178 ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 



Causality ; and this, empiricism has condemned as 

 having no basis in fact — as being the creature of 

 "fantasy." Hence all perception — all experience, 

 even to its simplest item — is itself dissipated and 

 reduced to illusion. 



The flat contradiction between this and the em- 

 pirical principle, which derives its whole force from 

 the assumed absoluteness of the single sensation, is 

 obvious. Hume is thus the instrument of bringing 

 about a curious result — that a principle should dis- 

 appear by merely being taken in full earnest and 

 carried out with unflinching consistency. What he 

 has really done, and quite irrefutably, is to remove 

 in this way the empirical principle finally ; or, rather, 

 he has simply let the principle dialectically remove 

 itself. True is it indeed, that without an Abiding 

 and Active in us the transitory and sensible is im- 

 possible. As the case has been forcibly put in a 

 saying that deserves to become classic, " Our uncon- 

 ditioned universality is the ground of our existence," 

 — its ground, that is, at once its necessary condi- 

 tion and its sufficient reason. 



