Wellington Philosophical Society. 647 



phical Discussion. (2.) The Truth of Facts and the Constitu- 

 tion of Conceptions. (3.) The Type-instance of Eeality. (4.) 

 The Extension and Attenuation of Meaning. (5.) Transition 

 from Literal to Metaphorical Meaning. (6.) Connotation of 

 Everything.— Part II. : (7.) State of the Controversy. (8.) 

 Eelation between Knowledge and Reality. (9.) The Type of 

 Causation. (10.) Constant Causes. (11.) Uniformity of 

 Nature. (12.) Force and Causation. (13.) Vires acquirit 

 eundo. (14.) Properties of Artificial Objects. 



Sir James Hector thought it unfair to discuss such an elaborate paper 

 without ?nore consideration : in fact, he had not clearly caught which 

 line of thought the author supported. The existence of a necessary 

 sequence in cause and effect was required by modern science ; and those 

 who led in the metaphysical aspect of the subject must be careful of 

 their premisses. He thought several of the physical illustrations given 

 might prove fallacious on close examination. While he approved and 

 admired the paper, he thought that such discussion should not be mixed 

 up with truly practical science, which is the disentanglement of compli- 

 cated sequence of cause and effect, and not the discussion of an ultimate 

 cause. 



The Hon. R. Pharazyn said that, in spite of the old Scotchwoman's 

 opinion, there was much truth in the assertion of a great authority that 

 " all physical questions ultimately resolved themselves into metaphysical 

 ones," in the sense that in any phenomenon we had to determine how much 

 was objective and how much belonged to the mind of the observer. There 

 was a kind of metaphysics which ignored experience, and which Mr. G. H. 

 Lewes called " metempiric," which was useless and led to no results. 

 As Professor Max Muller had well said, " To know a thing by itself is to 

 know it not as we know it, but as we do not know it, which is self-contra- 

 dictory." The great principle of science was that all real knowledge was 

 relative, and relative in two ways : first, in relation to one's own mind ; 

 and, secondly, in relation to things. As Professor Bain says in his "Logic," 

 " We think of all things in pairs — large and small, light and dark, hot and 

 cold, and so forth." Then, what was meant by a scientific explanation 

 of any fact but referring it to some more general fact known to us by 

 experience? This applied to our most familiar conclusions. If in the 

 stillness of the night we hear a scratching, gnawing sound we imme- 

 diately say rats or mice caused it, though, indeed, some people might say 

 ghosts, but, knowing nothing of ghosts, that would nod occur to him. 

 Now, looked at in that way, and considering that experience was our 

 only guide, he thought Mr. Carlile's paper, ingenious as it was, had en- 

 tirely failed to upset Hume's and Mill's theory of causation. All we know 

 of cause and effect is invariable sequence ; and he agreed with a writer who 

 said that for scientific use "law" was a better term than "cause." As 

 to the contention that mind was the ultimate cause of things, he feared 

 he should be trenching upon theology if he discussed that question ; but 

 he might say that there was a logical weakness in the argument from 

 design. Put into the form of a regular syllogism, it was usually stated 

 thus : " Whatever shows marks of design must have had a designer. The 

 universe shows marks of design ; therefore the universe must have had a 

 designer." This, he thought, was syllogism in the first word of the first 

 figure, and its major premiss was, " Whatever shows marks of design 

 must have had a designer." Now, Mill had demonstrated that the major 

 premiss of every syllogism is an inductive assertion. Now, in this case 

 our induction is based upon human experience only — an experience ex- 

 tremely limited as compared with the universe at large. Paley's " watch 

 argument" rested on the fact that we know that watches and such 



