115 
On one point— -in the Analysis of Human Responsibility,*— 
some years ago it was shown, that the simplest idea of 
Being— even of the Eternal Self-existent Being — or continuity 
of the absolute in Truth, Reason, or Good, con- °ute! he Abso ~ 
tained a “ Principle of Continuity ” of its own. 
Continuity, in se, is not ideally the same as sequence. The 
Absolute, e.g. is independent of sequence, yet it always “ con- 
tinues to be.” Even in our own finite sphere, our mind reckons 
on Reason having beenf always Reason, and the Absolute always 
absolute. Nor can we conceive of pure Reason as other than 
Reason always. It is not more Reason now, than when our con- 
sciousness of it began. And the Infinite and Eternally Conscious 
Being, must thus be conceived as “ continuing,” yet with no 
essential limitations of sequence; for then He would not be 
absolute. Action also, which varies, implies “continuance,” 
even in God, though “pure act” is not His entire essence; for 
that includes the conscious absolute. 
38. But “Continuity,” as explained by our authors, is some- 
thing more than the necessary postulate of all intelligence and 
all act. It is extended from the Intellectual sphere, 
where of course it is inevitable, to the Phenomenal' m C t I“no. 
where it is partial and imperfect, and the term thus menai - 
acquires ambiguity. Phenomena are taken to be internally con- 
tinuous in the same necessary sense as conscious intelligence 
and its acts must be; and the nexus is assumed. 
We must examine this somewhat further : 
The doctrine of causation is based on our perception as 
to . a certain holding together of acts and origin, or starting- 
point. But do we not introduce another idea altogether when 
we apply to mechanical sequences the same term as we use in 
he case of an apparently self-acting origin or “ cause” ? It is 
quite true that there is a kind of continuity, or con- 
tact rather, in all physical action and re-action in of c2£3? 
the Visible Universe. But even there, there is a taboth - 
kind of vis in “continuity” beyond what “contact” implies, 
btill more, forces wholly acting out of the “ Unseen Uni- 
verse (as, by the admission of our authors, originating 
causes do), have a vis which mere “continuity” bv no 
means explains. Probably phenomena within the seen ’Uni- 
verse have continuity only in the sense of apparent contact. 
Agencies, then, active from the Unseen, wherever we place them, 
or conceive them to act, (like the “ monads ” of Leibnitz,) are 
* See Transactions, vol. x. 
+ See the Analysis of Human Responsibility. 
i 2 
