1 8 The Law of Causation. 



tify its validity by a priori deduction, like Kant, 

 or by observation, like Mill, or you may, like 

 Lotze, confess it is the indemonstrable postulate 

 of all our knowledge ; but you cannot for a mo 

 ment fail to see that the law, however it may 

 be established, is indispensable to the natural 

 and physical sciences, which presuppose it at 

 every step. 



Now, to say that ethics is a science of the same 

 type as botany or astronomy is to assert that the 

 methods of investigation applicable to the latter 

 are equally suited to the former, and consequently 

 that constancy of causation, which is the founda 

 tion of those methods, must obtain among moral 

 phenomena with the same rigorous invariability 

 as among the events of nature. Nor can anyone 

 at all alive to the drift of contemporary thought 

 and culture have failed to observe the prevalent 

 acceptance of this determinism, especially on the 

 part of the ever-increasing number of scientific 

 inquirers. Schopenhauer, indeed, erected the 

 dogma into a test of mental vigor, and maintained, 

 with characteristic asperity and assurance, that 

 none but intellectual dwarfs could be libertarians. 

 At the present day the triumphant reign of 

 physical science has begotten a distrust in meta 

 physical ethics ; and men have turned their gaze 



