VI.] Chauncey Wright. 91 



Without this assumption in some form we could not 

 carry on the work of life for a single day. The 

 assumption, moreover, is absolutely unconditional ; 

 no occurrence ever shakes our reliance upon it. I 

 set my clock to-day, and depend on its testimony 

 to-morrow in starting on a journey : if I miss the 

 train, I may conclude that the clock was not well 

 regulated, or that it has begun to need cleaning ; but 

 it never occurs to me that my confidence in the 

 mechanical laws of cog-wheels and pendulums has 

 been at all misplaced. 



This universal and unqualified assumption of the 

 constancy of Nature is, in a certain sense, a net result 

 of experience, inasmuch as we find it tested and veri- 

 fied in every act of our conscious lives. Acting on 

 the principle that " a pound is a pound, all the 

 world around," we find that our mental opera- 

 tions harmonize with outward facts. Doubt it, if 

 we could, and our mental operations would forth- 

 with tumble into chaos. Experience, therefore, — 

 by which is meant our daily intercourse with out- 

 ward facts, — continually forces upon us this assump- 

 tion. Along with whatever else we are taught 

 about ourselves and the world, there comes as 

 part and parcel the ever-repeated lesson that the 

 order of Nature may be relied on. In this sense 



