40 APHORISMS AND REFLECTIONS 



merit and the mind holds good here also. Art and 

 industry may get much music, of a sort, out of a 

 penny whistle ; but, when all is done, it has no 

 chance against an organ. The innate musical 

 potentialities of the two are infinitely different. 



It is notorious that, to the unthinking mass of 

 mankind, nine-tenths of the facts of life do not 

 suggest the relation of cause and effect ; and they 

 practically deny the existence of any such relation 

 by attributing them to chance. Few gamblers but 

 would stare if they were told that the falling of a 

 die on a particular face is as much the effect of a 

 definite cause as the fact of its falling ; it is a proverb 

 that "the wind bloweth where it listeth " ; and even 

 thoughtful men usually receive with surprise the 

 suggestion, that the form of the crest of every wave 

 that breaks, wind-driven, on the sea-shore, and the 

 direction of every particle of foam that flies before 

 the gale, are the exact effects of definite causes ; 

 and, as such, must be capable of being determined, 

 deductively, from the laws of motion and the pro- 

 perties of air and water. So again, there are large 

 numbers of highly intelligent persons who rather 

 pride themselves on their fixed belief that our 

 volitions have no cause ; or that the will causes 

 itself, which is either the same thing, or a contra- 

 diction in terms. 



To say that an idea is necessary is simply to 

 affirm that we cannot conceive the contrary ; and 

 the fact that we cannot conceive the contrary of any 

 belief may be a presumption, but is certainly no 

 proof, of its truth. 



