THE CAUSES AND CONDITIONS OF KNOWLEDGE. 177 



dieting themselves and which often end in useless wars over the meaning of 

 words. 



But to proceed — knowledge in general may be divided under three heads, 

 Knowledge of Fact ; Knowledge of Law and Knowledge of Necessity. Knowl- 

 edge of Fact arises from the consciousness of those ideas produced in the mind 

 by perception. Such knowledge is possible with the conditions of Fact, Mind, 

 Idea, Identity and Diversity of Idea, the act of consciousness, and true con- 

 viction. 



Knowledge of Law arises from a consciousness of the relations between facts 

 and involves an action of the mind about its Knowledge of Fact which action, not 

 being spontaneous, must be determined by something. 



Now everything of which we are sensible must, we are compelled to think, 

 be the effect of some particular cause or causes. This is called the Notion, of 

 Causality and is what prompts the mind to seek for the Knowledge of Law. 



The process of reducing cause to effect must stop at a point immediately 

 beyond which lies the absolute or unknowable, which has been demonstrated to 

 be the one and indivisible cause of all that is. What the nature and attributes of 

 the absolute may be is a theological question which does not concern this paper 

 other than that it is the creator of law and the author of existence. 



Now, whether this first cause may or may not be capricious we have no 

 means of knowing and thus it happens that Knowledge of Law having for its 

 basis the arbitrary will of the Absolute is colored with a feeling of dependence 

 upon that will for its persistence. The conviction accompanying such knowledge 

 is based upon the known constancy of this will in the past, but can never be 

 pure unless we could know that this constancy could extend to all future time. 

 And thus it happens that we are able to conceive all Knowledge of Fact, and 

 with it all Knowledge of Law to become void. Hence those sciences which 

 have the Knowledge of Fact for their basis, and which are but the Knowledge 

 of Law systematized, such as mechanics, natural philosophy, chemistry, etc., 

 are all dependent upon the uniformity and persistence of natural law. We see 

 therefore that in addition to those conditions necessary to a Knowledge of Fact, 

 a Knowledge of Law could not be but for the Notion of Causality and would 

 be impossible unless nature is uniform. 



We now come the Knowledge of Necessity. Necessity is that which must 

 be and which being it is impossible should not be. It must, therefore, be inde- 

 pendent of fact and (so far as we can know) independent of the will of the Abso- 

 lute, and must persist if persistence is possible. 



Now propositions which are independent of phenomenal existence are true if 

 they are possible. Their truth determined renders their falsity impossible, and we 

 cannot conceive them to be dependent upon any contingency for their persistence. 

 Take the proposition "things which are an equal to the same thing, are equal to 

 each other. " While the practical application of this truth depends upon existence, 

 the truth itself does not, nor can we conceive it possible that the universe could 

 be wiped out and rcreated without this proposition reasserting itself. 



