148 COSMIC rUlLOSOFHT. [pt. i. 



preceding event and must itself determine some succeeding 

 event. And whal is an event? It is a manifestation of force. 

 The falling of a stone, the union of two gases, the blowing of 

 a- wind, the breaking of wood or glass, the vibration of a cord, 

 the expansion 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 excite- 

 ment of an emotion, — all these are manifestations of force. 

 To speak of an event which is not a manifestation of f<>rce> 

 is to use language which is empty of significance. Therefore 

 our belief in the necessity and universality of causation is the 

 belief that every manifestation of force must be preceded and 

 succeeded by some equivalent manifestation. Or, in an 

 ultimate analysis, it is the belief that force, as manifested to 

 our consciousness, can neither arise out of nothing nor lapse 

 into nothing — can neither be created nor annihilated. And 

 the negation of this belief is unthinkable ; 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 Hamilton had in his 

 mind when he asserted that our belief in the necessity and 

 universality of causation is due to an original impotence of 

 the conceptive faculty, — to our inability to conceive absolute 

 beginning or absolute ending. In his examination of Hamil- 

 ton's philosophy, Mr. Mill has made sad havoc of some of the 

 crude and hasty statements, and yet more unfortunate theo- 

 logical illustrations, in which Hamilton couched this doctrine ; 

 but the doctrine itself he seems to have misunderstood rather 

 than refuted. His favourite argument — that at one stage of 

 philosophic culture we can conceive what at an earlier or 

 later stage we could not conceive — rests upon a confusion of 

 language which I trust has been sufficiently shown up in the 

 course of the foregoing discussion. As I have already said, 

 the only kind of inconceivability which we can admit as such 

 is an impotence which results from the very constitution of 



