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carded our knowledge is impure. Thus, metaphysics 

 tells us that one fact which we observe is a cause, and 

 another is the effect of that cause ; but upon a rigid 

 analysis we find that our senses observe nothing of cause 

 or effect j they observe, first, that one fact succeeds an- 

 other, and, after some opportunity, that this fact has 

 never failed to follow that for cause and effect we 

 should substitute invariable succession. An older phi- 

 losophy teaches us to define an object by distinguishing 

 its essential from its accidental qualities ; but experience 

 knows nothing of essential and accidental ; she sees 

 only that certain marks attach to an object, and, after 

 many observations, that some of them attach invariably, 

 whilst others may at times be absent. ***** 

 As all knowledge is relative, the notion of anything 

 being necessary must be banished with other traditions." 

 There is much here that expresses the spirit of the 

 " New Philosophy," if by that term be meant the spirit 

 of modern science ; but I cannot but marvel that the 

 assembled wisdom and learning of Edinburg should have 

 uttered no sign of dissent, when Comte was declared to 

 be the founder of these doctrines. No one will accuse 

 Scotchmen of habitually forgetting their great country- 

 men ; but it was enough to make David Hume turn in 

 his grave, that here, almost within ear-shot of his house, 

 an instructed audience should have listened, without a 

 murmur, while his most characteristic doctrines were at- 

 tributed to a French writer of fifty years later date, in 

 whose dreary and verbose pages we miss alike the vigor 

 of thought and the exquisite clearness of the style of the 

 man whom I make bold to term the most acute thinker 



