COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



wood or glass, the vibration of a cord, the ex- 

 pansion of a heated body, the sprouting of a 

 seed, the circulation of blood, the development 

 of inflammation, the contracting of a muscle, the 

 thinking of a thought, the excitement of an emo- 

 tion, — all these are manifestations of force. To 

 speak of an event which is not a manifestation 

 of force, is to use language which is empty of 

 significance. Therefore our belief in the neces- 

 sity and universality of causation is the belief 

 that every manifestation of force must be pre- 

 ceded and succeeded by some equivalent mani- 

 festation. Or, in an ultimate analysis, it is the 

 belief that force, as manifested to our conscious- 

 ness, can neither arise out of nothing nor lapse 

 into nothing — can neither be created nor an- 

 nihilated. And the negation of this belief is un- 

 thinkable ; since to think it would be to perform 

 the impossible task of establishing in thought 

 an equation between something and nothing. 



This, I suppose, is what Sir William Hamil- 

 ton had in his mind when he asserted that our 

 belief in the necessity and universality of causa- 

 tion is due to an original impotence of the con- 

 ceptive faculty, — to our inability to conceive 

 absolute beginning or absolute ending. In his 

 examination of Hamilton's philosophy, Mr. 

 Mill has made sad havoc of some of the crude 

 and hasty statements, and yet more unfortu- 

 nate theological illustrations, in which Hamilton 

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