EVIDENCE OF UNIVERSAL CAUSATION. 109 



does contain. By abstraction M. Taine seems to think that we are able, not 

 merely to analyse that part of nature which we see, and exhibit apart the elements 

 which pervade it, but to distinguish such of them as are elements of the system 

 of nature considered as a whole, not incidents belonging to our limited terrestrial 

 experience. I am not sure that I fully enter into M. Taine s meaning ; but I 

 confess I do not see how any mere abstract conception, elicited by our minds 

 from our experience, can be evidence of an objective fact in universal Nature, 

 beyond what the experience itself bears witness of; or how, in the process of 

 interpreting in general language the testimony of experience, the limitations of 

 the testimony itself can be cast off. 



