## Examination of Mill's Logic

J. N. Darby.

<32007E> 135 {file section d.}

{A System of Logic, by John Stuart Mill, 8th edition.

The reader must bear in mind that these are only MSS notes jotted down while reading the book.}

Mill (p. 410) says volition is a physical cause, that is, an antecedent invariably producing a given consequent, which is absurd on the face of it, for thus it is not will. I may say, In three minutes I will strike the table; there is no consequent at all when this will exists. In three minutes I strike it when the will is positively active. Will cannot be physical, even if thought may be. Motives may produce will, conscience restrain it; but will is not subjective feeling, though this may tend to produce it; as, if a man irritates me, I should like to strike (not his talk but) him. It is not a consciousness of effort, but a consciousness of intention. Effort brings in the machinery; intention, not. If they say, and it is all they say, "I don't know how will sets the machinery in motion," I agree entirely, I insist on it. I have an intention and a will, and by nerves and muscles and a pen I write these lines, each word being what my intention makes it, if I am careful and wide awake. Can they tell how? Of course not. Is that a reason for saying, if I intend so to write, that I then have an active will to do it which puts these means in motion and produces the effect? The instruments have nothing to do with it. I must have a pen and ink. What then? They are as necessary conditions as nerves, and, say, electricity, if so it be. I speak to my friend: he understands and receives the deepest truths, say the nature of God. All I do is to modify the movement of the air by my lungs and throat and lips. Other spiritual power may be necessary; but this would only additionally prove that the animal economy through which the action passes has nothing to do with the cause. "Conscious of power" may be incorrect, because that may include the instruments of a body so wonderfully constructed to follow will; but "conscious of will" as that which somehow when in practice acting (for it may be there when it is not) causes the effect to follow. Paralysis has nothing to do with this. It refers to the machinery the motive power sets in activity: how, none can say. He can carry up the machinery to the nearest point where it receives the impulse, but that link no human mind can find; in no case can he. But however it acts, or however we learn it, active will, when the machinery is in order, does produce effects. Nothing can be without it, and no human mind can tell us the links between matter and mind and will. Mill has no idea of anything but theories of others and natural laws (p. 419); the truth that lies behind he avowedly avoids; and when he touches it collaterally, he goes all wrong by the help of others (pages 411, 413). In pages 393-426 I only find shirking the truth, feebleness of mind, and want of sagacity.

136 The chapter on the composition of causes is all to no purpose. There is no analogy between the cases. The composition of forces is one and the same case, motive power (or attraction) acting on a distinct object. Chemical composition is one thing acting on another, or rather two things acting on each other, so as to produce a result within themselves, combining elements which, when together, form a third thing. One is mere force on an inert mass, the other the combination of elements within themselves. The total absence of all moral sense and responsibility, and the degrading character of his philosophy, are shewn in the way he speaks (p. 432) of the laws of life. The way gastric juice produces chyle, or gastric juice is formed, perhaps that is within his sphere of vision, and no one doubts there is a chemical action in the development of animal life; but beyond that his thought cannot reach. What a son is to a father, a man to God, this never crosses his path. I shall be told it is no part of logic. In a direct way I fully admit it; but neither is chemistry, which is his constant hobby; and the life has nothing really to do with chemistry save in its external causes and sustainment.

137 It is proved now that there is no production of life from matter of itself, and that life precedes organisation and produces it. That much is hid from man, nay, all these things, I fully admit. But all his laws of life are only the form of operation when life is there. Matter does act on mind, as a knock on the head or a bad cold makes me senseless, mad, or stupid; and mind acts on matter, for I move, in spite of all the Cartesians (though in substance I agree with Leibnitz) in the world: bow I cannot say. Muscles, nerves, perhaps magnetism, only bring me to more subtle matter, and the question is untouched. Of this I have spoken. The effect of progressive heat (p. 434) may be merely increased power of separating the particles. But this is no matter. It is fatiguing, his never getting beyond the nearest materialism; and we must ever remember that laws leave the question of real cause wholly untouched, as I have said.

To say that social and political phenomena are the effects of the laws of mind, is simple nonsense. It is the effect of passions, prejudices, unknown impulses, with which mind has nothing to do. Motives - and men have to be governed by motives - are not mind; and, whatever Utopia he may conceive, he cannot get rid of them or govern others, nor has he by any possibility a standard of result or principle which can form society. He may easily say "the good of all"; but what is that good? If reason governs each individual, is each individual competent to discern the best good of all, and to act upon it without caring for self? Love governing where it is, I understand. But reason and laws of mind never made a world happy, nor have they anything to do with it. Cold never thawed the hard earth, nor reason selfishness in man.

138 As to induction (p. 444), I deny that its object is to ascertain what causes are connected with what effects. It is to ascertain what things are. No doubt it may be used for the other; but every major premise of a syllogism, when believed by induction, is not the statement of the effect of a cause. 'Every man is an animal' is fact derived from observation, and has nothing to do with cause and effect. This is merely the blinding effect of being engrossed by laws of nature, and incapacity to get out of the material rut in which his very narrow mind moves. And this, as the end of inductive philosophy, is the low fallacy of his whole book. That his principles are incapable of anything beyond it I fully admit.

But Mr. Mill assumes that chemistry, life, social and political questions, are all problems of the same nature; he leaves out not only the whole higher sphere of thought, admitting that induction has made nothing even of most of these, and drawing all his instructions from chemistry and mere physical nature. But this false view of induction destroys the basis of his reasoning. And it is every way and wholly false and illogical; for laws are not really causes, and physical laws are not everything - at any rate cannot be assumed to be such; so that his whole system is false from beginning to end. The introduction of another element besides physical uniform sequence makes, or may make, all untrue; and it is wholly unfounded. He is obliged to make human will a mere physical cause or law, having never proved it is so, which makes evidently the whole system foundationless, a rehearsal of chemistry and the way of discovering facts in it, which is not logic (see p. 410), but which betrays the system, and shews the flimsiness of the whole of it.

His statements as to methods of agreement are not correct. The effect of it is not necessarily A; because it is possible, and indeed common, that A without B produces nothing at all. But it is not material, as it is merely means of discovery.

The same objection applies to Canon 4, as indeed he admits. On his own shewing they are not shewn to be unconditioned, therefore not shewn to be a cause. The principle (p. 466) is a false principle. Gastric juice (cold) and heat produce, neither of them, any effect on a piece of meat: join them, and they digest it. In moral things the contrary is constantly true: a woman has nothing to do with me, and no effect on my position; she marries my father, and I am turned out of the house. Nor is it evident in the case of the stars, though it may be true. The conjunction of two suns might alter every condition of man's life, in many respects morally, or burn him up; one changes nothing as originally adapted to his nature, though the last instance is less strictly exact, as one (though, as adapted, unfelt) does act on him.

139 Physical "phenomena" only (p. 470) come under these rules, right or wrong. Organic life consists, Mill says, in a continual state of decomposition and recomposition of the different organs and tissues (p. 473), and yet more strongly, "the chemical actions which constitute life." Now this is alike folly and impudence. In life in the body these changes take place: but who says this is life? In the first place, it is proved that life precedes and produces organisation (the inorganic nucleus in the cell); but at any rate the body being subject to these changes by vital power in no way says that they are life or constitute life. They are a corporeal process where life is, but more cannot be said. Of course he cannot get beyond it; and note here that he pretends to go beyond phenomena or physical causes. He may say these are the regular phenomenal causes; but, when he says this constitutes life, he touches the efficient cause, so as to settle there is none else but the phenomenal.

The dispute between him and Whewell I leave. I think some of his cases inconsequent; but all this is merely verifying inductions on chemistry and the like, interesting in their way, but which concern me little. All is material. On the composition of forces I do not think his conclusions just; the distance gone is not the same, nor is time the same; nor can rest be estimated as the same as twice the distance in opposite directions. Its consequent effects clearly are totally different. If the force were attractive, not impinging, it would not be so. Some of the difficulties he escapes by tendency and pressure.

For the mere history of science in its deductions I have no remark to make. His making induction a part of deduction is clearly false, as already noted. It is merely ascertaining the general premise for the deduction, and so he says (page 534). Nor is his statement in page 536 true in proper deduction, when the nature or law is adequately ascertained. If deduction be just, I say "must be." In mere material phenomena verification may be all well, because it is a question of material facts, which may be mistaken. But this is a question of the truth of the premise, not of the deduction which assumes it, and we are where we were, subject to particular observation of cases, unless the law or nature of the thing be ascertained: then the conclusion is certain. Verification may be all well, but it is testing the justness of the induction which establishes the major premise.

140 As logic, all his statements are very poor indeed. That he has interested himself in physical science may be all very true; but though it may seem harsh, the whole tone evinces, I judge, a bad vitiated mind. I am led to say this by the way he speaks so lightly and flippantly (p. 534) of constructing an organic body, and trying whether it would live. The tissues at the instant of death are the same. An organised body constructed is not a living body, nor an organ's inactivity of themselves, or movable by will, the same as a constructed organism. He is no Prometheus. He admits he is quite ignorant, only flippantly taking occasion by his ignorance practically to deny life or a soul distinct from body. If a man believed there were, he could not talk of trying whether it would live. And this is flippant on what is solemn, if it be only to be or not to he; and flippancy on solemn subjects is the proof of a vitiated mind.

VOLUME 2

Why must there be ultimate laws? All may be summed up in one, and that one a constant acting of force in One who can originate force. His limiting it to sensations is limiting it by effects on us, beyond which I suppose his mind cannot go. Colours, for instance, are the result of degrees of refraction, and red is contained in white. A coloured object is from some special power of reflecting that ray. He affects to speak only of phenomenal sequences, and not of efficient causes; but if the reader be attentive, he will soon find Mill speaks of them as efficient. Causa causata perhaps; but this he will not have, because it leads to a causa causans, which no human mind can escape or conceive.

Bain's statement (p. 7) is merely that we cannot now give an ultimate cause, or one nearer to it, to two phenomena. Sameness is constantly treated as similarity or resemblance, which is a misleading blunder, failing in abstraction (page 11). Induction has nothing to do with deduction, nor has verification, which is merely a means of testing its justness. It is clear that I cannot verify till the deduction is completely made; and verification also is in particular cases, and the conclusion might be true in them, yet the deduction unsound as a general one. All is superficial here, and a mere recital of material means of scientific research. Hypothesis is the short cut of genius versed in general relations and power of memory as to them, merely concluding it must be so. If proved that other circular forms did not produce equal spaces, then the proof was complete; practically it was that, supposing no cause did. As to causes being causes, see page 15, second paragraph.

141 I have not much to remark in this part of the book: only notice the careless fallacies of Mill (page 57). The effect might not be produced if A were alone. In the calculation of chances he changes probable into "probable to us." But this changes the whole idea, and makes the probability depend, not on the calculation of the chances based on the fact, but on my knowledge, different it may be in all, so that there is no calculation of chance. He does not believe in the Jesuit's middle knowledge. What means certain here? Some event does happen, we can say, in result. But events are not certain a priori. It was the sense of this made him add to Laplace. The two events must be of equally frequent occurrence. To get out of this he turns probable into "probable to us," unless all this is confusion. Evidently it is more probable that a man in the last stage of consumption will die within a year than that a man in good health, caeteris paribus, will. Our ignorance of it does not affect its probability, though it may our estimate of it. The logical ground (p. 66) is not our knowledge, though we may have to act on it. Pages 67, 68, are all nonsense. The fact of credibility of witnesses is clear judgment of the individual, no average question at all.

In page 69 we have a very important false principle, arising from his rejection of testimony, and resting all on inferences and averages. The probability of a fact rests on our knowledge of the proportion of cases in which it occurs. Now, supposing it occurred but once, and never before, the real question is of adequate testimony, not of probability at all. Say the deluge: I have a positive testimony, confirmed in every way, supposing the earth to bear evident marks of its having taken place. I have no question of probability, but of adequate testimony; and this false and evil dependence on inference confounds past facts with possible future ones, putting them on the same ground. Testimony has nothing to do with probability; but he seems to have no idea of such a thing as truth. Besides, here and throughout we have it assumed that there can be no power in operation at any time other than phenomenal sequences; not merely that he will only consider these; which, if there be others, must put him on false ground, and which are no causes at all (from which yet he cannot escape). But he denies all others: they are not supposable to him. It is only causes in operation which tend to produce, admitting, in spite of himself, efficient or productive causes, but limiting all active power to existing phenomena.

142 As to past fact, probability is nonsense, or a denial of all possibility of adequate or certain evidence. In reasoning (p. 82) on the sun rising he tells us: If it do not, it will be because some cause has existed, the effects of which, though during five thousand years they have not amounted to a perceptible quantity, will in one day become overwhelming. He then goes on to assume that only some long existing cause, or one arriving suddenly from a distance to be the cause, can be supposed. But this assumes there can be no agent or power beyond known phenomena. I believe in constant agency of divine power, and that this is the ultimate law; but he has no right to assume that there can be no intervention of power beyond observed phenomena. We know that it is the infidelity of the last days; but it is an arbitrary and ignorant assumption.

(Page 95). It does not prove A to be the cause, but only a necessary condition. Thus the universality of causation as a general proposition is not what is believed; but when I find a formed thing, I believe there was a former; so, if anything occurs, I believe something has made it occur. The return of day, save religiously, is not a question of general causation at all. The peasant expects the sun to rise, because it always has, by simple enumeration; and when he sees his cart, he believes somebody made it, without any generalisation, and he would think you mad, or perhaps a philosopher, if you doubted it. Thus the mental principle in these cases is quite different. But in neither case is there belief of universality of causation. Nor is universality of causation the truth we cannot help believing, that is, an abstract proposition; but, having an effect, we cannot but think there is a cause. Nor is he right in saying belief is nowhere without proof at all. Nor is it the truth of a fact in external nature which I believe here. The cart is the fact, and with it comes the belief that it was made.

143 Man does believe that effects, as the word intimates, have a cause. Reason never believes anything; it may test the credibility of evidence; but it is not its function to believe, but to reason. Nor does it follow that, if I cannot help believing that there is a cause for an effect (that is, that it is of necessity I do so), my belief may be of what is not true; for if there be such an instinct, it may be, and is, a truthful instinct. It is not that any particular thing is the cause, but that there is one. This assertion of Mill is from the primary fallacy that there is no ground of truth but reason, which I wholly deny. And what he says (p. 99), shews the fallacy he labours under. Man cannot conceive chaos, because he is part of an order or system; nor events in it without a cause, because he belongs to a caused system; and there can be events in chaos only by action on it. If I have a notion of events in chaos, I have the notion of cause and effect; and effects are still the proof of a cause.

The belief in human will does not affect in the least the general principle of fixed laws. It is bound by them in its activity: cause and effect remain in nature where they were. Arbitrary intervention, even where there is almighty power, leaves them where they were as a fixed rule, and supposes them. What was not known was the universality, which is an abstraction quite distinct from the facts on which it is founded. And all his reasoning fails; because, if his discovery of the law uncontradicted is only simple argument and simple enumeration, all subsequent reasoning is no stronger than the basis, and this is founded on each particular case. It is merely a measure of probability; and the allegation that the major is no part of the proof, because it may have been previously proved by induction is a fallacy already exposed. All men are mortal is a proof that Lord P. is mortal, if he be a man; and all he can make is a material improvement in a fallible process (p. 101): but the ground was not rigorous induction (page 102). All this is very lame.

The belief in a cause has nothing to do with uniform sequence. This is the effect of laboured investigation, and gives that persistence of causes in their effects which makes an ordered system and fixed laws, and applies only to the sphere in which they are observed. Whereas the belief that what occurs has a cause is instinctive part of my nature, and hence, as far as my capacity goes, applies to all that occurs any where. Be it true or false, it is a wholly different thing; for we must not think that the law of causation is the same thing as the fact of an event or effect flowing from a cause. The former is simply the uniformity of sequence (p. 108) in phenomena. Consequence connects the two ideas; but an effect flowing from a cause is really its producing it. In spite of himself, saying he will not speak of efficient causes, Mill speaks of one thing producing another. He says not efficient; but says "effects of different causes," in his other books constantly; thus pages 246, 247, 203, so 160, "the effects of causes," "the effects which these causes produce." All this is mental dishonesty. What is an effect of a cause not efficient? I have no objection to recognise the operation of supernatural power in some miracles as a case of the law of universal causation - that is, the existence of a cause. But it clearly is not a case of invariable sequence, for the cause is set in motion by special intervention; yet invariable sequence is all he owns as cause from observation of nature. This is quite clear, however he may muddle it together. He admits, moreover, the instinctive action of mind by a law of our nature (p. 110); but on this I need not comment.

144 His answer in page 111 to M'Cosh is null, for the law of causation is "the uniformity of the course of nature." The uniformity of the course of nature has not any exceptions that I know of, nor do events succeed one another without fixed laws. But it does not thence follow that there are events which do not depend on causes: but if there are such which are not according to fixed laws of nature, there are causes which are not the fixed laws of nature. His tacit denial of God, and of all efficient causes in order to that, plunges him into incessant illogical statements. So ultimate co-existences force him up p. 113) to eat his words by admitting either things without a cause, or a cause found by ascending "to the origin of all things." And he cannot deny the fact. He is obliged to come, where all open honest minds come, to a causa causans for the ultimate coexisting properties from which uniform effects follow. There is no uniform sequence, or they are not ultimate. When he says, "if the properties do not depend on causes, but are ultimate properties," could there be a stronger evidence of will to deny a first cause? For an ultimate property is not an invariable sequence; and how did it come to exist? (See p. 115, at the end.)

145 The rest of that chapter is all talk to little purpose about kinds. Note his only idea of moral inquiry (p. 130), the chance of human actions so as to predict them. All his reasoning as to existence is false; because, when he says the Emperor of China exists means that I should see him at Pekin if there, he confounds cause and effect. He has defined qualities to be something which produces a sensation. The existence of the something, then, is necessary to the sensation. Existence is not its being perceived (p. 142); it is that which is the occasion of the sensation. I may have the sensation even without the existence of the thing; I can dream or remember. But the object of what follows is to deny the force of testimony; it is an inductive law of succession or coexistence. It is neither. When I am told by a credible witness - by one I believe - the Emperor of China exists, there is no proof of its connection by succession or co-existence with any other thing. When the outermost planet was discovered by its disturbing Uranus in its orbit, it was no conviction that with more power it might be seen. That followed, of course; but a certain power of gravity was there, as the course of Uranus shewed.

As to resemblance, all is a mistake. When mathematical quantities are alike, they do not resemble one another, they are the same. Figures resemble each other, because in that they are the same. Two things equal to the same are equal to - one another - convenient for Euclid - means nothing; it is one and the same quantity in all three. As I have said, mathematics are identity of quantity in different forms. If I have a foot-rule, it is only that, as to quantity, all three are one and the same. When it is said two straight lines which have once intersected one another continue to diverge, it is no matter of induction or observation. A straight line is one which always follows the same direction. Hence if they diverge in starting by supposition (for once intersecting one another means that), they always diverge or they are not straight at all, that is, they do not follow the same direction.

146 Other facts are matters of observation empirically, or may be traced to causes. We must not forget that confessedly constant sequence in itself proves nothing, not even a phenomenal cause, as day is the cause of night. He, we may be reminded, says unconditional sequence, as if the sun was always up, it would be always day - always light, not day. Many things which are causes are conditioned, as heat with gastric juice, a certain proximity for the attraction of cohesion. All this confusion arises from real causes not being owned Hydrogen and oxygen make water, but under the condition of the power which unites them atomically according to certain laws.

The whole of the chapter on grounds of disbelief is founded on an entire fallacy, that is, assumption that that is true of which no proof whatever is given; just what I said at the beginning as to using a word with his own definition of it as if it was the truth. He assumes that experience of natural laws is the only foundation of knowledge. Evidence can only be a proximate generalisation. Possibly so on his ground, that belief of testimony is only matter of inference. But this is simply begging the question. It can only be a question of superior generalisation, because that is the only ground of evidence. But that is just the question. It assumes that God, or man, cannot reveal himself so as to enforce belief which is not true - certainly cannot be assumed, specially when it is the point in question.

I know I am. What generalisation is that? I know that Mill elsewhere tells us that even this is known by his kind of knowledge. But this is making a farce of reason. So he asserts, if an alleged fact be contradictory of a rigorous induction from a completed generalisation, it must be disbelieved. Now his complete generalisation, agreement and difference and all, is merely inference from observed phenomena; but this assumes that any power beyond observed phenomena is impossible. But this he cannot assume, and if he does, it is merely a begging of the question and is contrary to truth, and to what he is forced to admit, that ultimate properties must have had a cause, for we have then ascended to the origin of all things; but this must have been antecedent to the laws these properties act by. One could not have a more complete proof of the fallacy of his system than this chapter. So his defence of Hume is simply the same fallacy. Whatever is contrary to a complete induction is incredible: induction from what? This merely says there can be no cause but what we see of fixed laws, which even Mill admits there must be.

147 Nor is it merely (p. 166) that B did not follow A. This assumes only the negative of existing causes or laws. But supposing X comes in, which was not there? He does not even consider the possibility of another power which may act from itself so as that no observed action of A has anything to say to it. It is not to be credited but on evidence which would overturn the law. It has nothing to do with the law - may confirm it. Thus resurrection supposes the law of death, is an action of power not in the sphere of observed sequences. And note here, our question here is not if it be true, but if it be impossible, for which the only ground is the positive assumption that there is no power possible outside observed sequences, which he alleges are no efficient causes at all. If what a human being can see is no more than a set of appearances, either there is no ground of believing anything, and complete induction is a fable, or I may have as good or better evidence of what power extrinsic to observed phenomena and sequences has done. So when he says (p. 167) he cannot admit a proposition as a law of nature, and yet believe a fact in real contradiction to it. Now law of nature is merely existing phenomena; and this is the absurd idea that the ascertained phenomena of nature are the only possible things that can be, and not a conclusion within nature, but the denial of all action outside it, and that as possible; which is simply nonsense as reasoning, and the more so as he is obliged to admit such action at "the origin of all things." Because such a thing is, as far as we know it, there can be nothing else! There can be no other ground for this but the positive denial without proof that God can act, and affirmation that there is nothing possible but what we have observed. Yet the ultimate properties and their cause he confessedly has not accounted for. Nor within the limits of fixed laws, quite another question, is all so certain, though enough for all human purposes in the sphere man is in. Because if ABC produces abc, and BC only bc, this does not prove A is the cause of a; it may be a necessary condition of B being the cause. I must have ABC produce abc always, BC not produce a, and A by itself produce a; a concatenation of proof hardly ever to be found. And this supposes I know all possible causes which could produce a, and all to be absent. (See p. 168.)

148 The question of miracles is not (p. 167) of any cause defeated, but generally of positive power producing an effect of its own, as health restored, the dead raised, sight given - natural laws remaining just what they were. There are the cases of frustrating the action of poisons; but there is the power of evil defeated, and all power in good operative. The moral character is as strong a part of the evidence as the power, and there is even power to communicate power. I deny that belief of a supernatural being is necessary first in order to believe miracles, because the exercise of a power wholly above nature is the proof of supernatural power; it is, on the face of it, that power. If the dead be raised, that is not a sequence of nature.

As to believing oneself capable of judging what the supreme God ought to do, it is above all things presumptuous in one who has no foundation of morality at all, though Christ's miracles are the supremacy of all good in power where evil was, of others sometimes judgment in its place. Supreme power and perfect goodness used to lead men to trust God, as leading to a yet higher good when they were in misery, is not unworthy of God. A word giving sight, the lame from birth walking, the dead raised, goodness in power meeting every case in sight of hundreds, is not possibly the case of natural causes. They do not operate so; there is no experience of it: the wish is father to the thought; and he admits the facts may be proved. The whole of this argument mocks at reason. And his other ground is the character of duty as they conceive it, in which the conceiver may be judged rather than God. One who can see no beauty in the uniform patient exercise of power in goodness to lead man's heart to trust it, may find others will know his state more than he is aware of.

No one desires to deny that "on the whole" the government of the universe is carried on by general laws. But this is no presumption at all against miracles, that is, the intervention of divine power when man is in misery to recall him to God, and give the ground of confidence in goodness in power. With a weak, scarcely benevolent, God doing the best He could (and that very bad as Mr. Mill holds), there is no need to believe anything about it. Man, he thinks, is to do better if he can. (It is a disgrace to Oxford to allow such a book.) But he contradicts himself here; practically he admits such acts of power may be satisfactorily certified (page 168). Now, supposing resurrection from the dead is (and I repeat it is not a question of a counteracting cause defeating an effect, but of power acting when the effect is produced, acting by its own energy), it may set ordinary laws in motion again, as in many cases it did, but did its own work independent of them. There was no counteracting anything generally, and, if the fact be certified, it is no question of probability or improbability. Supposing one rising really from the dead who stank after four days in the grave, what probable sequence of nature is there in that? There is no mental honesty here. And that there is deliverance from death and misery by goodness and power is worthy of God, but not to take man out of his present place of responsibility till full accomplishment be come.

149 He tells us (p. 171) that the law of causation, number, and extension are the only cases of absolute incredibility of any exception; but what does extension apply to but to matter? Consequently there is no such thing as spirit at all. As to number, eternity, I am, is an exception. It is the stupidest limiting of everything to observed matter. To the whole class of moral motives in man even, number and extension cannot apply. What is the number and extension of a mother's love, of a child's attachment? It is brutish, his system; and if there be a cause for everything - which I believe there is for this creation, and that cause is God - belief in a fact (not exactly contrary to, but) independent of some recognised law of nature, has nothing to do with shaking conviction of the truth of the law (p. 175), as I have said. Resurrection does not make me doubt of death as a law of nature in us now; quite the contrary. - As to his throws of dice, I leave them to him and D'Alembert.

We have now to come to the great question of motive, human will, and fixed laws. Whatever reasoning may make of it, the responsibility of man remains untouched, because he does act by motives which determine him. But all in Mill is so loose and unanalysed that it is difficult to deal with. Thus a motive, what is it? Is it a motive when it does not move the will at all? If it is that which has determined the will, then it is mere tautology to say he is governed by motives, for it is only a motive when it does determine or govern it. Yet is there a will when nothing is willed at all. If I will a thing, the determination is made, morally the act is complete. Free to will is quite true as far as compulsion goes; for if it be compelled it is not willed, it is another's will.

150 Now, in all the flimsy language in which he speaks of antecedents, the difference is plainly this. In fixed laws of nature it is compulsion. Gravity acts; the earth, the moon, follow fixed laws - cannot do anything else. It is compulsion; the movement, centripetal or centrifugal, is imposed. The action itself is a necessary one as far as observed nature goes; it is strictly compulsion both as the act and as to the acting thing, it having no thought or will or consciousness in the matter. So in all cases of fixed laws. They mean this: but there is another point. In the case of man's will the motive produces no action. Man's will or mind is the thing acted on. It is a state of mind, determination by motive. It does no more than be a motive; consequently a man may act or be hindered acting, or defer to act when the will is there, and only when he acts comes the analogy with physical effects. With the previous part, the production of the will, there is no analogy at all. Till the will is determined, there is no motive in the mind; there may be reflection of the mind on it, but it has not become a motive to me - has not produced any effect in me. When the man acts, his will is the antecedent cause, by whatever bodily machinery it is carried out.

But another point comes in here: an object may attract the desire without determining the will, which may utterly refuse it. It is not an actual motive to the man as to his conduct. All this, which is of the essence of the question of will, to say nothing of the conscience controlling it when otherwise the will would be determined, is left out by the superficiality of Mill. Of course he has not in view divine objects, which take the mind clean out of the whole sphere he moves in, and by grace determine the will. But on his own ground the phenomenal antecedent to effect in man's conduct is his will. Motive produces no act; but, where operative, produces a state of will and no more, or rather is one, which is not a phenomenal effect at all. It is not true that the action of masses is merely individual will. Motives vary from individual to individual, and may in any individual from moment to moment. This is lost in masses which follow a general impulse, or there could not be a mass. But he admits that the causes are so endless and unknown that we cannot predict action, at most tendencies. But this is not invariable sequence or a fixed law at all.

151 Now a general course of corrupt human nature I do not deny.; but if I take up individual man, the whole idea is absurd. A man's recollection of his mother stops him in evil. The scriptures, a sermon, a thousand things impossible to count on, come in and arrest or form the determination of the mind called will. All he can pretend to is to see the tendency of corrupt human nature without God, which, for my part, I should not deny. If he say this is an antecedent cause, no doubt, only he cannot know of its existence, nor, if it exist, of its effect; that is, it is no matter of invariable sequence nor of fixed law at all. But even here his statements prove only that he cannot do what he pretends to do. He is obliged to do what he condemns in Bacon, only pretending to get up to the principles of human nature and bring in deduction, but forced to admit we have no sure elements to reason from. This brings in another difficulty, that all depends not on the discovery of a necessary fixed law of force (as gravity or chemical action), which cannot act otherwise, but on my sagacity in estimating motive, which involves my moral state as well as the state of those I reason about.

How clearly Christianity is above and outside all this, by a revelation of God, a new nature, and objects wholly outside the world! Mill has a feeble and partially benevolent Creator who did the best He could out of the materials He had to hand, and we are to mend His work. But then what of necessary effects of causes? This he feels and seeks to shrink from. Now that man has got philosophers (not for the first time, however) and "the highest thinkers," we may expect something of this poorly-constructed world. It has been a long while coming to find it out; nor would they, without Christianity, have had even the thought they had. Plato not only did not know God, but taught the most brutish communism, which Aristotle disapproved because, base as trade might be, selfishness was a stronger motive. The world by wisdom knew not God. It pleased God, by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe. But these have gone farther: when they knew God as revealed in Christ, they did not like to retain Him in their knowledge.

But I will take up a few details. All the statements of Mill are vague, as we have seen; lusts, will, conscience, are all huddled up together; motives present to an individual's mind and character; but is it yet really motive till the will be determined by it? Then it is inducements which act upon him, and so we could foretell his conduct with as much certainty as we could any physical event. He admits fully afterwards we cannot, but only tendencies. In physical nature the physical event may be hindered, but the cause remains absolutely invariable; and this is utterly false as to the influence of motives on a man. You must know not only the man's character, but the circumstances at the moment, for a moment may wholly change what acts on him. (See pp. 433, 466 sec. 2, 452, 450, 1, 2, 480, 492, 513, end of 4, 515, 540, 541, etc ) If I knew what acted on a man as an inducement - if it be merely a thought, desire, powerful pressure on his inclinations - I do not yet know how he will act. I quite understand that Mill would hold that the hindrance to his acting on this is one of the antecedents, but this is not merely character. I may have motives which determine wholly above character, and which subdue my nature. If these be taken in so that the purpose is determined by them, then it is merely saying if I know what has determined the will, as I have said.

152 Now masses, as already said, are masses in virtue of not controlling impulses, but acting on the passions, or perhaps wants, pushed to an extreme, so that passions broke out; and here, but really in each case only when all is known, the general result may be better judged of. Conscience is always individual. But this independence of individual character and principle is lost in the infidel and liberal system, as indeed Lecky admits in his history. I deny that the knowledge of circumstances and character would enable us to tell how people would act (p. 422); for motives outside both, and governing a man in spite of both, not counteracting the will but determining it, may be in operation. Of this, of course, Mill has no idea. In physical causes there is nothing to form. Counteraction is another thing, the motive power remains the same.

But the slovenly mental habits of Mill are again found here. Our volitions and actions are invariable consequents of our antecedent states of mind. The volition is the state of mind, and may be produced by a motive which is no antecedent state of mind at all, nor even my natural character. It may control it, and never have been in me before; yea, set me free from it. Nor is any foreknowledge the same as divine foreknowledge. God knows what will be and absolutely, and He does not reason on tendencies and effects of character and its probable results. When I speak of will, I speak of actual determination of purpose, not of a religious or metaphysical faculty.

153 "There is nothing (p. 423) in causation but invariable, certain, and unconditional sequence." "There are few to whom more constancy of succession appears a sufficiently stringent bond of union for so peculiar a relation as that of cause and effect." Even if reason repudiates, the imagination retains the feeling of . . . some constraint exercised* by the antecedent over the consequent. Now, first he had said he would not consider efficient causes, but only physical or phenomenal causes; here he does consider them, to deny them absolutely. But uniform consequence has nothing to do with cause. It may be a cause with no uniformity, uniformity with no cause (while fully admitting regular order in creation). Day and night we have seen, but so of all seasons, summer, winter, etc., so of the moon's phases; but of even more important things death uniformly follows life. Is life the cause of death? We must turn Buddhists and seek Nirvana. Sequence deceives; it is merely that a thing comes after in point of time, which in itself proves nothing even if constant. A cause is the why it follows.

{*Given certain institutions, and customs, wages, etc., will be determined by certain causes . . . but this class of political economists argue that these causes must by an inherent necessity . . . determine the shares." (Autob. 244.) Is no constraint exercised here in either view of the case? The first is Mill's.}

Now there is force in existence. That is admitted, and force produces effect, movement, etc.; it becomes heat, etc. It is an efficient cause, an agent, uniform or not. It turns to heat where it cannot move, to movement from heat, etc., not uniform, but a power. Electricity knocks a thing down, sets fire to something, melts, kills, or takes away consciousness. If the same as magnetism, it turns iron north or south, it operates with power not uniformly, it strips a strip of bark from a tree from top to bottom, leaving the tree as it was; it twists another into small fibres in all its growth. Here I have force in this shape; power operating gives light, and makes a clock go. This is not mere uniform sequence, but operative force - an efficient cause. But, as I have said, ascending to ultimate properties and "the origin of all things," you have clearly and avowedly no sequence, uniform or other, but operative power - a cause.

154 If I only take present order, I may stop at a constant law without seeking the cause, and this is what he professed to do, but does not do, but denies any such: it is not mysterious compulsion as if there was a will but ordained effect, an effect produced, as he is forced, unconscious of self-contradiction, to say. And necessity it is in this sense, as to matter, that according to its ordered nature it cannot be otherwise. It is compelled by the original orderer so to be. It is its nature without a will. Gravity is always the same, so that I can predict, not a tendency, but a fact. It may be hindered, but not changed while the kosmos subsists. And if we are to believe Mr. Mill (p. 433), "it needs scarcely be stated that nothing approaching to this can be done" (in the case of mind). (See pp. 424-5 also.) If I can change or conquer my character, can he do this as regards the ordering of the spheres by gravity?

His discussion on pleasure, pain, and habit, is empty. "We still continue to desire the action"; but I do not go further into it. In page 434 he admits motives in large masses which cannot be so accounted in individuals, again contradicting himself. And I admit, taking the run of masses of men, if sufficiently sagacious, we can judge of the motives which will govern them, though after all very inadequately, from a thousand causes. Still there may be a general estimate of the working of motives in uncontrolled man. Only most do not believe how bad he is when uncontrolled. They are, however, "the lowest kind of empirical laws," and they must "be connected deductively with the laws of nature from which they result." This, then, requires a sure knowledge of the nature of man. And here is a field of inquiry and moral judgment. One believes he is good; another, that no good thing dwells in him in the flesh; what is to be done here? Mill, that the world is such a miserable world that an impotent half-benevolent God must have made it out of the materials He had to hand. Only man, being, I suppose, better than He, is to try and perfect it. What are the universal laws of human nature? (page 435). How ascertained but by the empirical laws observation affords "of the lowest kind," unless we believe in revelation? Of the mind's own nature (p. 436) he will keep clear; the laws of mind are for him mental phenomena, but this is empirical. Nature has another meaning than in human nature, which is disposition and motive, here nature properly. Mind, if it means anything, he tells us (p. 436), means that which feels - does not reason or think.

155 Pages 436 and 437 directly contradict each other as to what laws of mind are. In page 437 one kind are called laws of body, in contrast with mind; but it is no matter, save to shew the slovenly superficiality of Mill. What he calls confusion in page 436 he lays down in page 437. Nor is sensation really a state of mind. It is the point of mysterious union between mind and body of which the mind takes or may take notice, reflecting. But note further, though body and other states of mind may produce a state of mind, he excludes absolutely all action on the mind by mind or power extrinsic to itself, which is as important as it is absurdly false. It is to make its law like matter, the laws according to which one mental state succeeds another. But suppose a state of mind began by an influence extrinsic to it - the commonest thing possible, for this he has no place; so that all his statement is false as a system.

In page 441 he is all wrong. When white is there, there are no various colours, they have ceased, they are not white; but white is before my eye. The rest I deny and leave.

Belief may come from habit of the idea in the mind, but there are other sources as testimony of that, as to which I have no habit. To make moral reprobation consist in association with a disgusting idea is worthy of Mill and disgust. It is curious to see how carefully he excludes testimony; one thing is recognised by the mind as evidence of another thing.

Page 449. The statement as to old and young has very little or no foundation. The formation of character has of course certain truth in it, but it is not by the laws which form it that the whole of the phenomena are produced. As to the action of circumstances on man, I must know what character is actually formed to judge of that. All this is in the air, besides all special action on man being ignored. So all on to page 456 is nothing but his fancies, and groundless too; denying not only higher principles, but natural characteristic differences of race, as of sex too. It is not true (p. 458) that bodily strength tends to make men courageous. It may make men bullies over weakness if not courageous, but this all is excessively superficial and worthless.

I admit (p. 459) we must know, as I have stated, the nature of a thing to have a proposition. But Mill cannot deny that all his mental laws are from empirical laws only, for even character is that. See pages 454, 455, as the result. If they are laws of formation of character, this is clearly empirical. It supposes a character must be formed to judge; but then laws of human nature abstractedly have no place, because a formed character is what I have to discover. The whole system is superficial and arbitrary. (See p. 451, first paragraph.) So page 450, "impossibility of establishing any but approximate empirical laws of effects."

156 Laws of matter in their nature we have as gravity; it cannot be otherwise. But when I come to character and circumstances, this is not the case, though there may be empirical laws making conduct probable. But this is what he admits is not science at all, and such formation of character must be, that is, it is no science at all, besides leaving out other deeper principles. Indeed he contradicts himself, for if psychology, that is, the nature of man, be the science, then formation of character is not. Yet here psychology is the science studied (page 461). This formation of character follows, which is by circumstances, and then comes the action in circumstances. As far as this is mere knowledge of human nature or mankind, no one would deny it. It excludes all but circumstances and human tendencies as they exist, no action on the soul being admitted. All moral considerations are of course excluded, all basis of moral obligation. "Congenital predispositions" are not so far (p. 462) to seek, and will never be found when man's being evil is rejected as a starting-point. It is not a law of man's nature to lie, but what makes him lie? Selfishness. Hence "lying is nearly universal when certain external circumstances exist universally" (page 449). But I do not dwell on all this part. The statement (p. 469) that "the actions and passions (of masses) are obedient to the laws of individual human nature" is utterly false. Page 466 is not true. He always forgets the power of an objective end of action. The law of the individual as to this is selfishness or his own interests; of a society it is the supposed interests of the society, and more or less the individual is sacrificed to it.

Nothing can be more utterly futile and empty than all this part of the book. He takes up the principle already laid down; that, having empirical general laws, he hypothetically puts great general principles of the nature of mind, laws of mind, thence deduces consequences as to forming character in given circumstances, and so how men will act, only admitting that we can only have tendencies, and never conclude to facts. And what are these few and simplest laws of mind; few but not simple, and running into one another? (page 489). Memory, imagination, association of ideas. Now I suppose nobody denies these three things; but can anything be more absurd? Where are the passions and objects of man, his affections, and the positive influences exercised upon him? Mill admits that we must know what they are before a child can speak, the circumstances of ancestors, and what not. He admits our mental states and capacities are modified for a time, or permanently, by everything that happens to us in life. But this is experimental (p. 451); the generalisations which result will be considered as scientific propositions by no one at all familiar with scientific investigation (page 452). Are the laws of the formation of character susceptible of a satisfactory investigation by the method of experimentation? Evidently not (page 452). These laws are to be obtained by deducing them from the general laws of mind, by supposing any given set of circumstances, and then considering their influence in forming character (p. 457); these laws, or the principal ones, being memory, imagination, and association of ideas - the result to be verified by observation. It being impossible to obtain really accurate propositions respecting the formation of character from observation and experiment alone (p. 456), and so, knowing memory, etc., we possess psychology, the laws of mind, and draw corollaries from them, which is the new science of ethology not yet created. Yet, after all (p. 458), psychology is altogether, or principally, a science of observation and experiment, by which (we have read) it is impossible to obtain any accurate propositions. Consequently we must have the generalisation of laws of mind; but they are hypothetical, only in result affirming tendencies.

157 Now remark here, that in true science we have nothing to do with tendencies, but with facts. The forces of gravity and laws of motion do not give tendencies, they produce certain resulting facts. They may be counteracted, and that even by the operation of the same laws; but they have nothing to do with tendencies. Hypothesis may come in to get at the law, verified by the ascertained result in facts, and it then ceases to be an hypothesis. It is a principle or law demonstrated by facts. The whole argument is trifling nonsense. Yet the constituent elements of human nature are sufficiently understood to create a science of ethology. Yet the laws are modified by everything in our life, that is, as to our mental states and capacities, are no laws at all, are matter of observation and experiment, or principally so, that is, empirical; and all the science flows from knowing there is memory, imagination, and association of ideas forming character by circumstances we do not know, and then, middle principles of how to form being obtained, we, by education, form the character to be desired. And what is that? We perfect the bungling of creation, while we must know what the nurse has done with the baby and act as a despot alone could, and not even he, for he could not manage the nurse, the passions and governing objects being wholly left out of both sciences. Now that there are these three principles in human nature everyone knows; that education tends to form character is not denied; that the observation of human nature helps to know how the general mass will act, at least tendencies hypothetically, no one denies; but such a mare's next of hypothetical science I never met with.

158 It is again curious to see the effort to set aside belief on testimony by attributing to it associating ideas. Such practical impotency in judging of "the laws of human nature," leaving out passions, objects, selfishness, is hard to conceive any one capable of; but there it is, and a science made of it - one created by Mr. Mill. No doubt it is. If you want to see uncertainty and folly, read page 466. Happily there is an impassable limit to the possibility of calculating (the facts or results) beforehand (p. 467); the data being uncertain and varying, only the laws are not. Now that certain principles govern human society as a general rule, no one can doubt; but the discovery of the result depends on data so complex that we cannot calculate on it. Just so; we are left where we were after the exact science of psychology, ethology, and all - only the last science has not been created yet. Is that the case with the results of the law of gravity?

I do not admit that the sequences and co-existences result from the law of the separate elements. So that the effects amount precisely to the sum of the effects of the circumstances taken singly (page 488). Men acting in a mass are quite different from the individuals taken singly. Confederacies of men are in a moral state, and have a sense of power which takes them out of what controls individuals; and even conscience is necessarily individual. Logical deduction has not to be verified, an hypothetical generalisation which is not deduction has (page 490). It results at best (p. 491) in what is useful for guidance, but insufficient for prediction, and that is an "exact science."

159 But even with respects to tendencies, "it would be an error to suppose we could arrive at any great number of propositions which will be true in all societies without exception." No doubt. "All the propositions are in the strictest sense hypothetical" (p. 493), and cannot be verified, of course, till it is too late, because there is no constancy or uniformity of data as there is in exact science. Our conclusions are soon deprived of all value by accumulating error (page 494). So much so that "the more the science of ethology is cultivated, and the better the diversities of individual and national character are understood, the smaller, probably, will the number of propositions become which it will be considered safe to build on as universal principles of human nature." That is encouraging. (See again p. 503.) The confessed fact is that, while there are assuredly principles which actuate human nature, the path as to the masses of mankind is so modified by circumstances that we must know the effect of circumstances on human nature, and the practical effect on men, and this is always changing; the "properties are changeable." That is, however, controlled the inquiry may be by the general laws of human nature, yet we have to know, if we can, its circumstantial condition, and how one state of society produces another, and that itself in given circumstances, for violence may come in, and one state not be a simple sequence of another; and of these we cannot judge even empirically; of a few tendencies we may, perhaps, if nothing intervene - as increase of wealth, commerce, etc.

But one thing is wholly left out here even in the inquiry what is the end society tends to: what is the good and goal to be sought? It will be flippantly said the good of the whole. What is that? Who is the judge of it? I do not attach importance to his discussion on society; but though it is difficult, from his want of precision, to compare what he says, yet I make a few remarks. "The succession of states of the human mind and of human society cannot have a law of its own; it must depend on the psychological and ethological laws, etc. It is conceivable that these might be such as to determine the successive transformation of man and society (page 512). But . . . I do not think anyone will contend that it could have been possible setting out from the principle of human nature . . . to determine a priori the order in which human development would take place" (page 513). There is an end of hypothesis and deduction from psychological laws. "What we now are and do is in a very small degree the result of the universal circumstances of the human race, or even of our own circumstances acting through the original qualities of our species," there is an end to psychological science, "but mainly of the qualities produced in us by the whole previous history of humanity." This series of action and reaction of man and circumstances could not possibly be computed. All is therefore uncertain and empirical. There is no science from psychological generalisation, "while it is an imperative rule never to introduce any generalisation from history into the social science unless sufficient grounds can be pointed out for it in human nature." Then he goes on to say what I have quoted, that the result is in a very small degree that of the original qualities of our species.

160 As to progress, which he yet admits may not be improvement (p. 511), it is all a fable. Not that there may not be progress in civilisation (not morally); yet is there progress in the Copts, in Assyria, Persia, Turkey, in the barbarian inroads? In mere physical arts and sciences there is in modern Europe, but not even there in fine arts. What is the progressiveness of the human race which is the foundation of philosophising? Christianity has elevated the standard of conscience, bringing in withal the knowledge and reference to one true God. But outside its influence where is the progress? But in this progress "often . . . we cannot even shew that what did take place was probable a priori, but only that it was possible," and this from psychological laws! And this is an exact science, like the invariable effects of gravity! "Nothing is more probable than that a wrong empirical law will emerge instead of a right one (p. 515; see pages 523, 524). Here we must know the laws according to which social states generate one another; but (p. 512) the succession of the states of the human mind and of human society cannot have an independent law of its own. It must depend on the psychological and ethological laws. Here little progress can be made in establishing the filiation directly from laws of human nature without having first ascertained the immediate or derivative laws according to which social states generate one another." Only, unhappily, they have no independent ones at all - cannot.

161 The vapid infidelity of page 527 I leave. "We have to take into consideration the whole of past time from the first recorded condition of the human race." Recorded where? What was that condition, and in what place? History, moreover, is too broken and interrupted to have a course of progress, whatever "the superior minds" may think of themselves. No doubt they are the men, and wisdom will die with them. See the self-complacency of page 530. The intellectual element is the predominant circumstance in determining their progress. Progress in what? I only note it here to recognise the principle. Philosophy and religion are abundantly amenable to general causes (page 539). But if there had been no Christ, no Paul, there would have been no Christianity. His perfect ignorance of the person of Christ objectively being the all of Christianity, with what it involves, has necessarily made him talk nonsense here. Circumstances may have been prepared for it; but his total ignorance of what Christianity is (or even Judaism) necessarily makes him grossly superficial.

As to the general principle of progress, it is (p. 540) only precarious approximate generalisations confined to a small portion of mankind, and there is need of great flexibility in our generalisations. And "who can tell?" etc. See, too, page 541, how much "remains inaccessible to us." Unhappily the art of life (p. 523), to which all other arts are subordinated, has still to be created. Rules of conduct (p. 549) are only provisional. Right and wrong he has not an idea of. Morality, prudence, and aesthetics, all have to be created; but (p. 544) the ends to be aimed at must be known, or laws of phenomena are useless. Most true. Some general principle or standard must still be sought (page 555). The end, however, is conduciveness to the happiness of mankind, or rather of all sentient beings. Has man no higher or better? What is that happiness? On this he is silent, save that present happiness may give way to ideal nobleness; but this in result will be mere happiness existing in the world. Of happiness, divine or heavenly, of course he has no idea. It is, at best, what is under the sun, the days of the life of our vanity. Life now is almost universally puerile and insignificant; it is not happiness such as human beings with highly developed faculties can care to have. Moral, spiritual, divine happiness, grace in the heart towards others, is simply absent from his mind. It is a blank.

162 I see nothing in the book but an overweening estimate of himself and his own mind, and the grossest absence of every moral feeling - a blank, an incapacity for anything higher than reasoning on current facts, which he does superficially; not aware that there is anything beyond, which he does not possess, with only that which always accompanies it - the secret (so not honest) pervading effort to undermine the grounds on which the assurance of it is built in others. It is a petty, superficial, pretentious work, without one tinge of any moral or elevated feeling, but the contrary; a miserable attempt to spin, out of a world he holds to be badly created by a feeble God (the only one known), by a creature badly created or grown up by evolution, a system that is to be objectless as causeless, which this creature is to perfect as well as he can without knowing what good is. Impossible to conceive anything more beyond the power of conceiving truth.

The fact is, it is simply positivism borrowed from Comte which knows nothing but what is presented to the senses, with perhaps some inferences, and leaves every moral and divine idea wholly out, and covers absurdities and rejection of what is intuitively known by what is illogical and contradictory too. It is merely the absurdity of positivism; conscience and morality all gone, as is the possibility of a higher power acting influentially on me. I am to seek the good of all. Why so? What motive have I for doing so? What is the good? Am I the judge of it, or are they? And who are they? It is as empty as it is bad. His affinity with another man's wife he calls his first marriage to her (one of mind and affection, I dare say); and then he married her after her husband's death, who was a convenient sort of man that let things go on. There was immense moral and mental weakness in Mr. Mill, he was in a state of despairing melancholy for a long while.

Now his logic does not bring out all the results, but it sows the seed in denying causation, and in teaching positivism, on which, with some intellectual principles borrowed from Kant, it is wholly based.

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