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This is a case in which even the vulgar know the meaning of the words employed, just as well as the philosopher does, and perhaps somewhat better, if the philosopher is a little blinded by a preconceived theory. In common with the vulgar, I know precisely what I mean, when I ask, What makes that phenomenon happen, or what is its Efficient Cause? even though I cannot answer the Then I know what Efficient Cause means; question thus asked. and this knowledge either came to me from experience, in which case I have actually had either external or internal experience of such a Cause, or there is some knowledge which is not empirical. Either horn of the dilemma confutes the Positivists.

I believe that this knowledge of Efficient Causation comes from internal experience. When, with a conscious exertion of my mental, and all my muscular strength, I push against the wall of the house, I know that I am putting forth force or power, and that such force is essentially causative, or necessarily efficient, even though it be not sufficient to produce all the effect desired, and therefore, so far as my senses testify, the wall does not in the least give way. In this case, my effort is certainly not made known to me merely as an antecedent event; for it has no consequent. No visible effect follows; the wall still stands. And yet I know that this effort was essentially an Efficient Cause, and, therefore, that it must have been followed by some effect, must have tended to make the wall give way, even though this effect was imperceptible to sense.

How this first knowledge, this earliest idea, of Efficient Causation subsequently passes over into an irresistible conviction of the Law of Causality, that is, into an absolute and imperative belief, that no change whatever can take place in the external universe without an efficient cause, is a question which need not detain us here. Probably it could not be fully answered without setting forth a complete system of metaphysics. As we have seen, it is the question which first suggested Kant's whole "Critique of Pure Reason."

The Positivists fail to see, what now appears obvious enough, that their doctrine of nescience so narrows the domain and restricts the processes of Physical Science itself, as to incapacitate it for the exercise of its functions, and to discredit as illegitimate many of its conclusions hitherto supposed to be irrefragable. According to their logic, our investigations must be strictly limited to phenomena attested by the evidence of the senses, and to what Mr. J. S Mill calls "the strictly legitimate operation of inferring, from an

observed effect, the existence, in time past, of a cause similar to that by which we know it to be produced in all cases in which we have had actual experience of its origin." But if this is a correct statement of the logic of inductive science, the undulatory theory of light must be abandoned as a baseless and untenable hypothesis. For the ether, the vibrations of which are needed for the transmission of the light to our eyes, and which is supposed to be widely diffused through space, extending at least as far beyond the remotest visible star as the distance between that star and our earth, is not only absolutely imperceptible to sense, but is wholly unlike any other substance with which we are acquainted. It is not merely invisible and intangible; but, so far as is yet known, it has not inertia enough to retard in the slightest degree the motion of the lightest body passing through it. According to the latest form of the atomic theory, its molecules do not attract, but mutually repel, each other; and its vibrations are transmitted without stay or hindrance through the densest transparent bodies. What is this ether? It must be something; for there cannot be vibrations where there is nothing to vibrate. It cannot be material; for it does not gravitate, it has no inertia, and it does not, so far as we know, exclude matter from the space occupied by itself. It cannot be mind; for it is extended, and it affords not the slightest trace of perception or consciousness. Then it must be a tertium quid, something between matter and mind; and as such, it is quite as incognizable and inconceivable as the Infinite and the Absolute. Its existence is inferred solely from its effects, and from analogy with the air and other vibrating substances which are the vehicle of sound; an analogy fainter and more remote than that between the human and the Divine Mind. Let the Positivist prove to us, on his own principles, if he can, that we may legitimately assume the existence of this ether, and still deny the being of a God.

Another specimen of the logic of the Positivists may be taken from their attempts to base the conclusions of a crass materialism upon the assumed identity of certain chemical changes, which are supposed to take place in the substance of the nerves, with the states of consciousness which are so far attendant upon them as to be manifested at the same moment. I have already quoted Mr. Herbert Spencer's assertion, that these two classes of phenomena are nothing but "the inner and outer faces of the same change; and consequently, that in truth there are not two classes of them, but only one, since these changes, if viewed "on their outsides," appear as chemical phenomena, but if we regard them "from their

insides," they are phenomena of consciousness. What evidence is there of the truth of this assertion? On what ground does he maintain the identity of two classes of phenomena which are so radically unlike that they have not a single feature in common? The one class can be viewed only through the external senses, under the microscope or in the test-tubes of the chemist, and can be expressed only as physical changes, in terms of extension and motion; consciousness as such knows nothing of them. The other class are absolutely imperceptible to sense, are not extended, do not move, have no relation to space, so that it is sheer nonsense to talk of their "insides" or "outsides," and can be cognized only as successive states of the indivisible and identical Ego of consciousness. What trace of similarity can be pointed out between conscious Thought on the one hand, and the tumbling down and building up of molecules from their primary atoms in the brain on the other? Dissimilar in every respect, it is hard to believe that the assertion of their identity is made in sober earnest.

For the question here at issue, the concomitance of the two phenomena proves nothing. The fact that a certain physical event is the antecedent, and a certain mental state is its invariable consequent, may prove that the former is the (physical) cause of the latter; but it certainly does not prove the identity of the one with the other. Nay, by denominating one the antecedent, and the other the consequent, it expressly negatives the supposition of their identity. Nobody doubts that a vibration of the air or some other medium, is the invariable antecedent of the sensation of sound; but any one would very properly be laughed at who should seriously maintain, that the quivering motion of the air is the sensation. Then bring the two phenomena one step nearer to each other. Assume, as Mr. Spencer and other materialists do without a scintilla of evidence, that certain molecular changes in the substance of the nerves always precede or accompany any change in consciousness. Still, the assertion that such molecular disturbance is the conscious thought which it accompanies, is quite as absurd as the former one, that the quivering motion is the sensation. The two things are entirely incongruous; you might as well say that a dance of atoms is an epic poem.

But the argument may be carried much farther. The great simplicity and uniformity of molecular action in any substance, and of all other merely physical change, are wholly incompatible with the infinite range and diversity of human thought. All physical change is resolvable exclusively into modes of motion. Fast or

slow, continuous or reciprocating, minute or grand, in one direction or another, weak or strong, it is still motion, and nothing but motion. The very molecular action, which Mr. Spencer here refers to, is only a process constantly repeated of setting up bricks, and knocking them down again. It is a mere dance of atoms, and one which has by no means an intricate figure or any considerable variety of steps. It is as plain as a pikestaff; "up and down the middle, cross hands, and swing your partners." These are the phenomena, and all the phenomena, as viewed "on their outsides"; and the very same phenomena, Mr. Spencer tells us, regarded "from their insides," are John Milton composing the "Paradise Lost," and Isaac Newton meditating his immortal "Principia." Should we even grant to the materialist, then, what cannot be admitted for a moment, that his theory sufficiently accounts for that vague abstraction, that ghost of a reality, which we call thought in general, it certainly does not afford any explanation whatever of the only phenomena really needing explanation; namely, the infinite compass and diversity of the particular thoughts which actually succeed each other in the consciousness of any one thinker. I fail to imagine how any dance of atoms in the materialist's brain, when "viewed from the inside," should be so illogical as to suppose that "thought in general," which is one and the same in all brains, and under all circumstances, is still identical with "particular thought," which is never the same in any two minds, or in any one mind at two successive moments.

CHAPTER XVI.

SCHOPENHAUER's FourFold Root of the Principle of SUFFICIENT REASON. THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.

IN the preceding chapter, and elsewhere, we have briefly looked at the great question respecting the Freedom of the Will in a few of its aspects, reserving a complete discussion of the subject for a later opportunity, which has now arrived. As a means of facilitating a separate and thorough examination of this problem, I will present here a compendious view of Schopenhauer's doctrine respecting it, as contained in his earliest publication, entitled "The Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason." This little book, one of the ablest and most original, as it seems to me, of all his works, was the Thesis which he presented when he took his Doctor's degree, in 1813, at the age of twenty-six years. Many of the conclusions which it seeks to establish appear unfounded, and the reasoning in support of them is sophistical; but they are worked out with great acuteness and ingenuity, and were afterwards made the basis of that system of philosophy, the exposition and defence of which occupied the remainder of his life. The character of this philosophy, and of its author, will be considered at length in a subsequent portion of this book. Here, we have only to examine his masterly analysis of the great Principle first enunciated by Leibnitz as the foundation of all science and all philosophy.

The broadest and most universal expression of the Principle of Sufficient Reason is, that no phenomenon can exist or take place, and no assertion can be valid, without a Sufficient Reason why it is so rather than otherwise. The enunciation of it may be made more clear and precise thus: In the phenomenal world, that is, in the universe as it appears to us, every object and every event, including even every judgment, volition, and affection of the mind, is determined, or made what it is, through the relations in which it stands to other phenomena; so that, if we knew those relations thoroughly, we could determine a priori the existence and the