"]() SCEPTICISM; 



member the continuous flow of events, to dissever 

 it into discrete stages, to distinguish certain elements 

 in the infinitely complex whole of phenomena, and 

 to connect them with others as their causes or effects. 

 But what if the Becoming of things be an integral 

 whole, which could be understood only from the 

 point of view of the whole ? Would not the idea 

 of causation be inherently invalid^ just because it 

 isolates certain factors ? And in any case it is 

 inherently false. For w^hether our dissection of the 

 continuous flux of phenomena be justifiable or not, 

 the separation by which we isolate certain fragments 

 must be false. We hear a noise and see a bird fall ; 

 we jump to the conclusion that it has been shot. 

 But what right have we thus to connect the firing 

 of the gun and the death of the bird as cause and 

 effect, and to separate them from the infinite mult- 

 itude of concomitant circumstances ? Why do w^e 

 neglect all the rest as immaterial ? We cannot 

 say, " because all the other circumstances remain the 

 same," for the world never remains the same for 

 two consecutive moments. How then can we say 

 beforehand that the remotest and occultest circum- 

 stances have not been essential to the result? It 

 was at least a merit of astrology that it faced the 

 difficulty, and' did not disdain to suppose that even 

 the stars had an influence over human events. The 

 supposition of ancient divination, that the fate of 

 a fight might be calculated from the entrails of 

 chickens, the flight of rooks, or the conjunction of 

 planets, may appear a sober and sensible doctrine 

 of causation, far less absurd^ than the arbitrary and 

 indefensible procedure of modern scrence. 



But even supposing that we had made good a 

 claim to apply our subjective category of causation 



