350 
postulates. Unaware that science suggests some preecedentia of 
existing results, — and that the a priori has clone good service to 
science heretofore — (if e.g. Kepler first hypothesized his “ Laws,” 
and subsequently found them scientifically true) — he begins by 
an illogical demand of “evidence” for the prae-evidential. If, as 
we have shown, science itself as yet stands on some a priori , 
the scientific “tests” could have no immediate place. They 
might even be irrational, as applying to the prae-phenomenal, 
what pertains only to the phenomenal. dust as Leibnitz, 
in a passage referred to by Mr. Mill (p. 136), repu- 
is^wayspos- diated as unworthy of God, the idea of perpetual 
tuiated. subsequent interference with His own laws as such ; 
so, equally, the competent 1 heist might be forgiven, if he re- 
Mr. Mill’s soiled from the thought of an Eternal subjected to 
ignomtiueien. the interference of scientific manipulation, as if He 
were but the logical conclusion of phenomenal pre- 
misses. It seems as if Mr. Mill could not, as we have pointed 
out, so far realize what is even meant bv the a priori as to state 
it. He further betrays this, perhaps, in saying, “ that a priori 
arguments are frequently a posteriori arguments in disguise.” 
48. (ii.) In discussing, as he now would half attempt, the a priori 
causation “ evidence” or argument of Theism, the essayist, as 
implies it. it is his wont, subdivides once more; and not per- 
haps without propriety. He distinguishes the permanent from 
the changeable in Nature ; and thus would limit the argument 
for a “ First Cause,” making account only of the changes of the 
present phenomena of the universe, and not its Beginning from 
Permanent Being. But here it is immediately apparent that being 
unable to approach the abstract and the a priori in its higher 
region, Mr. Mill is at once the victim of his crude attempt to use 
abstractions in their lower and popular form, in which they are 
little more than collective terms. Nature as an unknown whole 
he assumes is Permanent, (with all its “Evil” in it !) 
and he will only deal with it in the details of known, 
varying phenomena. This assumption stands instead 
of a priori with Mr. Mill. It is not argument. We will follow, 
as he puts it, this part of his essay, as to the “changeable” 
phenomena; and we shall have to note that a “change” does 
not produce change, and is only the occasion of it : that which 
effects the change being really the “element,” or cause. 
“ Changes in nature (he says) are always the effects of previous 
changes .” Now if he had said, as before, (p. 143), of some “ ele- 
ment ” which had produced a previous change, he would have 
perceived his position to be ambiguous, and therefore logically 
useless, as well as in other respects delusive. “Change,” simply 
A mistake in 
stating the 
proposition. 
