204 NATURE AND MAN. 



It seems strange that those who make the loudest appeal to 

 experience as the basis of all knowledge, should thus disregard 

 the most constant, the most fundamental, the most direct of all 

 experiences ; as to which the common sense of mankind affords 

 a guiding light much clearer than any that can be seen through 

 the dust of philosophical discussion. For, as Sir John Herschel 

 most truly remarked, the universal consciousness of mankind is 

 as much in accord in regard to the existence of a real and intimate 

 connection between cause and effect, as it is in regard to the ex- 

 istence of the external world ; and that consciousness arises to 

 every one out of his own sense of personal exertion in the origina- 

 tion of changes by his individual agency. 



Now while fully accepting the logical definition of cause as 

 the "antecedent or concurrence of antecedents on which the 

 " effect is invariably and unconditionally consequent," we can 

 always single out one dynamical antecedent — the power which 

 does the work — from the aggregate of material conditions under 

 which that power may be distributed and applied. No doubt the 

 term cause is very loosely employed in popular phraseology ; often 

 (as Mr. Mill has shown) to designate the occurrence that imme- 

 diately preceded the effect ; — as when it is said that the spark 

 which falls into a barrel of gunpowder is the cause of its explosion, 

 or that the slipping of a man's foot off the rung of a ladder is the 

 cause of his fall. But even a very slightly trained intelligence can 

 distinguish the power which acts in each case, from the conditions 

 under which it acts. The force which produces the explosion is 

 locked up (as it were) in the powder ; and ignition merely liberates 

 it, by bringing about new chemical combinations. The fall of the 

 man from the ladder is due to the gravity which was equally pull- 

 ing him down while he rested on it; and the loss of support? 

 either by the slipping of his foot, or by the breaking of the rung, 

 is merely that change in the material conditions which gives the 

 power a new action. 



Many of you have doubtless viewed with admiring interest 

 that truly wonderful work of human design, the Walter printing- 

 machine. You first examine it at rest ; presently comes a. man, 

 who simply pulls a handle towards him : and the whole inert 

 mechanism becomes instinct with life, — the continuous sheet of 



