PROFESSOR WHEWELL, ON CAUSE AND EFFECT. 331 



That in estimating moral causation, the progress of time is necessarily 

 estimated by moral changes, and not by machinery, — by the progress of 

 events, and not by the going of the clock, — is a truth familiar as a practical 

 maxim to all who give their thoughts to dramatic or narrative fictions. 

 Who feels any thing incongruous or extravagantly hurried in the progress of 

 events in that great exhibition of moral causation, the tragedy of Othello? 

 If we were asked what time those vast and terrible and complex changes 

 of the being and feelings of the characters occupy, we should say, that, 

 measured on its own scale, the event is of great extent ; — that the trans- 

 action is of considerable magnitude in all ways. But if, with previous 

 critics, we look into the progress of time by the day and the hour — 

 what is the measure of this history? Forty-eight hours. 



But I am going beyond the boundaries of the speculations which we 

 usually follow in this room, and will conclude. 



W. WHEWELL. 



