CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY. 19 



it stands equally to reason, that a thousand respective 

 measurements will never counterpoise or equate the single 

 geometrical proof (say, e.g., of Euclid, I. 32, or I. 47). 



So, just in every way, Brown's in variableness in ex- 

 planation of causality is a proposition untenable, is a 

 proposition crude. The darkness of an eclipse., or the 

 lifting up in the balance of the pound weight by the two 

 pound weight, are not matters of mere invariableness, 

 but of insight as well. These glasses are the cause of 

 the clearness of that print ; but the glass is not just 

 abstract on the one side, and the clearness equally abstract 

 on the other. Even a savage would give a bewitched 

 inside of power to the glass, which a Newton would 

 convert into a transparent concrete of reason with no 

 barrier but what, as said, is apparent, always at last 

 between psychology and physiology, physics and meta- 

 physics, matter and. mind. 



It is not so certain, however, that such explanations of 

 concretes by abstractions, as that, in the case of Brown, 

 of causality by invariableness, may not have bad results 

 elsewhere. Political Economy, for example, is a science 

 absolutely true in its great generalisations. But these 

 generalisations are not true if only left abstract. They 

 must, on the contrary, be seen into and understood. 

 Abstractions must be deepened and vitalised into con- 

 cretions. Demand and supply, for instance, will never 

 come together, if they are separated by customs and 

 prohibitions, and ships of war in support. Supply, when 

 it is a human being that sees a profit to itself in Demand, 

 will always incline to realise that profit unless pre- 

 cluded and prevented. So it will cultivate the very worst 

 lands in existence, provided only that they will yield a 

 profit ; and that is but a part of the fact that the law of 

 rent is no abstraction, but a fact a concrete natural fact. 

 Good lands, and well-placed lands, must yield more than 



