Chauncey Wright. 95 



were it not obvious that we have here struck 

 upon a grave misconception on the part of Mr. 

 Wright. Misled, no doubt, by some ambiguity 

 of expression, Mr. Wright supposed Mr. Spencer 

 to be laying down some everlasting principle of 

 universal objective validity, and quite indepen- 

 dent of experience. To do this would undoubt- 

 edly be to desert science for metaphysics ; but 

 Mr. Spencer has not done anything of the kind. 

 As I said before, there has probably been an ex- 

 cess of controversy on this point. For my own 

 part, without retreating from any position for- 

 merly taken, 1 I should be willing, for all practi- 

 cal purposes, to waive the question altogether. 

 Whether our belief in the uniformity of Nature 

 be a primary datum for rational thinking or a net 

 result of all induction, or whether, with the au- 

 thors of the " Unseen Universe," we prefer to 

 call it an expression of trust that the Deity " will 

 not put us to permanent intellectual confusion," 

 whichever alternative we adopt, our theories 

 of the universe will be pretty much the same in 

 the end, provided we content ourselves with a 

 simple scientific coordination of the phenomena 

 before us. And this is all that has been aimed 



1 Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy, Part I., chap. iii. ; Part II., chaps. 

 i, xvi. 



