in. Yet, if the supreme Creator and Ruler of the world should have determined to bring time to a close at once, the sun would not rise again on the morrow. Consequently, the empirical Judgment can never assume an absolute, but only

a conditioned, universality. It is physically, not metaphysically, practically, not theoretically,-certain. Wherefore, such empirical Judgments are often elevated to the rank of experimental axioms; but never can be absolute, necessary truths. For they deal with contingent existences as such; and, for this reason, can never lay claim to metaphysical evidence.

CHAPTER V.

SYNTHETICAL À PRIORI JUDGMENTS.

DESCARTES is the true father of all those Protean new philosophies which have appeared in continuous succession from his time until now. By establishing a universal doubt at the threshold of knowledge as the necessary condition for acquiring philosophical cognition, he disastrously diverted the course of scientific inquiry; nay, more, he so dammed it up at the fountain head that there could be no escape save by a paralogism. For he extended this universal doubt to all the faculties of the human soul; so that, under his guidance, the student of philosophy was taught to doubt, at the outset, the infallibility of the very media of cognition, till that infallibility had been established by satisfactory proof. But such a task is plainly impossible; for proof of whatsoever kind presupposes, as a conditio sine qua non, the infallibility of the reason. Descartes only escapes the difficulty by a tacit restriction of his universal doubt at the first step he takes,-a restriction which enlarges its periphery in proportion as he proceeds. His first and fundamental But how does he know

position is this: I think; therefore, I am. for certain that he thinks, unless he already trusts to the infallibility of his consciousness or, in other words, to the act of his intellect as psychologically reflex? We will say nothing of the pre-position of the I in the Antecedent. In like manner, he draws from his data certain conclusions which are preparatory to his subsequent demonstration of the infallibility of the faculties. Yet the certainty of these anticipatory conclusions necessarily depends on the acknowledged infallibility of the reason. Once more: The infallibility of the reason has to be proved in common with that of the other faculties. But, in order to be able to prove, you must presuppose the infallibility of the understanding that intues the premisses and the infallibility of the reason that draws the conclusion; otherwise, of what value is your proof? All that he did, therefore, for philosophy, (and