40 DERIVATION OF THE LAWS. [CHAP. III. 



one form of expression ; the sceptic, if true to his principles, ano- 

 ther. They who regard the phenomena with which we are con- 

 cerned hi this inquiry as the mere successive states of the thinking 

 subject devoid of any causal connexion, and they who refer them 

 to the operations of an active intelligence, would, if consistent, 

 equally differ in their modes of statement. Like difference would 

 also result from a difference of classification of the mental faculties. 

 Now the principle which I would here assert, as affording us the 

 only ground of confidence and stability amid so much of seeming 

 and of real diversity, is the following, viz., that if the laws in ques- 

 tion are really deduced from observation, they have a real existence 

 as laws of the human mind, independently of any metaphysical 

 theory which may seem to be involved in the mode of their state- 

 ment. They contain an element of truth which no ulterior cri- 

 ticism upon the nature, or even upon the reality, of the mind's 

 operations, can essentially affect. Let it even be granted that 

 the mind is but a succession of states of consciousness, a series 

 of fleeting impressions uncaused from without or from within, 

 emerging out of nothing, and returning into nothing again, 

 the last refinement of the sceptic intellect, still, as laws of suc- 

 cession, or at least of a past succession, the results to which obser- 

 vation had led would remain true. They would require to be 

 interpreted into a language from whose vocabulary all such terms 

 as cause and effect, operation and subject, substance and attri- 

 bute, had been banished ; but they would still be valid as scien- 

 tific truths. 



Moreover, as any statement of the laws of thought, founded 

 upon actual observation, must thus contain scientific elements 

 which are independent of metaphysical theories of the nature of 

 the mind, the practical application of such elements to the con- 

 struction of a system or method of reasoning must also be inde- 

 pendent of metaphysical distinctions. For it is upon the scien- 

 tific elements involved in the statement of the laws, that any 

 practical application will rest, just as the practical conclusions of 

 physical astronomy are independent of any theory of the cause 

 of gravitation, but rest only on the knowledge of its phaeno- 

 menal effects. And, therefore, as respects both the determi- 





