PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY. 119 



claim more than access to the laws of phenomena, in their 

 grouping and succession ; nor can I hesitate to accept the posi- 

 tivist dictum ^yx'AS. causes lie entirely beyond scientific cognizance. 

 Our own causality, as you justly say, we do directly know ; but 

 causality other than oiir own we do not know by either observa- 

 tion or consciousness ; we observe only movements ; we feel only 

 certain sensations of our own ; both of which are phenomena 

 and not their causes ; and our reference of such things to an 

 objective causality which is not in our experience is, I take it, an 

 intuitive intellectual act, planting outside of us the counterpart 

 and antithesis of the power which we put forth from within. 

 If the authority of this intellectual act as a prior condition of our 

 thinking of phenomena at all is denied, no ground whatever 

 appears to me to remain for " dynamical laws ; " and either Mill 

 or Biichner would easily throw back your second class into the 

 first They would ask what more you find in the " conditions 

 of the action of a force " than the concurrence or sequence of 

 phenomena ; and would protest that the " direct consciousness " 

 to which you appeal is still nothing but an order of feelings, i.e. 

 of internal " phenomena ; " and on the ground of scientific ex- 

 perience and method, I really do not see how an answer could 

 be given to this. Besides Mill's reduction of all mathematical 

 and physical axioms to inductions on observed uniformities, we 

 have now Continental physicicns calling in question Newton's 

 first law of motion ; so that, among those who decline all 

 obligations to metaphysical assumptions, the distinction which 

 you would draw between Kepler's laws and Newton's is being 

 broken down. As to Biichner, since he contends, as you do, 

 for our scientific knowledge of " force " (as well as " matter"), 

 and therefore does not stop short with your first class of " laws," 

 but proceeds to the second, I do not see why he may not, 

 with you, speak of such laws as " governing " or " explaining " 

 phenomena. 



So much for my old client, Metaphysics versus Physics. He 

 is always bothering you, if you try to dispense with him. The 

 only other point that I should like to remark upon is a use 

 (which seems to me the source of misapprehension) of the word 

 intuition. It is certainly common to speak of any apprehension at 



