816 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Dr. Ward, I thought, winced a little when this appeal was made 

 to him ; whether it was that he differed with the Archbishop as to 

 the drift of the passage quoted, or whether he regarded the society 

 as in general too little educated in philosophy to appreciate arguments 

 derived from the teaching of St. Thomas. As the Archbishop ceased, 

 a good many eyes were turned upon Dr. Martineau, as if we had now 

 got into a region where no less weighty a thinker would be adequate 

 to the occasion. 



I think, said Dr. Martineau speaking with a singularly perfect 

 elocution, and giving to all his consonants that distinct sound which 

 is so rare in conversational speech I think that the course of this 

 discussion has as yet hardly done justice to the a priori elements in 

 human thought which have contributed to the discovery of the gen- 

 eral uniformity of Nature, and to the axiomatic character of the prin- 

 ciple which we are discussing. I should not entirely agree with the 

 Archbishop or with St. Thomas if I rightly apprehended the quota- 

 tions from him, that we ought to ground our belief on the uniformity 

 of Nature 'primarily on our belief in the constancy of the Divine 

 mind. Historically, I doubt whether that could be maintained. For 

 example, the Hebrew Scriptures, which are full of the praise of the 

 moral constancy of the Creator, appear to attach very little impor- 

 tance to the uniformity of Nature's methods, which they often treat 

 as if they were as pliant as language itself to the formative thought 

 behind it. Still less can I agree with Mr. Bagehot's view that every- 

 thing which rushes into the mind is believed without hesitation till 

 hard experience scourges us into skepticism. I should say rather that 

 the understanding is prepared to accept uniform laws of causation by 

 the very character of human reason itself. It is remarkable enough 

 that Aristotle fully recognizes the close connection between the neces- 

 sary character of human inference and the necessary relation of cause 

 with effect, that he treats the " beginning of change " {a-pyy\ Kivrjo-ews) a-J 

 either the cause which necessarily results in an effect, or the reason 

 which necessarily results in an inference. " An efficient cause, there- 

 fore, may be found in any beginning of change either in the physical 

 world or the logical. In both cases it has the same characteristics : 

 necessity, whether in the form of inevitable sequence or in that of 

 irresistible inference ; and consecutive advance, a step at a time, along 

 a determinate line, whether in outward nature or in inward thought. 

 Whatever is, it either acts out or thinks out what is next. So far, 

 therefore, as the universe is at the disposal of efficient causes, its con- 

 dition at each moment results purely from the immediately prior, with- 

 out the possibility of any new beginning. If an experienced observer 

 could compress into a formula the law of all the simultaneous con- 

 ditions, he would be able to foresee the contents of any future mo- 

 ment not, however, to modify them, for his prescience depends on 

 their being in themselves determinate, and on his calculations em- 



