ADDRESS. Ixxxi 



It seems strange that those who make the loudest appeal to Experience as 

 the basis of all knowledge, should thus disregard the most constant, the most 

 fundamental, the most direct of all experiences ; as to which the Common 

 Sense of Mankind affords a guiding light much clearer than any that can be 

 seen through the dust of Philosopliical discussion. For, as Sir John Herschel 

 most truly remarked, the universal Consciousness of mankind is as much in 

 accord in regard to the existence of a real and intimate connexion between 

 Cause and Effect, as it is in regard to the existence of an External World ; and 

 tha,t consciousness arises to every one out of his own sense of personal ex- 

 ertion in the origination of changes by his individual agency. 



Now while fully accepting tlie Logical definition of Cause as the " an- 

 tecedent or concurrence of antecedents on which the Effect is invariably and 

 unconditionally consequent," we can always single out one dynamical 

 antecedent — the Power which does the work — from the aggregate of 

 material conditions under which that Power may be distributed and 

 applied. No doubt the term Cause is very loosely employed in popular 

 phraseology; often (as Mr. Mill has shown) to designate the occurrence that 

 immediately preceded the effect ; — as when it is said that the spark which 

 falls into a barrel of gunpowder is the cause of its explosion, or that the 

 slipping of a man's foot off the rung of a ladder is the cause of his fall. 

 But even a very slightly trained Intelligence can distinguish the Power 

 which acts in each case, fi-om the Conditions under which it acts. The 

 Eorce which produces the explosion is locked up (as it were) in the powder ; 

 and ignition merely liberates it, by bringing about new Chemical combina- 

 tions. The faU of the man from the ladder is due to the Gravity which was 

 equally piilling him down while he rested on it ; and the loss of support, 

 either by the slipping of his foot, or by the breaking of the rung, is merely 

 that change in the material conditions which gives the Power a new action. 



Many of you have doubtless viewed with admiring interest that truly won- 

 derful work of Human Design, the Walter Printing Machine. You first 

 examine it at rest ; presently comes a man who simply puUs a handle towards 

 him ; and the whole inert mechanism becomes instinct with life, — the con- 

 tinuous sheet of four miles of blank paper which rolls off the cylinder at one 

 end, being delivered at the other, without any intermediate human agency, as 

 separate " Times " Newspapers, at the rate of 15,000 an hour. Now what is 

 the Cause of this most marvellous effect ? Siu-ely it lies essentially in the 

 Power or Eorce which the pulling of the handle brought to bear on the machine 

 from some extraneous source of Power, — which we in this instance know to 

 be a_ Steam-engine on the other side of the wall. This Eorce it is, which, 

 distributed through the various parts of the Mechanism, really performs the 

 action of which each is the instrument ; they only supply the vehicle for its 

 transmission and application. The man comes again, pushes the handle in the 

 opposite direction, detaches the Machine from the Steam-engine, and the 

 whole comes to a stand ; and so it remains, like an inanimate corpse, until 

 recalled to activity by the renewal of its Moving Power. 



But, say the Reasoners who deny that Force is any thing else than a fiction 

 of the imagination, the revolving shaft of the Steam-engine is " Matter in 

 Motion;" and when the connexion is established between that shaft and the 

 one that drives the Machine, the Motion is communicated from the former to 

 the latter, and thence distributed to the several parts of the Mechanism. 

 This account of the operation is just what an observer might give, who had 

 lookcd-on with entire ignorance of every thing but what his eijes could see ; 

 the moment he puts his hand upon any part of the machinery, and tries to 



1872. ^ f 



