THE ALLEGED SCEPTICISM OF KANT. 189 
sky, and man interprets it according to his own view. In the 
early times he interpreted it as a small thing moving round the 
earth. Then he learnt to interpret it in other ways, but we do not 
suppose that we have yet got to the final interpretation of what 
the sun is in itself. All we perceive, to begin with, is the effect 
which it has upon us, and we gradually learn to interpret that 
effect, or rather to interpret our idea as to the cause of that effect, 
in a manner more and more approximating towards the truth. 
Sometimes scientific men even use the word ‘ revelation” in 
regard to the things that they discover. They say this or that 
substance reveals to us its properties. That of course is metaphor, 
because the substance they conceive is not regarded as possessing 
intelligence. But when we use the term revelation with regard to 
God, as we regard Him as a personal and intelligent Being, the 
expression is not metaphorical—i.e., we believe that God wishes us 
to discover Him and adapts and arranges things so that we may 
discover Him. But leaving that out of the question, the facts 
seem to be of the same order. The thing-in-itself has a certain 
effect, from which we argue as to the nature of the thing, and so 
we approximate towards an idea of it. God effects the whole 
universe and us as parts of it, and being influenced by those 
effects ourselves, we reason up to the idea of God. 
There is one other point I would say a word upon and that is 
the chain of causes. It is a difficult question, but it seems to me 
that a little light is thrown upon it by this consideration, that if 
we regard phenomenal causation in time, we find that causes may 
be looked upon in two different ways, or in a certain sense we may 
say that things have two causes. There is the cause of a thing 
happening at a particular time, but besides the cause of its 
happening at a particular time, there is also a permanent cause. 
To take an illustration—suppose a stone drops, there are two 
causes—something or other dislodged it—that is the cause which 
causes the event to happen at that moment; but, besides that, 
there is a permanent cause, which conforms to the law of gravity 
and is always acting. The immediate cause which causes the 
thing to happen at a certain time no doubt may be brought into a 
chain of causes and so you may say it is not free. 1f something 
dislodged a stone from a hill-top then that event had a previous 
cause, and that again had a previous cause, and so on; but I do 
not admit that we can trace back such a thing as gravity to a 
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