THE RESISTENCE OF RELATIONS AMONG FORCES. 203 



which make up the explosion, will bear to one another like 

 relations of quantity and quality in the two cases. The pro- 

 portions among the different products of combustion will be 

 equal. The several amounts of force taken up in giving 

 momentum to the bullet, heat to the gases, and sound on 

 their escape, will preserve the same ratios. The quantities 

 of light and smoke in the one case will be what they are in 

 the other; and the two recoils will be alike. For no dif- 

 ference of proportion, or no difference of relation, among 

 these concurrent phenomena can be imagined as arising, 

 without imagining such difference of proportion or relation 

 as arising uncaused — as arising by the creation or annihila- 

 tion of force. 



That which here holds between two cases must hold 

 among any number of cases; and that which here holds 

 between antecedents and consequents that are comparatively 

 simple, must hold however involved the antecedents be- 

 come and however involved the consequents become. 



§ 65. Thus what we call uniformity of law, resolvable as 

 we find it into the persistence of relations among forces, is 

 an immediate corollary from the persistence of force. The 

 general conclusion that there exist constant connexions 

 among phenomena, ordinarily regarded as an inductive 

 conclusion only, is really a conclusion deducible from the 

 ultimate datum of consciousness. Though, in saying this, 

 we seem to be illegitimately inferring that what is true of 

 the ego is also true of the non-ego ; yet here this inference is 

 legitimate. For that which we thus predicate as holding in 

 common of ego and non-ego, is that which they have in 

 common as being both existences. The assertion of an exist- 

 ence beyond consciousness, is itself an assertion that there is 

 something beyond consciousness which persists; for persist- 

 ence is nothing more than continued existence, and existence 

 cannot be thought of as other than continued. And we 

 cannot assert persistence of this something beyond con- 



