ERRORS OF APPREHENSION 143 



care for matters of practical detail is also a feature 

 of Chinese funerals : when the dead, as often 

 happens, are not buried for some time, and their 

 coffins are deposited in vaults round a " garden 

 of the dead," each vault is furnished for the soul's 

 enjoyment ; and, when the relatives periodically 

 assemble to do honour to the dead, a chair is left 

 vacant for the soul's accommodation. Similar 

 memorial services, marked by such concrete 

 acknowledgments of the soul's existence as the 

 offering of food, bound families together in Rome, 

 in Greece, and in India, and made a deep impres- 

 sion upon the national laws. 



II. Errors of inference. We are instinctively 

 impelled to link together happenings which follow 

 one another in sequence. This is the basis of the 

 process of inference upon which we depend every 

 moment for the guidance of our behaviour. If 

 one wasp stings us we avoid another. The 

 connection of two events in sequence, seen in 

 the light of consciousness, appears to be that 

 of happening and consequence of cause and 

 effect and we conceive of causing and being 

 caused as inseparable properties of happenings, 

 just as we conceive of colour and of number as 

 essential properties of all things. Accordingly we 

 link every happening backwards and forwards 

 as being caused by another happening, or as 

 causing another happening and we are dis- 

 concerted if a cause is not evident for every 

 occurrence. Observation is an imperfect guide 

 where knowledge is elementary. In simple 

 matters it may guide us correctly enough. One 

 who touches fire is burned : the burn is justly 

 attributed to the fire. But the vast majority 

 of life's experiences are not simple : they 

 are preceded by a number of happenings, any 



