3* 



David Hume be consulted, I think he would smile at their 

 perplexities, and chide them for doing even as the heath- 

 en, and falling down in terror before the hideous idols their 

 own hands have raised. For, after all, what do we know 

 of this terrible " matter," except as a name for the un- 

 known and hypothetical cause of states of our own con- 

 sciousness ? And what do we know of that "spirit" 

 over whose threatened extinction by matter a great la- 

 mentation is arising, like that which was heard at the death 

 of Pan, except that it is also a name for an unknown 

 and hypothetical cause, or condition, of states of con- 

 sciousness ? In other words, matter and spirit are but 

 names for the imaginary substrata of groups of natural 

 phenomena. And what is the dire necessity and " iron" 

 law under which men groan ? Truly, most gratuitously 

 invented bugbears. I suppose if there be an " iron" law, 

 it is that of gravitation ; and if there be a physical ne- 

 cessity, it is that a stone, unsupported, must fall to the 

 ground. But what is all we really know and can know 

 about the latter phenomenon ? Simply, that, in all human 

 experience, stones have fallen to the ground under these 

 conditions ; that we have not the smallest reason for be- 

 lieving that any stone so circumstanced will not fall to 

 the ground, and that we have, on the contrary, every 

 reason to believe that it will so fall. It is very conven- 

 ient to indicate that all the conditions of belief have 

 been fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement that 

 unsupported stones will fall to the ground, " a law of na- 

 ture." But when, as commonly happens, we change will 

 into must, we introduce an idea of necessity which most 

 assuredly does not lie in the observed facts, and has no 



