AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 65 



Shall the mulier formosa superne be indeed desinent in the atrum 

 piscem ? Or if, whether for us, or the poet, there shall be a 

 concrete that is rational, a concrete that is even natural, a 

 concrete that is a concrete, shall not the one term, in all cases, 

 grow out of the other? All will be different then. The terms 

 shall not be heterogeneous, but homogeneous. The succession 

 shall not be only positively, arbitrarily, invariable, but necessarily, 

 rationally invariable. The succession, in fact, shall not be a 

 succession at all. As what in all nature is closest, it shall be 

 seen to be also what in its own nature is closest not a suc- 

 cession, but a conjunction, a connection, a union, the most 

 intimate, the most deeply inward union possible at all events, 

 the most intimate, the most deeply inward union the whole 

 inorganic world can show. 



Hume shall have simply hoaxed us, then shall have simply 

 hoaxed metaphysics hoaxed metaphysics with his billiard 

 balls, as Charles the Second did physics with his fish 1 



Yes ; it is really so. Neither a priori nor a posteriori is there 

 the incommunicable gulf in causality which Hume so naturally 

 assumed, and so speciously glossed over. 



Billiard balls are not by any means all that may be regarded, 

 or alone what may be regarded, as types of causality. Here is 

 a full sponge, and here is a hand that contracts on. it with an 

 effect that is known. Have we here but an indifferent A, and 

 an indifferent B, that are only outwardly beside each other, and 

 not at all inwardly, and with reason, wrought together ? Can 

 we conceive of what happens here as but succession a succes- 

 sion that, though thus to-day, may be otherwise to-morrow? 

 A bit of wood weighed after immersion in water is found to be 

 heavier than it was before immersion. In the same way, a letter 

 that in India weighed under the ounce, may in England weigh 

 over it. But, in either case, is the one fact but an indifferent 

 second to the other 1 Expose the boards of a book to the fire, 

 and, Scotice, they "gizzen" but not without a perfect intelligence 

 on our part of why. When the pound in the one scale plumps 

 on the board, and the ounce in the other kicks the beam, does 

 any one settle his chin in his neckerchief, and gravely expatiate 

 on a first and a second in all times past that may, nevertheless, 

 reverse themselves to-morrow c ? Surely arithmetic here has 

 absolute possession and to the perfect conviction of everybody 

 of the entire mystery! When to divide a sheet of paper 

 evenly, I fold it in two and tear in the line of the fold, is the 

 result a mere invariable consequent without perception of a 

 reason? So, also, that a blunt knife is a better paper-cutter 

 than a sharp one surely we see why ! Place a cannon ball 

 on a sofa cushion, is the indentation that follows, a mere con- 

 sequent, the reason of which we cannot understand. Doors 



