AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 63 



then, no stable system of reason ? Is it only as the unsteady 

 iridescence in the water-drop in the Arab boy's hand "? Thus 

 and thus to-day, may all things work loose from one another to- 

 morrow? Shall we never know anything but appearances 

 never know truth ? Ah ! well might Descartes doubt whether 

 he who sent us were not " a powerful and malicious being who 

 took pleasure in deluding us ! " 



But let us just see whether all these things cannot be looked 

 at otherwise. 



1. There is no cause, then ; there is only & first followed by a 

 second, an A by a B. Nexus between them there is none discern- 

 ible : there is only one imagined. Under the name of power, it 

 is familiar enough to conception to be sure, and current enough 

 in speech, but, all the same, it is a mere fancy, a voluntary- 

 involuntary phantasm, a gratuitous symbol, a vicarious image, 

 a personified abstraction, a Comtian entity, an Hegelian Vorstel- 

 lung a myth ! * The knowledge of this we owe to Hume, and 

 this one point is the spore from which that vast bulk of German 

 philosophy grew. 



Nevertheless, it was but by counterstroke, so to speak, that 

 from that spore this bulk grew ; and it is not so certain that 

 Hume's faith corresponded with his speech. Indeed, it is only 

 a mistake, perhaps, to suppose that the sly Hume believed any 

 such view of cause and effect, though, with his usual arch 

 mischief, for perplexity to the priest, he wickedly started the 

 difficulties that gave rise to it. Perfectly willing to " under- 

 mine the foundations " of anything whatever that had seemed 

 hitherto only to serve " as a shelter to superstition," he knew 

 all the same, that " Nature would always maintain her rights, 

 and prevail in the end over any abstract reasoning whatsoever." 

 So it was that, even when just mentioning with such an air of 

 simple reference to what was a matter of course for everybody 

 the transparent fact, that, " in all reasonings from experience, there 

 is a step taken by the mind, which is not supported by any 

 argument or process of the understanding" so it was, I say, 



* It is to this meaning I would confine the word conception, and for good and sufficient 

 reasons, it may be, despite the etymology. Idea is, of course, Idee, and can take on 

 every one of its significations. Kant, when exact and authoritative Hegel always 

 translates Sec/riff by Notio. There is left only (Conception for Vorstelluny, and Hegel 

 actually does render Vorstellungen by Conceptionen. We hate no choice then ! And 

 reflection will only the more and more approve the result. Representation, for example, 

 is a hideous word that will never pass current ; and Dugald Stewart's admirable chapter 

 on "Conception" will show that that word to him was quite the Hegelian Vorstel- 

 lung. Concept, again, reminds too much of conception satisfactorily to render egriff, 

 and is, for the most part, only in philosophical use by an authority that in another 

 generation will cease to be significant. All this, however, only where exactitude is 

 required. Otherwise and in general, idea conveys perfectly well, not only Begriff, but 

 even Vorstellung. A ny interchange of the words in question is perhaps possible to the 

 experienced translator, except only the unpardonable barbarism of notion for Vorstel- 

 lung. Notion ought to be kept sacred for the logical notion. 



