proved to be true, when the instances on which it rests are such that if they have been correctly observed, the falsity of the generalisation would be inconsistent with the constancy of causation; with the universality of the fact that the phænomena of nature take place according to invariable laws of succession. It is probable, therefore, that M. Comte's determined abstinence from the word and the idea of Cause had much to do with his inability to conceive an Inductive Logic, by diverting his attention from the only basis upon which it could be founded.

'Dissertations and Discussions,' vol. iv. p. 172: True it is that all we can observe of physical phenomena is their constancies of coexistence, succession, and similitude. Berkeley had the merit of clearly discerning this fundamental truth, and handing down to his successors the true conception of that which alone the study of physical nature can consist in. He saw that the causation we think we see in nature is but uniformity of sequence. But this is not what he considers real causation to be. No physical phenomenon, he says, can be an efficient cause; but our daily experience proves to us that minds, by their volitions, can be, and are, efficient causes. Let us be thankful to Berkeley for the half of the truth which he saw, though the remainder was hidden from him by that mist of natural prejudice from which he had cleared so many other mental phenomena. No one, before Hume, ventured to think that this supposed experience of efficient causation by volitions is as mere an illusion as any of those which Berkeley exploded, and that what we really know of the power of our own volitions is only that certain facts (reducible, when analysed, to muscular movements) immediately follow them.

206

APPENDIX B

MILL'S THEORY OF THE SELF

'Examination of Hamilton,' p. 247: [Memories and expectations] are attended with the peculiarity, that each of them involves a belief in more than its own present existence.

Ib., p. 248: If therefore we speak of the Mind as a series of feelings, we are obliged to complete the statement by calling it a series of feelings which is aware of itself as past and future; and we are reduced to the alternative of believing that the mind or ego is something different from any series of feelings, or possibilities of them, or of accepting the paradox, that something which ex hypothesi is but a series of feelings, can be aware of itself as a series. The true incomprehensibility perhaps is, that something which has ceased, or is not yet in existence, can still be, in a manner, present; that a series of feelings, the infinitely greater part of which is past or future, can be gathered up, as it were, into a single present conception, accompanied by a belief of reality.

Ib., p. 258: Expectation being one of these [postulated data], in so far as reference to an Ego is implied in Expectation, I do postulate an Ego.

Ib., p. 260: Certain of the attributes comprised in our notion of the Ego, and which are at the very foundation of it-namely, Memory and Expectation, have no equivalent in Matter, and cannot be reduced to any elements similar

to those into which Matter is resolvable by the Psychological theory. Having stated these facts, as inexplicable by the Psychological theory, I left them to stand as facts, without any theory whatever: not adopting the Permanent Possibility hypothesis as a sufficient theory of Self in spite of the objections to it, as some of my critics have imagined, and have wasted no small amount of argument and sarcasm in exposing the untenability of such a position; neither on the other hand did I, as others have supposed, accept the common theory of Mind as a so-called Substance.

Ib., p. 262: There seems no ground for believing, with Sir W. Hamilton and Mr Mansel, that the Ego is an original presentation of consciousness; that the mere impression on our senses involves, or carries with it, any consciousness of a Self, any more than I believe it to do of a Not-Self. The inexplicable tie or law, the organic union (as Professor Masson calls it) which connects the present consciousness with the past one, of which it reminds me, is as near as I think we can get to a positive conception of Self. That there is something real in this tie, real as the sensations themselves, and not a mere product of the laws of thought, without any fact corresponding to it, I hold to be indubitable. ... But this original element, which has no community of nature with any of the things answering to our names, and to which we cannot give any name but its own peculiar one without implying some false or ungrounded theory, is the Ego, or Self. As such, I ascribe a reality to the Ego-to my own Mind-different from that real existence as a Permanent Possibility, which is the only reality I acknowledge in Matter; and by fair experiential inference from that one Ego, I ascribe the same reality to other Egoes, or Minds.

Having thus, as I hope, more clearly defined my position in regard to the reality of the Ego, considered as a question of Ontology, I return to my first starting-point, the Relativity of human knowledge, and affirm (being here in entire accordance with Sir W. Hamilton) that whatever be the nature of the real existence we are compelled to acknow

ledge in Mind, the mind is only known to itself phænomenally, as the series of its feelings or consciousnesses. We are forced to apprehend every part of the series as linked with the other parts by something in common, which is not the feelings themselves, any more than the succession of the feelings is the feelings themselves; and as that which is the same in the first as in the second, in the second as in the third, in the third as in the fourth, and so on, must be the same in the first and in the fiftieth, this common element is a permanent element. But, beyond this, we can affirm nothing of it except the states of consciousness themselves. The feelings or consciousnesses which belong or have belonged to it, and its possibilities of having more, are the only facts there are to be asserted of Self-the only positive attributes, except permanence, which we can ascribe to it. In consequence of this, I occasionally use the words "mind" and "thread of consciousness interchangeably, and treat Mind as existing, and Mind as known to itself, as convertible; but this is only for brevity, and the explanations which I have now given must always be taken as implied.

209

APPENDIX C

MILL'S THEORY OF THE RELATION OF
MORALITY TO NATURE

'Essays on Religion,' p. 8: We must recognise at least two principal meanings in the word Nature. In one sense, it means all the powers existing in either the outer or the inner world and everything which takes place by means of these powers. In another sense, it means, not everything which happens, but only what takes place without the agency or without the voluntary and intentional agency of

man.

Ib., p. 16: To bid people conform to the laws of nature, when they have no power but what the laws of nature give them when it is a physical impossibility for them to do the smallest thing otherwise than through some law of nature, is an absurdity.

Ib., p. 19: While human action cannot help conforming to Nature in the one meaning of the term, the very aim and object of action is to alter and improve Nature in the other meaning.

:

Ib., p. 25 However offensive the proposition may appear to many religious persons, they should be willing to look in the face the undeniable fact, that the order of Nature, in so far as unmodified by man, is such as no being, whose attributes are justice and benevolence, would have made, with the intention that his rational creatures should follow it as an example. If made wholly by such