CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY. 15 



button to fasten his coat, a garter to keep his stocking 

 up. > Indeed, this is the case everywhere. My hand 

 compressing a full sponge carries the constitutive 

 particles of the latter nearer each other, and the mobile 

 water is forced to quit. Surely the force here is a very 

 sensible power. But the case is not different when a 

 pricked bladder collapsing drives the air out by the 

 force of its elasticity. That latter force, though in- 

 animate, is quite as the former ; and the two are perfectly 

 susceptible of the most accurate, proportionate ad- 

 measurement. Certainly the hand is not the sponge, 

 and the bladder is not the air : each is itself, and very 

 different from the other. Nevertheless, in regard to the 

 action which has taken place between them, it is a 

 concrete, and holds of both. Brown would have us 

 ignore all between. He would have us see an abstract or 

 independent individual A put down, and just on the 

 instant, for no known reason, an abstract or independent 

 individual B start up! Such relation really seems so 

 on the part of a struck key and a heard note on the 

 piano. The key is A, the note is B ; and they seem 

 abstractly beside each other. But, in point of fact, even 

 they are not the abstract side by side, invariably so 

 found, which Brown would have us hold to be the sole 

 state of the case in the cause and in the effect. Open 

 your piano, and you will see the concrete mechanism 

 between the copula, the medium, of the struck and 

 vibrating wire. The ultimate specific copula between 

 the air-wave and the sound in the ear medium between 

 matter and mind we do not know ; but we do know that 

 there are steps to it. What are all these ossicula, and 

 cochleae, and seal*, etc. ? What but machinery adapted 

 for the purpose ? Put the end of a stick in the fire, and 

 it is burned black. The stick simply becomes black ; it 

 feels no power that makes it black. The state of the 



