Part II.

The Second (Philosophical) Issue; or, The Escape from Materialism through the Modern Idealism of Ignorance.

In his necessity to say something, if only for "his own," Mr Huxley, in reference to my phrase "the materialism he would found on it," remarks, "one great object of my Essay was to show that what is called 'materialism' has no sound philosophical basis!" The note of admiration I retain here is Mr Huxley's own, and I am humbly of opinion that it is more in place at the end of my sentence than at the end of his. At the end of his, namely, it intimates indignation that an express effort to resist, should be treated as an express effort to found, materialism. At the end of mine, again, it intimates surprise that Mr Huxley should seek to hide his alpha beneath his beta, and upbraid me for openly signalising alpha alone, whereas I equally openly signalised beta—though placing it on one side. If Mr Huxley does two things namely—attempts, first, to set up materialism,—attempts, second, to knock down materialism (see pages 20, 21, 23)—how can allusion to the materialism he sets up, guarded by an equal allusion to the materialism he knocks down, be an "utter misreprentation?" "One great object of my Essay," says Mr Huxley! Yes, truly; but what of the other—great, greater, and greatest—object? "Utter misrepresentation!" The only utter misrepresentation concerned here is—Pshaw! the whole thing is beneath speech.

Nevertheless, my previous, merely parenthetic, treatment of Mr Huxley's second issue shall now be completed by a consideration in detail. We are to understand, then, that what Mr Huxley claimed to have effected (physiologically) in fifty paragraphs—for materialism, he now claims equally to effect (philosophically) in one-and-twenty—against it; and the means to this are "the principles which the Archbishop of York holds up to reprobation." These, as it is easy to know, concern the so-called "limits of philosophical inquiry," and may be reduced to what Mr Huxley holds to be our three ignorances: our ignorance, namely, first, of cause; second, of substance; and, page 60 third, of externality, or an external world. The evangile, according to Mr Huxley, consequently, is that, lost by knowledge, we may be saved by ignorance! Indeed, it must be allowed that the whole matter stands there very clear, consistent, definite, irrefutable, satisfactory, before Mr Huxley's own consciousness. The progress of knowledge generally, he is sure, has been ever more and more towards the reduction of all phenomena into the series and successions of material antecedents and consequents; and there cannot be a doubt but that life, and will, and thought, must, in the end, be all similarly tucked in. These, too, when explained, will only be explained as "results of the disposition of material molecules." It does not follow, for all that, is Mr Huxley's further thought, that what is called materialism is true, or that "there is nothing in the world but matter, force, and necessity;" I indeed have reduced all, we may further figure him to say, into material terms, and connected all in material sequence; but this system of a world may conceivably lie all the same, so to speak, in the drop of water in the hollow of an Arab boy's hand. That is, firstly, I know not any necessity of connection in the phenomena of the world, though I know the fact of it; and so volition may be free. Secondly, I know not what anything is in itself, whether it be named of matter, or whether it be named of mind; and so matter as matter is not established, and mind as mind is not destroyed. Thirdly, there is no doubt but that the system—all that we know—the whole world—does lie, not indeed in the hollow of an Arab boy's hand, but in consciousness: all that we know are but modes of consciousness—bundles of our own consciousnesses. In this way, while there is a most pleasing definiteness for our knowledge, there is also a most pleasing indefiniteness, for our ignorance. Or in this way, while, in knowledge, science is secured its rights, and thought its freedom, we may quite satisfactorily limn God, free will, immortality, and all that sort of thing (if we really do want it) in the mist of our ignorance !

This is Mr Huxley's relative position—even to the irony, though that is not so certain. It is just possible in that respect, namely, that Mr Huxley is as simple and serious on the one side, as he is simple and serious on the other—as simple and serious and self-complacent in regard to ignorance, as he is simple, serious, and self-complacent in regard to knowledge. For my part, indeed, I must confess myself to find Mr Huxley, however valuable in his knowledge, much more interesting in his ignorance—in his ignorance and in the faith that is born of it. I don't know anything about cause, he seems to say to himself, or substance, or actual externality; and therefore there is all that—dream—possible! What a comfort, when the prose of know- page 61 ledge wearies—when materialism is a horror to our natural hopes—to possess in the poetry of ignorance a secret and sacred chamber in which I can shut myself up legitimately to dream! What a comfort to be able to retire to this my Fetish and strong god to listen to my prayers! "Where ignorance is bliss, 't were folly to be wise;" and surely it is ignorance that is the blissful side here. Sufficiently curious, it is, too, that the Revulsion, to which knowledge is professedly all in all, cannot do, nevertheless, without the refuge of ignorance. How Mr Buckle mouths solemnly roundabout, in that ample, empty, pretentious way of his, dwelling ever on the sacredness of a man's religious conviction, which is for silence and secrecy alone I One would think it more natural that we should thank a man for communicating to us that which, as most precious for him, might prove most precious for us too. But no! gabble, chatter as you like about your lower interests, but be absolutely silent about your higher ones! That is the wisdom of the perfectly admirable Mr Buckle; and Mr Huxley, as we see, is not without a certain approach to it. Let us listen benevolently, he seems to say, to knowledge in public; but let us all the more worship ignorance in private! It is this ignorance we shall now consider in the order of its three forms already named.

1. What concerns causality may be stated thus :—The material phenomena which constitute knowledge, are commonly regarded as in connection the one with the other; but into the nature of this connection, into the necessity of this connection, we do not at all see. All that we do see is the fact of invariable association among them. We certainly have grounds for the expectation that this association will not vary; but these grounds reducing themselves to this, that on the whole, it has not yet varied; it is impossible for us to say, it can not, or it must not vary. Knowing the fact only, and not its conditioning reason, we are obliged to say in fairness, it may vary. When the sun rises, it is day this day, and any day we ever heard of; but to-morrow it may be night. A stone flung into the air returns to-day, but to-morrow it may not. Cork floats at present, but in the future it may sink. The knife cuts the apple now, but an hour hence the apple may cut the knife. To-day sugar sweetens tea, to-morrow it may salt it. To-day the stick breaks the window, to-morrow the window may break the stick. To-day the gunpowder but repeats the spark, to-morrow it may quench it. To-day the cloak depends; to-morrow it may suppend, etc., etc. Of course, we have no reason to expect these changes; but we have no guarantee against them. We do not any day know what "pastures new" await us. And this is good; for this is philosophy, and in such philosophy we have a checkmate to superstition, we have a checkmate to the page 62 priest, who dare not any longer, in the face of such verifications, dogmatise.

2. These are great advantages, but they are not greater than those the same "New Philosophy" extends to us from the consideration of substance. What do I know about this that you call substance? Where is it? What is it? Can you let me see it? I will believe it when I see it. Meantime I know qualities only—I know all things in their qualities, not in themselves, not in their substance. And this, that we know not substance, is "the greatest discovery of psychology." Consider, too, how, in turn, it is related to infallible knowledge and—dogmas! We are emancipated from the priest when we can show him that we know appearances only. To pretend to know all that, when he does not know what bread is!

3. But a due application of the same principles to the question of externality, elicits even greater advantages perhaps, and in a double kind. For it not only secures us from what the priest can do against us, but it renders us independent of what he can do for us. I know no external world—namely, or I know no certainty of an external world. That fire that burns, that sea that rages—I know nothing of either but as a state of my own. What I know of external things—what I can know of external things must be in my consciousness. What are called such external things, then, are but bundles of my own consciousnesses. To tell me, consequently, all that miraculous story, is to tell me something which, even the existence of the external world being unguaranteed, I must hold also to be unguaranteed. This, at the same time, too, that my ignorance of any actual external world and of any necessity, whether of causality or substantiality in it, plenarily empowers imagination to bring to my feet, in freedom, all the good things the priest can only bring me in bondage—God, Immortality, Free-will.

This, then, is the "New Philosophy;" and who will deny its might, and its majesty? Knowledge is precipitation into a "slough," but ignorance is "escape!" To be awake with the understanding is to fall into "crass materialism;" but to dream with the imagination is to be safe within the crystal battlements of eternal idealism! Knowledge is but the wretched old oil-lamp, that spills, and bothers us with its wick and its filth; it is ignorance that is the Aladdin's lamp, and brings elysium!

But do these gentlemen mean it to be so? To Mr Bain, for example, is not the materialism all that is for him fundamental? and is not the idealism but, profanely to say it, the tongue in the cheek—to the priest, who incontinently sinks silent, dumbfounded? But how are we to look at this extraordinary Zwitterling. this extraordinary hermaphrodite? Is the world, page 63 then, no stable system of reason? Is it only as the unsteady iridescence in the water-drop in the Arab boy's hand? Thus and thus to-day, may all things work loose from one another tomorrow? Shall we never know anything but appearances—never know truth? Ah! well might Descartes doubt whether he who sent us were not "a powerful and malicious being who took pleasure in deluding us!"

But let us just see whether all these things cannot be looked at otherwise.

1. There is no cause, then; there is only a first followed by a second, an A by a B. Nexus between them there is none discernible : there is only one imagined. Under the name of power, it is familiar enough to conception to be sure, and current enough in speech, but, all the same, it is a mere fancy, a voluntary-involuntary phantasm, a gratuitous symbol, a vicarious image, a personified abstraction, a Comtian entity, an Hegelian Vorstel-lung—a myth!^* The knowledge of this we owe to Hume, and this one point is the spore from which that vast bulk of German philosophy grew.

Nevertheless, it was but by counterstroke, so to speak, that from that spore this bulk grew; and it is not so certain that Hume's faith corresponded with his speech. Indeed, it is only a mistake, perhaps, to suppose that the sly Hume believed any such view of cause and effect, though, with his usual arch mischief, for perplexity to the priest, he wickedly started the difficulties that gave rise to it. Perfectly willing to "undermine the foundations" of anything whatever that had seemed hitherto only to serve "as a shelter to superstition," he knew all the same, that "Nature would always maintain her rights, and prevail in the end over any abstract reasoning whatsoever." So it was that, even when just mentioning—with such an air of simple reference to what was a matter of course for everybody—the transparent fact, that, "in all reasonings from experience, there is a step taken by the mind, which is not supported by any argument or process of the understanding"—so it was, I say,

^* It is to this meaning I would confine the word conception, and for good and sufficient reasons, it may be, despite the etymology. Idea is, of course, Idee, and can take on every one of its significations. Kant, when exact and authoritative—Hegel always—translates Begriff by Notio. There is left only Conception for Vorstellung, and Hegel actually does render Vorstellungen by Conceptionen. We have no choice then! And reflection will only the more and more approve the result. Representation, for example, is a hideous word that will never pass current; and Dugald Stewart's admirable chapter on "Conception" will show that that word to him was quite the Hegelian Vorstellung. Concept, again, reminds too much of conception satisfactorily to render Begriff, and is, for the most part, only in philosophical use by an authority that in another generation will cease to be significant. All this, however, only where exactitude is required. Otherwise and in general, idea conveys perfectly well, not only Begriff, but even Vorstellung. Any interchange of the words in question is perhaps possible to the experienced translator, except only the unpardonable barbarism of notion for Vorstellung. Notion ought to be kept sacred for the logical notion.

page 64 that even when just mentioning this, and remarking that "we cannot penetrate into the reason of the conjunction" of cause and effect, he knew and admitted that that "step" and that "reason" lay in "a natural relation."

In reality, the whole thing has been, on the part of Hume, but a wicked riddle, the sly rogue (or the arch rogue if you will) always speaking with such an air of innocent conviction, that his allegation—"no reason can be discovered"—was taken at once without a moment's misgiving quite as the matter of fact for which it seemed to be taken by himself.

But, suppose we ask now—after all these years, and after all that breadth of clamour—is it matter of fact? Can it possibly be matter of fact? Must not the reason of the conjunction of things, as cause and effect, lie, as Hume admits, in "a natural relation?" And must not that natural relation be discoverable? In other words, must not "the step of the mind," the "process of the understanding," which Hume seemed to assume to fail, actually not fail?—and must it not be capable of being demonstrated?

Let the reader fully realise to himself what the assertion means, that the cause A is only an invariable first, and the effect B only an invariable second. All, so, is evidently reduced to the single character succession, and with the single predicate invari-able, the explanation being added the invariability is only what we may call a positive one. That is: so far as we know yet, A has been first, B has been second, but this invariable succession so far as experience goes, must be seen to be what it is—only an invariable succession so far as experience goes. We have but a fact before us, we know not how, or whence, or why; we have absolutely no reason whatever for the fact. The succession is, has been, may be; but it is a dry fact—a dry fact of mere succession. It is but a conjunction of abstracts; it is no concrete—no concrete of two, the one from the other, and in the other, and through the other. There is no reason in the very midst of the succession, by virtue of which the one is only because the other is. It is a fact that there is A now, and B then; there is no relation whatever between them but that of the order in time. A is A, B is B; each on its own side is for itself, and sui generis, and independent. There is no community between them. They are absolutely disparate—heterogeneous. Each is foreign, alien to the other. Different from, they are indifferent to, each other. They are not inwardly in union; they are but outwardly beside each other. But for the order in time, they are not one whit more connected, the one with the other, than this ink-bottle and yonder coal-scuttle.

Surely the statement itself is its own involuntary felo de se! To the humano capiti, shall we join then the cervicem equinam? page 65 Shall the mulier formosa superne be indeed desinent in the atrum piscem? Or if, whether for us, or the poet, there shall be a concrete that is rational, a concrete that is even natural, a concrete that is a concrete, shall not the one term, in all cases, grow out of the other? All will be different then. The terms shall not be heterogeneous, but homogeneous. The succession shall not be only positively, arbitrarily, invariable, but necessarily, rationally invariable. The succession, in fact, shall not be a succession at all. As what in all nature is closest, it shall be seen to be also what in its own nature is closest—not a succession, but a conjunction, a connection, a union, the most intimate, the most deeply inward union possible—at all events, the most intimate, the most deeply inward union the whole inorganic world can show.

Hume shall have simply hoaxed us, then—shall have simply hoaxed metaphysics—hoaxed metaphysics with his billiard balls, as Charles the Second did physics with his fish?

Yes; it is really so. Neither à priori nor à posteriori is there the incommunicable gulf in causality which Hume so naturally assumed, and so speciously glossed over.

Billiard balls are not by any means all that may be regarded, or alone what may be regarded, as types of causality. Here is a full sponge, and here is a hand that contracts on it—with an effect that is known. Have we here but an indifferent A, and an indifferent B, that are only outwardly beside each other, and not at all inwardly, and with reason, wrought together? Can we conceive of what happens here as but succession—a succession that, though thus to-day, may be otherwise to-morrow? A bit of wood weighed after immersion in water is found to be heavier than it was before immersion. In the same way, a letter that in India weighed under the ounce, may in England weigh over it. But, in either case, is the one fact but an indifferent second to the other? Expose the boards of a book to the fire, and, Scotice, they "gizzen," but not without a perfect intelligence on our part of why. When the pound in the one scale plumps on the board, and the ounce in the other kicks the beam, does any one settle his chin in his neckerchief, and gravely expatiate on a first and a second in all times past that may, nevertheless, reverse themselves to-morrow? Surely arithmetic here has absolute possession—and to the perfect conviction of everybody—of the entire mystery! When to divide a sheet of paper evenly, I fold it in two and tear in the line of the fold, is the result a mere invariable consequent without perception of a reason? So, also, that a blunt knife is a better paper-cutter than a sharp one—surely we see why! Place a cannon ball on a sofa cushion, is the indentation that follows, a mere consequent, the reason of which we cannot understand. Doors page 66 slam, shutters rattle, draughts whistle—in such events, or in the action of windmills and watermills, of the teeth of saws or of the teeth of men, can it be pretended that we have before us only dry facts, the one now and the other again, but without any reason of connection inwardly that makes the one but a birth out of the other? Is it really just once for all so, that the lees sink and the scum rises, or is there an explanation for both events? When, overhearing your wonder at the strangely blazing windows in a wood in France, the kindly Commère threw in, "C'est par rapport au soleil, Messieurs I" was not that rapport precisely the "step" the "understanding" wanted? The Nile periodically overflows, but it does not only just do so—we now know why. An eclipse involves, not only an invariable first, and an invariable second, but a reason as well. It is surely not inexplicable why bodies throw shadows. So it is also with day and night, with the seasons, with the tides—in all these cases we have not only an invariable succession, but a reasoned invariable succession. It is really no mystery why the key fits the lock, or why Bruce's calthrops overthrew the English horse. To varnish an egg preserves it, but we are not left with the naked fact only, we can give an account of it as well. If you turn a turtle on its back, you do not wonder at it remaining so, anymore than at the cut stalk falling, or the bladder you prick collapsing. You do not draw your boots on with a pair of skewers, and you do not say the only reason why not is that boot-hooks are the invariable antecedents. Candle-making (-dipping) admits of explanation. A glass-house is not the unconnected, the dry antecedent of strawberries at Christmas. The navvie that digs, uses his pick first and his shovel second—with perfect satisfaction as well to understanding as to perception. The paint on my house-door has its sufficient reason in that painter's pot. Antarctic regions have more sea than Arctic ones; and yet, though warmer in summer, they are colder in winter; not without "rapport," perhaps, to the relative distance at these seasons of the sun from either. The mason uses a mallet of wood rather than a hammer of iron, and there is a rationale of his act which is not uninteresting (in the case of the mallet a deflection in striking hardly tells, and the action of the point of the chisel is more delicately modifiable perhaps.) The water that runs clear from the filter was brown when it entered; but it has left its sufficient reason behind it. A wedge splits a tree—this you understand, and you are not surprised that a knife does not. The same breath that cools your soup will warm your hands; but in neither case is the first to the second only a dry one; it brings foison with it, and the virtue that connects them. Why rag is better for a cut than paper, why a watch-spring acts, why a stone hurts and a feather- page 67 pillow does not—all that you see. The fire that hardens clay will soften wax: you can tell why in the one case, if, perhaps, not in the other. For this, too, is to be admitted, that we cannot always tell why. This, however, is but a moment's jar, and the jar itself is the proof of the position. When the king, of the dumpling in Peter Pindar, wonders "How, how the devil got the apple in!" we laugh; but the wonder we laugh at is the naive confutation, as at hands of general mankind indeed, of the mere pedantry that has made Hume's riddle a theory! If here got there, there must have been a door of communication between them. In all cases of causality, the first is not just on this side and the other just on that side, because it is once for all just so: in all cases of causality there is—whether we know it or not—a door of communication between the two sides. Hume made believe to shut this door up, and half a dozen worthy men have taken him at his word!

It is worth while considering, however, that the very men who—explicitly—deny all this sort of concrete virtue in the facts themselves, and assert as well a mere provisional invariability as a mere dry succession of an abstract first and an abstract second—those very men are in certain circumstances very in-terestingly forward to refute themselves—implicitly. Just tell Mr Mill that Moses with a dry rod brought water from a dry rock! I do not think that that eminent philosopher will have any difficulty there. And yet if causality is but a succession—a succession that may vary—a succession in which the first is only the first, the second only the second—one would expect, on the part of Comte and his disciples, rather a desire to accept the miracle than that hot haste to reject it. Nay, the miracle they refuse at the hands of Moses, they are ready to accept at the hands of Mr Crosse: they are quite ready to believe it possible for him to grind wet maggots out of dry electricity!

It may illustrate the position, at all events, should I say here that the impossibility the Revulsion feels in regard to miracles is precisely the impossibility I feel in regard to abstract succession. I cannot entertain the idea of mere positivity of association, without community, without intermediating nexus. Very curious! Our modern Berkeleians, too, wry themselves into the same inhumanity: they, too, see indifferent units indifferently in succession, but at the will of God—contriving to secure for themselves thus (see Browning's "Caliban") a Setebos to worship, and the creation of a Setebos to admire!

Beyond all doubt, then, there is a certain community between the cause and the effect, and in this community lies the reason of the nexus. In short, the reason of the causal nexus is—Identity. "The rain," says Hegel, "is the cause of the wetness," "but it is the same water in the wetness that is in the rain." It is the same physical water on the street, then, that was in the cloud, and, similarly, the water in my beard is the same physical water that was in my breath. A like state of the case is visible in every one of the various examples of causality that we have seen above.

Nor is it different with Hume's billiard balls : it is identically the same motion now in the one that was then in the other, and the examination of them, before the motion, or after the motion, as independent individuals, was beside the point. That is, abstraction was made by Hume from all that constituted causality in the balls, and no wonder he could not find in them what he himself had just thrown out. The motion was alone the cause, and it was idle to examine them apart from it. And here we see that what are regarded as causes are, commonly, concrete objects with a variety of elements in them beside that or those which may stand at the moment in the causal nexus. Contraction in the hand, and in the sponge; water in the cloud, and on the street; motion in the bat, and in the ball : in all such cases we see but a single import, and it is common to the cause and to the effect. It, in effect, is both. So far as this import goes, then, there is a relation of identity between the cause and the effect, however different they are otherwise. They are not only externally associated, they are internally united—they are united in a relation of identity, and this, whatever elements of difference they may bring with them otherwise. The hand is very different from the sponge, the cloud from the street, the ball from the bat; but as copula between the respective pairs of differents, we have, in order, the identity of contraction, of water, and of motion. The knife cuts the apple : shall we, like Hume, examine knife and apple apart, and say how different they are—blinding ourselves to the one single absolute identity that is in the cause and the effect of which they are but the vehicles?

Sometimes, too, plainly, the identity may not be explicit, but only implicit; or it may even be present in the form of diversity. It is really by identity that you would explain shadows, page 69 eclipses, etc., and yet the shadow (darkness) is the reverse of light.

This, then, is the assertion : In all cases of causality, the tie, the copula, denied by Hume really exists; the "step taken by the mind" really is supported on a "process of the understanding;" this tie, copula, step, process, has—explicitly, or implicitly—its grounds and sufficient reason in Identity.

One can conjecture much opposition here. Is the pain of a burn identical with the flame that caused it, then? This, one can hear the Revulsion bawl out; to a man! Causality as such, however, ceases with the inorganic world. A such, it has no place in will, reason; and vitality itself has already set bounds to it—not but that a good stick may smash my skull and my wife's pipkin on precisely the same principles.

It is the motion, then, that is both the true cause and the true effect in the case of the billiard balls. In the ordinary row of such balls suspended for experiment by strings, the motion with which the last leaps off is precisely the same motion with which the first was allowed to impinge. It may seem a contradiction and a difficulty here that both balls—the first and the last—being allowed, at once, and similarly, to impinge on the rest, the one motion seems merely to be counteracted and destroyed by the other. Is the double motion, thus, then, only neutralised and lost? No; the motion counterbalanced in mass reappears in molecule; and we meet here the doctrine of the Conservation of Force or Energy. Not quite stable in its metaphysics yet, this doctrine is probably sound, so far, in its physics. Light and heat, however they may express themselves to sentiency, or to a medium that dilates on molecular vibration, are, in themselves, it seems, only motions, as magnetism, galvanism, etc., in some unexplained way, may also be. In that case, we may conceive nothing in space but matter and motion. Nay, in that case, may we not conceive nothing in space but motion alone? Matter itself shall be but counterbalanced motion—as it were implicit motion, which the flutter of a feather, in changing the direction of opposing tendencies, may instantly render explicit. A weight on a spring—these are but countervailing motions, and the slightest shift would enable them to express themselves. The earth itself, then, may be conceived—not that I deny matter—as but a congeries of belts of countervailing motions; and something of a rational basis may be seen thus to be extended to those who feign matter to be the expression of innumerable centres—whence, what, or how, one knows not!—of force. The fact of countervailing motion must be allowed, however, to demonstrate—as in the spring and the weight—the reality of motion without its expression. One can see also the possible dispersion of any page 70 motion in mass through the conduction of motion in molecule—vibration.^*

It is through this doctrine of the conservation of force that, in regard to causality, Mr Bain, with a very proper air of modest self-denial, makes a clutch at originality. He attributes to himself the "innovation" of "rendering" "cause" "by the new doctrine called the Conservation of Force," etc. But is such "clutch" possible to one who denies power, and asserts succession only? There is the mechanical equivalent of heat: what meaning can M E have for Mr Bain? Will he believe that there is heat here, and M E there, only as two units of a mere succession which in their own nature are not identical! Manifestly, there is a community of nature in the two sides of the conservation of force that summarily truncates any use of them by Mr Bain—at the same time that it is admirably corroborative of the true theory of causality which places its principle in Identity. Heat is motion, and really precisely the same motion is M E. When stopped by a wall (say), the motion of a cannon ball vanishes as in mass, but reappears as in molecule—heat. We see, then, in such an example, very strikingly, how the virtue that conjoins the two terms in causality is Identity. Power, therefore, is no abstraction, but has an implement, a, filling—of identity. Instead, consequently, of the conservation of force explaining causality, as is preposterously the proposition of Mr Bam, it is causality that, on the contrary, explains it. That is, Causality, as the universal, subsumes the Conservation of Force, as the particular, under it. It is but inconsistency, then, in Mr Bain, that—though the temptation may be acknowledged—would lead him, self-paralysed, as he is, in regard to power, to the clutch alluded to.

With reference to Mr Huxley, now, the result, so far, is this :—There is a necessary nexus in the relation of cause and effect, and no interest of spirit is to be rescued from materialism by the denial of it.

2. Nor is this one whit more possible by means of the expedient that we do not know things in themselves—that we only know phenomena—that we do not know what substance is. Mr Huxley's reason for ignorance here is precisely my reason, and everybody else's, for knowledge. As little as the causal nexus disappears because it is no mere affair of sense, so little does substance disappear for any similar reason. We

^* It is not in any man's power, then, to set bounds to the stored motion of the universe, and it is not even in any man's power to prove the molecular motion of the sun perishable. If all energy must end, why has it not ended? The infinitude of the past gives the same possibility of an end in the past, as the infinitude of the future the possibility of an end in the future. Energy, then, has either begun, or has always been. If begun, the principles of the beginning, in all probability, still are; if always been, then it always will be.

page 71 can know a substance only through its qualities, and it is but an absurdity to adduce this, our knowledge of it, only as the proof and the guarantee of our ignorance of it. Consider this! We know substance only by reason of qualities, therefore we do not know it. That is, we do not know by means of the very reason through which we do know! Is not this a mere paying of ourselves with words? A thing that does not act can never be known, and is only equal to nothing. Is it reasonable, then, to say that, precisely when it makes itself known by acting, precisely then it makes itself unknown by acting, as if it had never acted? How else can a thing be known but by acting—by its qualities? and is the only medium of admission to be made also the single medium of exclusion! We do not know things in themselves, because we only know what they are for us! Well, but what they are for us, is really what they are in themselves? A thing, a substance, is not a bundle, is not a collection of qualities; it is as much an intussusception of its qualities as an ego is of its ideas. There is not greenness here in this crystal, transparency there, and sourness yonder. It is the substance, the single and individual unit, the it, that is green, and likewise transparent, and also sour. Would you have me, in independence of the greenness, and transparency, and sourness, take you out the it and show it you? and even then, would you be able to know it, but as otherwise or similarly green, and transparent, and sour, etc. If you will blindfold yourself then you must; but it is your own act. I know the character of a man only by knowing what this character is for me; but do I not also then know what it is in itself? After I have thoroughly put myself at home with Shakespeare, or Burns, or Cromwell, am I immediately to turn round and stultify myself by figureing some substance, some in itself that is only gratuitous and foreign to the case. Mr Huxley is in his chamber: Does he then mystify himself into an impossible chaos by muttering to himself—Ah, that fire, that carpet, that table, these chairs, these books, they are really something quite else than what they are for me—what they are for me is a small matter—nothing—but what they are not for me—Ah! that were something, did I but know that! Does Mr Huxley really hide from himself what that picture on the wall is for him and in itself, by disconsolately murmuring, I am absolutely ignorant—I can never know what canvas, what hemp is in itself? Is not all that talk about an in itself that is not for him idle? Does he not inhabit the room? and is it not a thoroughly-intelligible system? So with the world : it is an intelligible—external—system. This stone that I take up, am I really to mystify or stultify myself in its regard by saying—If my muscles were infinitely stronger, it would dissolve in my grasp? It is black, it might be red. page 72 What then? Is not the lobster boiled the same lobster that it was unboiled? Mr Huxley, surely, does not expect us to follow him into that silly, wholly antiquated and effete rubbish that bids us cross our fingers to examine a pea, or squint our eyes to look at the table. Shall we, then, only behold the world aright—by putting our head between our legs? Is a cramp truth, convulsions reason, or distortion philosophy?

I do know substance, and I know it by and through the qualities with which I know so well how to serve myself. Here is a printed Shakespeare: is there in its regard an in itself which I do not know, but which, if known, would dwarf into insignificance all that I do know? Why, I do know it in itself—its very paper and boards, if you like—I know them in themselves too. There is no such thing anywhere in it as this in itself, that is said to be unknown. All that the book need be, should be, can be—in itself, it is for me. The true in itself there is Shakespeare's soul, and that I have access to—at least, all that can be done is done for my access. Thinkers like Mr Huxley are very wroth at obscurantism; but, by the same involuntary retribution through which they fall into the miraculous by fleeing it, they themselves are the obscurantists proper. At the very moment that they insist on knowledge, they insist also on dream—a dream that stultifies all knowledge into fragments of an unknown inane. We must not delude ourselves with phrases, then—phrases that are but subterfuges and evasions. God has not sent us to know only mockeries here—appearances. On the contrary, He has given it us to know things—things in themselves—a concrete system of things, as well external as internal, that is perfectly intelligible.

3. And this brings us to Mr Huxley's last ignorance—the ignorance of externality, the reason for which is that we know only consciousnesses, and in consciousness. Mr Huxley makes only a convenience of this, however; in his actual world it is no ingredient. That actual world is simply materialism; and the idealism it talks of in consciousness is only, as it were, an occasional flash from a private lantern that is peculiarly convenient at times for the reassurance of others, perhaps of ourselves! Let us have the materialism of knowledge for our daily work, he says, but the idealism of ignorance for our nightly dream—and the good of our souls, if we will! The expedient, therefore, does not seem a very hopeful one—an expedient that would counsel reason to take refuge in ignorance. But neither are the facts on its side. That we only know within is no reason that what we know may not be really without. The truth is that we can test it, and try it, and lay stumbling blocks in the way of it, and experiment on it, and prove it in a thousand ways—to the result that we do know an actually independent page 73 external system of things. To attempt to crush all this into the water-drop in the hollow of an Arab boy's hand, or, what is about the same thing, into the point of consciousness, and leave it there, is but supererogatory delusion, and the trick of a word.

But, so, we have a demonstration at once of the nullity of Mr Huxley's "extrication" and of the reality of his materialism. Doubt is always an unusual substitute for certainty; but doubt in regard to causality, or substantiality, or externality, is gratuitous and unfounded. We must decline, then, the safeguard of scepticism with which Mr Huxley would make believe to protect us from materialism; and even hint, but as gently as possible, that he who, at the hour that now is, would seriously proffer us—(the two fingers gravely crossed over the pea!)—any such doctrines, is, philosophically, as late, as he was, physiologically, precipitate. Perhaps that he is late in the one case is the why he was precipitate in the other. But, all that being so, at the same time that he would express all phenomena in terms of matter—would explain mind itself by the "disposition of mere material molecules," I cannot see that Mr Huxley is possessed of any—the very smallest—reason for refusing for himself the name of materialist. When he has placed materialism as an entire system of knowledge over or on his right hand, he cannot expect much confidence from us in what may be the sneer that points to ignorance, and the word idealism, profanely to say it, over the left. Would Mr Huxley but really take refuge in the principle of Descartes—self-consciousness! Is philosophy—are the philosophers, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Proclus, Descartes, Spinosa, Locke, Leibnitz, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Hegel—these, and all the rest, with their enormous writings—are they only there to say, We know nothing but successive phenomena in consciousness? Knowing that, are we dispensed from the labour of the region? Knowing that, and saying that, are we, while we work only for science, and in matter, perfectly cultivated, enlightened minds in the centre who hold the balance even? That is in one word the position of Mr Huxley; but is it likely that the vast, heaven-scaling mountain of philosophy has yielded only such a drowned mouse of a result? And can we claim to be philosophers by knowing no more? It is quite certain, however, that Messrs Mill and Bain write enormous books and for no other result—After all, then, Mr Huxley may have his own excuse! It is for us to know, nevertheless, that the position is wrong—that philosophy, perhaps, only begins where Mr Huxley ends; for the problem of said phenomena is to it—what they are, not simply that they are. But into this, plainly, we cannot enter at present.