3 
etinctive belief in the permanence of sequences 
he would avoid believing in false sequences, but 
he would be destitute of belief in true ones. 
And if he were left to acquire his knowledge by 
experience what painful, extensive, and discrimi- 
native processes he would have to perform be- 
fore he could distinguish permanent sequences. 
That the child should be able to bring 
such processes to a successful issue - at 
all depends upon the assumption that 
an induction from past to future may be 
made in the same manner as any other. If 
this be not admitted, we have to fall back on 
the instinctive belief. If it be, then the am- 
biguity in the term laws of Nature would cease. 
Laws arrived at by induction from usages 
would probably be admitted to be only con- 
densed statements of usages. If it should be 
said that the child need not become an experi- 
menter, but might be taught by his parents, or 
other instructors, then arises the question, 
How could he be taught unless he instinctively 
believed his tutors ? If he has no instinctive 
belief in testimony, but has to ascertain its 
credibility by experience and induction, he is 
not in a better position than if he had to find 
out by experiment what sequences are perma- 
nent. If he has an instinctive belief in testi- 
mony, still experience will have mistakes to cor- 
rect, for human testimony is not uniformly true. 
My purpose is, not to question the instinc 
tive belief in testimony, but to affirm that in 
the permanence of sequences. Indeeed, proof of 
either would render the other probable. By an 
instinctive belief, in the permanence of se- 
quences, I mean such belief in the permanence 
of all, whether they be actually permanent or 
not. If the child could distinguish permanent 
from accidental, he would do what the man, 
unaided by experience, can not do. When a 
child asked, “ If I go to sleep will it be dark 
again?” we may infer that she usually went to 
sleep by daylight, had sometimes awakened in 
the night, and suspected that darkness was the 
permanent follower of sleep. When another 
asked why going to bed at night makes it grow 
light in the morning, we may infer that it was 
in the habit of going to bed after nightfall, and 
believed that going to bed was the cause of 
dawn. Starting with these authentic instances 
it might not be difficult to give a plausible 
sketch of the development of intelligence. 
The refreshment which awaits him at the thresh- 
old of life impresses a sequence, at the accidental 
disturbance of which the infant shows signs of 
displeasure. He thinks that going to bed at 
night makes it grow light in the morning. Tes- 
timony, or experience, tells him that it would 
grow light whether he went to bed or not. For- 
tunate will he be if instinct leads him into no 
worse error than misinterpreting a sequence. 
He puts his finger into a lighted candle, his 
foot into scalding water, and he tries to get the 
bait out of a rat-trap. A burnt child dreads 
the fire, and he recognises the malign sequences 
as permanent. Sequences, more obviously bene- 
ficent, disclose themselves, but he is always liable 
to mistake. ne day he is taken to a place where 
anxious-looking men are adjusting what seem to 
him strange engines. Statements, accurate to 
the precise instant of time, do not interest him, 
nor does the monotonous beat of clockwork. He 
sallies forth. Presently, and amid a cloudless 
sky, the sun is darkened. He observes that 
animals recognise the change in Nature’s face. 
What wonder if he should impute her fantastic 
deviation from the ordinary course to the mys- 
terious instruments, and the eager-looking men ? 
When, in after times, he shall see huge machi- 
nery cease from work on the pulling or turning 
a small handle, and shall attribute the stoppage 
to the pull or turn, he will only be drawing a 
similar inference. Soon the child learns that 
looking at the sun through a telescope 
does not cause an eclipse, and that 
fluctuations of the index of a barome- 
ter are signs, not causes, of atmospheric 
changes. One by one he gets rid of false 
sequences, and assimilates and classifies the 
true. And, after all, he finds that experience 
and testimony either confirm the teaching of 
instinct or effectually restrain the aberrations 
into which instinct would beguile belief. Ad- 
vancing years dispel many a charming illusion 
of his youth, but they disperse its sensuous and 
intellectual clouds, and, as life’s evening closes 
in, he comes to acknowledge in Nature a gra- 
cious and, in the main, truthful mistress, and is 
content to forgive her at night the sweet false- 
hoods she told him in life’s morning. 
That what follows may be clear, let us bear 
in mind that, of any two events, not simulta- 
neous, the first in order of time is called the 
antecedent j the second, the subsequent j the 
two, a sequence. Two simultaneous events con- 
stitute a concurrence. Sequences are permanent 
or accidental, and when any doubt arises expe- 
rience alone can decide under which category 
any particular sequence should be placed. Our 
chief concern is with permanent sequences. 
On the question of the efficacy of physical 
causes to produce their effects I do not enter. 
I take the w rds, cause and effect, as I find 
them, without forgetting that the phenomena of 
Nature are not affected by the names we choose 
to give them. But it is the office of language 
to express by words the procedure of thought, 
and, in seeking to ascertain what sequences 
ought to be called cases of cause and effect, we 
may be dealing with things and not with names 
only. 
Let us consider some particular sequences. 
Night follows day ; death follows life ; thunder 
follows lightning ; violent atmospheric disturb- 
ance follows a great and sudden fall of mercury 
in the barometer ; daylight follows going to bed 
in the night. All these sequences are perma- 
nent, but there is only one of them which can, 
and that with questionable propriety, be called 
