106 Proceedings of the British Association. 



be held as provisional — another to recommend a general unsettling of 

 all received ideas. Whatever innovations of this kind may arise, they 

 can only be introduced slowly, and on a full sense of their necessity ; 

 for the limited faculties of our nature will bear but little of this sort 

 at a time without a kind of intoxication, which precludes all rectilinear 

 progress — or, rather, all progress whatever, except in a direction which 

 terminates in the wildest vagaries of mysticism and clairvoyance. 



But, without going into any subtleties, I may be allowed to sug- 

 gest that it is at least high time that philosophers, both physical and 

 others, should come to some nearer agreement than appears to 

 prevail as to the meaning they intend to convey in speaking of 

 causes and causation. On the one hand we are told that the grand 

 object of physical inquiry is to explain the phenomena of nature, 

 by referring them to their causes : on the other, that the inquiry into 

 causes is altogether vain and futile, and that Science has no concern, 

 but with the discovery of laws. Which of these is the truth ? Or 

 are both views of the matter true on a different interpretation of the 

 terms ? Whichever view we may take, or whichever interpretation 

 adopt, there is one thing certain, — the extreme inconvenience of such 

 a state of language. This can only be reformed by a careful analysis 

 of this widest of all human generalizations, disentangling from one 

 another the innumerable shades of meaning which have got confound- 

 ed together in its progress, and establishing among them a rational 

 classification and nomenclature. Until this is done we cannot be sure, 

 that by the relation of cause and effect, one and the same kind of 

 relation is understood. Indeed, using the words as we do, we are 

 quite sure that the contrary is often the case ; and so long as un- 

 certainty in this respect is suffered to prevail, so long will this 

 unseemly contradiction subsist, and not only prejudice the cause of 

 science in the eyes of mankind, but create disunion of feeling, and 

 even give rise to accusations and recriminations on the score of prin- 

 ciple among its cultivators. 



The evil I complain of becomes yet more grievous when the idea of 

 law is brought so prominently forward as not merely to throw into the 

 background that of cause, but almost to thrust it out of view altogether ; 

 and if not to assume something approaching to the character of direct 

 agency, at least to place itself in the position of a substitute for what 



