7. existence, as well as of the three component factors thereof, except only that the mind of man forces him to recognise them as three and as distinct, the very first form of human knowledge is necessarily the logical and ma- thematical truth, Unity into Unity into Unity=Unity. This is the first possible true conception which the human mind can make of KNOW- LEDGE ; as a unity of three distinct unities. In Kantian phraseology, it is " the unity of the synthesis of a threefold ;" and the first manifold that the mind can conceive, or build up together, is the threefold in the first cog- nition. This foi*?n of thought is not assumed, but proved. No one who speaks can deny it to us without self-contradiction in words, and that we have proved in the preceding discus- sion. This is the first form, therefore, which any knowledge assumes in the human mind, beginning at the true and only beginning, of supposing man wholly ignorant, and on the assumption that some knowledge exists for C.n.,§7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 57 the human mind to discover and contemplate, in order to satisfy the restless craving of the human intellect. The intellectual law or constitution of the human mind, therefore, requires, of necessity — i.e., never-ceasingly — as the very origin and fundamental principle, at once appreciable by the ignorant and by the wise, the ad- mission of this truth, a logical Unity in Trinity, a Trinity in Unity, as its first step to truth. It is not that no other is conceivable, but that any other conception is self-contradictory in words. The dogmatical materialist and dogmatical idealist both profess to conceive a form of knowledge compounded of two, and not three, factors; but we have shown that they must contradict themselves in stating their conception. This is that logical, tjiat verbal, Trinity which has been dimly seen by many great philosophers from Plato down- wards. The admission of this truth is thus demonstrated intellectually ; as the first step, the very first condition, the first necessary deduction implied in the admission of any knowledge whatever. Let self-puzzled or D 5 5 8 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. il, § 7. word -puzzled philosophers dwell on the fact that no knowledge can exist in the human mind without the admission of this funda- mental truth, and that every intellect which denies it is self-contradictory. Men can al- ways find an excuse for not believing what they do not love or like, but honest intellect will admit it as the first and last, the be- ginning and end, of human knowledge. The pure intellectual conception and the pure moral conception of a Trinity in Unity are wholly different and incommensurable. I trust that I have been able to engrave this great intellectual truth more clearly and dis- tinctly than hitherto on the human intellect of Englishmen ; but it requires an Infinite Spirit to inscribe the true moral conception upon the fleshly tables of the human heart ; that moral truth, that to the human mind the first Existence is, of necessity, a Trinity ; the Creator, the Redeemer, the Sanctifies the three coequal and coeternal units in the first unity; the Mind, the Spirit, and the Word of God — the true and only symbol of Divine love. It is, therefore, clear, and not C. ii., §7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 59 to be gainsayed, that if, as Theists, we admit the existence of one God — a God of self- knowledge — that being is a Unity in Trinity, a Trinity in Unity, according to the necessary constitution of man's mind, and any other human conception of a God of self-knowledge is self-contradictory. When, therefore, a Jewish peasant, coming forward as a long-foretold and long-promised Messiah, publicly announced the doctrine " I and my Father are o?ie" " He who hath seen me hath seen the Father," and " the Father shall give you another Comforter, even the Spirit of Truth ; He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you ; and ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you ; " he revealed a truth which, incompre- hensible as it may be to man's mind, and altogether above reason and not deducible thereby, is yet not only consistent with the highest reason, but any other human con- ception of the Deity ends in self-contradiction, and is inconsistent with the constitution of the human mind itself. God is an Object of worship, a Creator and 60 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, ' [C. il, §7. Father ; he is a Subject, or mind and spirit, combining with supporting or dwelling in all good minds ; and he is the Divine Word or symbol, the highest human exemplar, pos- sessing the Divine " Spirit without measure ;" or, as the Church of Alexandria expressed it, " inferior to the Father as touching his man- hood, and equal to the Father as touching his Godhead." The distinct personality of the Son and Holy Spirit is a marvellous revelation, but consistent with the highest reason. The Trinity is not three relations to mankind, but three persons in one Deity, three Relations to Himself. And if any man argues that such a conception of the Deity is a conception of three Gods, we answer that he is as logically absurd and inconsistent as if he argued that human self-knowledge is a conception of three men, and not, as we have shown it to be, a conception of one man existing in three necessary relations to himself — as an object, a subject, and the word or thought — the connection between them, without which a man, as a being of self-knowledge, cannot logically exist or be rationally conceived by C. ii., §8.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. fil the human mind. Thus are the deepest truths of revelation, which a child can apply to his own self-improvement, consistent with the highest reason on which a man can ex- ercise his intellect. Man has free choice and can refuse to believe, and may feel the pride of a fool in choosing wrong ; but he cannot find any intellectual shelter or logical refuge which will bear the test of rational exami- nation in denying this great revealed truth. Humility, however, goeth before true wisdom. (8.) Epistemology and Ontology inseparable. — One clear result, also, from this discussion of the composition of existence or knowledge is this, that the human mind cannot separate and distinguish epistemology from ontology, or the science of knowing from the science of being. Our fundamental postulate, which all men must grant in the form we have laid it down, is, in fact and truth, equivalent to the postulate, " God exists" or The Great " I am" exists. This is as certain as our own existence. Every man, verbally, admits it, and contradicts himself when he denies it. In short, intellectual existence and knowledge, 62 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.n.,§8. in their most abstract sense, are one and the same thing. 1 Self-knowledge must involve self] and if all knowledge has three factors, the three factors of self-knowledge must be persona; of self, otherwise self would be not self. Episte- mology and ontology, therefore, not only can- not be separated, but neither can be discussed alone intellectually or considered by itself . 1 Sir Wm. Hamilton blows an uncertain sound on this subject — the composition of knowledge. Compare these two passages : " Knowledge is a relation, and supposes two terms. There is the knowing mind — the thing known; and the knowledge is the relation between these two." — Lect. by Man., i., p. 195. But he has previously said, at p. 146, "What we know is not a simple relation apprehended between the object known and the subject knowing, but every knowledge is a sum made up of several elements." These two statements clash. They are recon- ciled by alleging and proving, as I have done, that know- ledge is a product of three factors — mind, thing, and word. All knowledge implies, of necessity, these three, and no more than these three, factors. In short, a word is a necessary element in all knowledge. Knowledge is a Trinity in unity, intellectually combined. Professor Ferrier, in his "Institutes of Metaphysics," expressly leaves out words altogether, and says — " Object + subject is the absolute in cognition." — Prop. xxi. The wise and the ignorant receive the same stroke on the nerve. The former adopts a word to express it, and has knowledge which he can communicate ; the latter has no word, and knowledge does not exist. Ergo, I affirm that object + subject is not the absolute in cognition. The word gives life to the cognition, and without the word it is dead. A word is the embodiment of the thought connecting object and subject. C. ii., §8.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 63 alone. But the truth has hitherto been too much overlooked or neglected, that the third factor is necessary to self-knowledge. Self as an object, self as a subject, must have also self as a word or symbol of the knowledge ; the mind, the spirit, and the symbol or word, which to a man expresses the connection between the subjective mind and the objective or spiritual self which it perceives. A man cannot be conscious of a thought, a feeling, or a prin- ciple, without he has some word, symbol, or sign to express it. The self-consciousness is in some way, we know not how, mixed up with the word which expresses the self-con- sciousness. This is the fundamental fact in all metaphysical truth, and it ought never to be forgotten or neglected. Words, symbols, or signs, are one factor in knowledge, are one factor in truth, and are necessarily so in the contemplation of the human mind. Men can compare their Words, but, except through their words, they are wholly unable to com- pare their Ideas. The existence of their ideas can only be proved and exhibited by the existence of their words. 64 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. in., § 1. CHAPTER III. REALISM — IDEALISM — NOMINALISM. (1.) Mr. Herbert Spencer's Realism. — If it had not been for Mr. Herbert Spencer's late book in English on Psychology, pretend- ing to prove what he is pleased to term realism, I should have thought it idle, at the present day in England, to discuss further the ques- tion between realism and every phase of idealism. Mr. Mill, writing before Mr. Spen- cer's work appeared, says, " Berkeley's doc- trine is in substance admitted — the idealists have established their case." Whether it is just to attribute to Berkeley what Kant calls a dogmatical idealism, that is the positive assertion that we know that C.m.,§l.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 65 matter, the non-thinking thing, does not exist at all, external to man's mind, is a question of persons, i. e. 9 of Berkeley's meaning, rather than of things. We may assert the defective- ness of a proof without asserting the contrary dogmatically ; but how any author of ability, who can put words together on some subjects with clearness and accuracy, can profess to maintain pure realism, or man's knowledge of things in themselves, seems to me a marvel of mental confusion. But the marvel ceases when we find this same author dealing with the word " belief," and even when on his guard, and when his attention is directed to the subject, unable to divest his mind of the confusion of ordinary language, unable to dis- tinguish clearly between the thing believing and the thing believed, and the belief itself in the mind, but actually to confound the existence of the thing believed — " the sun" for example — with the existence of the belief in his own mind. 1 Such lucubrations may be 1 Vide " Spencer's Psychology," p. 29, as to his belief in " the sun." Some of Mr. Spencer's writings are clear, use- ful, and practical ; but his mind seems to me confused by 66 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. in., §1. alleged to prove realism, but they cannot be replied to, for they have no meaning ; they stand self-condemned by incoherency, in words open and manifest. Belief is one thing, knowledge another ; but if anything has been hitherto proved in metaphysics, it is, as Sir Wm. Hamilton says, that "external things in themselves cannot be known, and need not be known by man, be- cause a thing is never presented to us other- wise than as a phenomenon," and that " phe- nomena are mere representations." The simple truth is this, that the more we know of nature the more does she withdraw herself, and the more mysterious and unknowable does the real nature of the external world become. As our knowledge of nature in- creases, so do the difficulties of realism increase with it. When we have resolved water into two gases by electricity, we have the multitude of his thoughts of concrete existences. When he comes to discuss fundamental abstract thoughts, the meanings of life, society, property, belief, truth, &c., evapo- rate altogether, or are quite inadmissible. Let me tender him my thanks, however, as an Englishman, for his "Essay on Over-Legislation;" though we differ on fundamental abstractions, we do agree in some practical matters. C.iii.,;§1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 67 three puzzles before us instead of one, the relations between each with the other two and with itself. If Ave could now discover methods of resolving all external things into six or seven instead of the sixty or seventy insoluble elements now known, we should be multiplying the complexity of the phenomena tenfold. It would require ten times the number of phenomena, each of which is an insoluble puzzle, to produce external nature with seven simples in place of seventy, and we should not be a whit nearer the reality of the matter. Mr. Mill clearly perceives and well ex- presses this truth. " The result of this sim- plifying process is to trace up an ever greater variety of different effects to the same agents. The further we advance in this direction, the greater number of distinct properties we are forced to recognise in one and the same object." 1 In short, the greater our knowledge of external nature, the more complex, instead of the more simple, does nature herself be- come, in a realistic point of view. 1 " Logic," ii., p. 108. 68 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. m , § 1. " All our knowledge begins with sense, proceeds thence to understanding, and ends with reason. Nothing higher can be dis- covered in the human mind," says Kant; and then he confesses himself " in some difficulty to give an explanation of this, the highest faculty of cognition." But one thing is made clear by his argument beyond rational dispute, that all the phenomena that affect our senses, and which pass thence to the tender standing, and are dealt with by the reason, can only there receive a mental solution, an ideal sim- plicity, a rational and verbal explanation. " The reality of the objects which we perceive still remains a profound and apparently in- soluble problem." 1 When men so much op- posed in many of their views of philosophy as Mr. Mill and Dr. Whewell, agree in their view of what all preceding philosophy has done or left undone ; where our own reason, as well as we can use it, confirms the result, it seems a waste of time to attempt to bolster up their conclusion, or to review and restate the arguments from Kant downwards, that 1 Dr. Whewell, " Ph. of Disc," p. 488. Cm., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 69 have never been answered intelligibly, which show that things in themselves are unknowable. When, therefore, Mr. Spencer says, " If it be alleged that we cannot know that things exist as we understand them to exist, because we cannot transcend consciousness, then there is at once taken for granted the validity of that test whose validity is called in question ; the universal postulate is assumed and denied in the same breath." 1 We merely answer, no ! your universal postulate is neither assumed nor denied, because it is unmeaning. You yourself have used in your so-called postulate the word " belief," either in two senses or in none at all, for you cannot or do not tell us in which sense of your two acknowledged senses you use it. But this word " belief" involves the whole question at issue, viz., the thing external to the rnind, and the thing not external but within the mind. Therefore, you either contradict yourself, or are in a state of unmeaning confusion on the subject of realistic belief and true knowledge. (2). Idealism Contradicted by the Laws of 1 " Psychol.," p. 65. 70 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [Cm., §2. Language. — Having disposed of dogmatic realism without argument on the authority of the reasons already adduced by Berkeley, Kant, and their followers, to prove man's ignorance of things in them selves, we assume it as already clearly proved, that all external things in themselves are unknowable ; that " we know and can know nothing absolutely in itself." 1 In short, it is clear that man's body stands between his mind and external nature, an impassable barrier, rendering exter- nal things in themselves unknowable, and re- ducing the entire sphere of man's knowledge to the phenomena or appearances which are transmitted by the human senses to the human mind. Nevertheless, every language of every human race utterly contradicts this philoso- phic creed. Man is a universal realist in every nation under the sun ; every tongue openly contradicts this philosophic conclusion, and every now and then we may therefore expect some word-puzzled philosophers to arise, who, confounded by the common words they are compelled to use in order to express 1 Sir W. Hamilton, " Lect. IX.," vol. L, p. 85. Cm., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 71 themselves intelligibly to their fellow men in ordinary language, will again and again attempt to prove that their "words do mean things in themselves," and will try to use the common convention or agreement of mankind to overturn a creed which ordinary language contradicts in every word. In spite of our philosophy, whenever we talk we are consi- dered to be bound by the common convention or agreement of mankind, and that our word " tree" for example, means the external thing which, we say, we see and touch, and not that minute infinitesimal pulsation which passes along our optic or other nerves, into the grey cellular matter of the brain ; that something which we can stop and annihilate in its passage by merely nicking the microscopic nerve ; that something which must in some way exist in one or more of the myriads of the micro- scopic cells of which the grey cellular matter of the human brain visibly consists. Language is too powerful, its laws are too strong for us ; the common agreement of mankind is felt too binding to be thrown off, for we can- not speak without submitting to it, and we 72 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [Cm., §3. go on and cannot avoid going on speaking with our tongues, concerning the great ex- ternal tree existing in nature, instead of con- cerning the minute microscopic cells or their contents actually existing in our several brains. But belief is one thing, and know- ledge another, and language a third. The realist may be very right in his belief, but he is certainly wrong in his alleged knowledge and in reason. Although, therefore, we all practically subscribe to his belief, i. e. 9 to the ordinary creed of mankind that things exist external to man, as men generally suppose them to exist, we say, be not afraid of mate- rialism from admitting clear fact and truth concerning the human brain, quite consistent with the doctrine that external things in them- selves are wholly unknowable. (3.) Belief of the Real, Knowledge of the Ideal. — So far as I can believe anything which I do not know, and which my reason tells me that I cannot mentally know, I frankly subscribe to the ordinary creed of realism, being at the same time convinced that no amount of argument can ever prove to C.ni., §3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 73 my mind the actual existence of the inkstand before me. There is no mystery here except the one insoluble mystery of human nature, the union of body and mind ; which mystery the thoughtful peasant can see as clearly as the deepest philosopher ; the vast mystery of the conjoint existence of a material body and an immaterial mind ; of a living person and a dying thing conjoined in one mysterious whole. If a man sets out by resolving to believe in the existence of nothing but what can be proved by reason, then he had better shut his eyes and his ears, for he can never believe in anything but the existence of himself. " Whatever is against right reason, that no faith can oblige us to believe," but " our faith ought to be larger than our reason, and take something into her heart." I go further than Jeremy Taylor, and say that it must be larger than our reason, and take something into our intellect that reason can never prove, not only in those higher transcendental moralities, but in the lowest and most vulgar concrete actu- alities that are at the ends of our noses and fingers. E 74 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. m., § 3. The knowledge of the idealist is not incon- sistent with the creed of realism. It is the man who has found the true limits of his knowledge whose faith must be at once the greatest and the most firmly established, being founded on the rock of truth. Mankind believes in the reality of things, and we cannot almost use a single sentence of ordinary language without admitting in words that belief. But that reality, I say with Kant and all his followers, man is so consti- tuted, that he can never know it ; but I go further : I say that man is so constituted, that he cannot even speak of, or form any word or sign whatever, to express or repre- sent that reality in which nevertheless his nature and his circumstances compel him to believe. Thus I say that human language is in its origin founded on an illusion, a mis- take ; and this it is which in my opinion lies at the root and is the true solution of all the squabbles of Philosophy. The question has never yet, as I conceive, been properly ventilated and answered, or rather I would more humbly say that the Cm., §4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 75 answer has been lost and buried in the pride and self will of the learned. What are words? what is true nominalism? If we consider realism as refuted, and dogmatic idealism as refuted, and that the true doctrine is that laid down by Berkeley, Kant, and the mode- rate of Kant's followers down to Sir W. Hamilton and Professor Ferrier, that things in themselves are unknowable, and that we only can know their appearances or phenomena re- latively to our own minds, the question still remains, what part do words take in human knowledge? There is still the old medieval question about nominalism just as unsettled, and in as great or greater confusion, than ever. (4.) Mediaeval Realism, Modern Idealism. — It is to be observed that the mediaeval con- troversy between realist and nominalist, was different from that between modern realism and idealism, for the mediaeval realist agreed with the modern idealist. The word realist has come to mean a different thing since the days of Reid. The ancient nominalist said that general terms, i. e., universal words, had no external representatives in external nature, E 2 76 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [Cm., §4. but were only creations of the human mind ; the ancient realist said that they had ; viz., what Plato called divine ideas. M The fun- damental principle of ancient nominalism was as follows : reality only exists in indi- vidual external things. Universals are merely notions of the understanding without reality, which notions are only designated objectively through language, and thence receive an appearance of reality, although they them- selves neither contain a reality, nor do they correspond to a reality. The principle of ancient realism, on the contrary, was this : there is no reality in individual external things ; universals are the true reality, and individuals, as such, are only distinguished by accidents." The ancient realist was nearly identical with the modern dogmatic idealist in denying the reality of external nature as we perceive it. The modern dogmatic realists, from Reid downwards, agree in part with the ancient nominalist, in asserting the reality of external individual things as we perceive them. But it is very idle and useless work discuss- C. in., §4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 77 ing schools of thought or philosophy. The really important question is, what we ought to think ourselves, and how we ought to express it. The ancient controversy between realist and nominalist, was a dispute concerning the things meant by universals, z. e. 9 general terms. Modern inductive philosophy has so filled men's minds since the days of Bacon, that men have begun to think that all verbal questions are merely deserving of contempt ; that men can get on without minding words at all, and, in short, that words take no part in inductive philosophy whatever. They think they are talking about things themselves existing in external nature in place of about their own words for things. They think that gravity, and forces, and affinities, and po- larity, &c, &c, are things really existing in external nature, and not mere human words for human imaginations. They think these words, and all scientific words, represent external realities, and not merely internal idealities invented by man for his own con- venience in talking, and which the breath of 78 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. in., § 5. man hereafter may blow to nothings, when- ever some greater truth may be discovered or revealed. (5.) True Nominalism. I assert that man cannot possibly speak of external reality ! It is entirely beyond his power to speak of things external to his own mind. The con- vention and agreement of mankind cannot alter the nature of things and words. Our agreement about our words cannot alter truth. It is evident that man's words either have no meanings, and so are empty sounds, or no- thing but vibrations of his larynx and pulsa- tions of the air, signs unintelligible ; or, they are words and have meanings, and are signs of the true meanings in the mind, not signs of the real things, whatever they are, of which the mind may suppose itself thinking. When I say my word tree means the real tree, I con- tradict myself in obedience to or concurrence with the common convention or agreement of mankind as to language. My word can mean my meaning only ; my word can only express my thought, idea, perception, conception, &c, my state of mind : that something in the C. iil, § 5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 79 brain or mind which causes my larynx and tongue to speak. My word tree cannot pos- sibly mean anything but my own individual thought or meaning, the thing in my own mind upon, or about, or produced by the real tree, and not the real tree itself. Man's words, therefore, cannot possibly mean any- thing but each man's own private meanings, call them by what name you please, thoughts, ideas, impressions, sensations, reflexions, con- ceptions, representations, or intuitions, &c. ; whatever words we choose, from age to age, from school to school, to give to the com- pleted act of the mind in thinking, ending in a vibration of the larynx, or a stroke of the pen. Words, therefore, in themselves, if in- telligible, are not, and cannot possibly be, signs of realities external to thfe mind, but only signs of thoughts or meanings in the mind of the man using the words. It is, therefore, impos- sible for men to speak of real things except the real things in his own personal individual mind. He cannot speak of his neighbour's thoughts, but only of his own thoughts of, or upon, or about his neighbour's thoughts 80 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [Cm., §5. as transmitted to him by his neighbour's words, deeds, signs, and symbols. However earnestly, therefore, a number of men may believe, and agree in believing, that their words entirely and truthfully repre- sent external things, or internal thoughts, as they really exist, words, according to God's constitution of man, cannot do so. Words, in themselves, only represent, and can only represent the truthfully believed thoughts in the mind, or things in the brain, of each true thinker, making, or adopting, and so using the words. The materialist may say things in the brain, we say thoughts in the mind. We are not now discussing materialism, but words. The only reality, therefore, of which man can possibly, according to his constitution, speak or make any sign, is the internal reality of his own thoughts in his own individual mind. He cannot possibly speak of external reality ; or of any other man's internal reality. So long as man is clothed with a body, so long man's body must continue to stand an utterly impassable barrier between the reality in each man's mind, and all other real exist- C.iii.,§5.] THE SCIEx\CE OF TRUTH. 81 ence whatever, whether mental, or bodily, or verbal, except only such other independent mental existences, whether deity, demon, spirit, or angel, as can communicate with man's mind directly and spiritually, and not indi- rectly through his senses as man communicates with man. Men can know their agreement in words, but they can know their agreement in nothing- else whatever. Their senses tell men whether they agree in their words, by their actively using the same words ; but they never can know whether they agree in their thoughts or minds. Men can discuss their words, but they can discuss nothing else whatever ; they are prevented by their constitution from even speaking to themselves of things as they really exist external to their own minds. I cannot speak or make a sign to myself of the real tree, much less can I speak it to my neighbour, between whose mind and my own, two impas- sible bodies are interposed. To be sure, we two can enter into a convention or agreement about our words, what we shall do, or say, or think, when we hear, or read, or see, or feel ; E 5 82 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. m., § 5. but our convention, our agreement, cannot alter the fact, or in any way affect the ex- ternal fact in nature, or the truth of things. Our agreement, that the sound or symbol tree shall be taken between us to be the sign of the real tree, cannot make the sound or symbol in itself a sign or representation of the real tree, which is separated from our minds by our bodies. It still remains, when I use the word, the sign of the thought in my mind, and, when you use the word, the sign of the thought in your mind. It is so, has always been so, and will remain so whilst our minds are imprisoned in our bodies. This is simple fact and truth, unless we choose to contradict ourselves, or to say that the thing in my mind now writing, and the thing in your mind, reading these words, are one and the same thing, which is most certainly absurd. Almost all the disputes of philosophers have arisen from not seeing, or erroneously seeing this truth. But it necessarily follows, that all human knowledge, all human science communicable from man to man, whilst im- prisoned in these mortal bodies, consists of Cm., §5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 83 words only, words expressing thoughts in the mind of the thinker, thoughts known only to himself and such Powers higher than man, by whom the power of reading man's thoughts is possessed. Men's minds are different, men's senses, which convey the phenomena to their minds, are different, and the only factors in knowledge which we have in common, are our words. There are truths of mind, and truths of bodies, and truths of words, but the only possible agreement between men in respect of any truth, is agreement in words, and in words only. Men say they have a know- ledge of minds, and of bodies, and of words; but however earnestly they think that they agree in their knowledge of minds and bodies, their only agreement is an agreement in the words, signs, and symbols expressing the knowledge. Why should we be afraid of this truth ? Man's agreement in knowledge is merely agreement in words ! If any trembling be- liever, or any untrembling worshipper of in- tellect, the two extremes of human faith and faithlessness, thinks that this conclusion is 84 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. in., § 6. dangerous, or lowers the dignity of human science, we answer, No ! It is truth, and raises the dignity of human words ! We be- come better fitted to believe that " for every idle word that men do speak they shall give account in the Day of Judgment, and that by our words we shall be justified, or by our words we shall stand condemned." Men- tally ! spiritually ! each man stands alone in the universe of existence, with his own mind and with his own words, and with the being or beings to whom he is responsible. Man cannot get beyond his mind, his body, and the deeds or symbols made by his body. This is a deep truth, and worthy of earnest reflec- tion. All agreement in knowledge is only agreement in words. (6.) The Convention of Language. — But it may be asked, is there any objection to the mutual convention and agreement of mankind, that their words shall be taken and deemed to stand as or be signs of the real external exist- ences, or the real internal existences, which produce the phenomena which lead men to speak, and give names to external things or Cm., §6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 85 internal thoughts ? To which I would reply, that to any honest bargain or convention between mankind, there can be no sort of ob- jection, always provided men keep constantly in mind that their bargain, their mutual agreement and convention, is not truth and cannot alter the scientific necessity, the never ceasing truth, arising out of the nature of man himself, a mind imprisoned in a body, that in truth his words can only express the private thoughts in the mind of each indi- vidual thinker; that they -cannot represent in truth, in themselves, any real external things whatever, or the real internal thoughts or ideas of any other human being of which reality he tries to think, or does think, whether truly or falsely. But confusion becomes intolerable, and sci- entific discussion can have no end until every scientific man clearly sees, and holds, and submits to this truth. Science and phi- losophy cannot possibly discuss, cannot possibly speak of real existences, mental or bodily ; they can only speak of, or discuss human words ! 86 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [Cm., §6. What then is truth, but those true words which no man can deny without, at the same time, contradicting his own conscience, and contradicting his own words ? The object of the honest logician, of the true philosopher, the earnest and truthful teacher and preacher, is to take the words of mankind and to teach them to think correctly, by using words cor- rectly, to teach them the truth which their words admit, and to urge them to hold it fast. Some wise man or silly being has said, that words are the counters of wise men and the money of fools. But, in order to become truly wise, men must become fools, and turn their words into good money, and feel that every word they use is worth more than gold, for it embodies the very heart and spirit of the man who truly uses it, and for eternal weal or woe may affect the living spirit of every fellow man to whose eyes and ears it may come, laden with emotion, intelligence, sentiment, or will. Words ! the office of words, therefore, is the problem of all philosophy. My words cannot mean your thoughts ; your words can- C. iil, § 6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 87 not mean my thoughts. Men can agree in their words, but this is the only agreement that can be possibly known between them. Their thoughts must for ever, whilst their minds are clothed with bodies, remain wholly and entirely unknown to each other. They can know whether their words agree ; they can never, in this world, know whether their thoughts agree ; but, from the agreement of their words, they can trust and believe that their thoughts do also agree. Two human minds are, in reality, as completely or more completely divided and separated, than one mind and one external body or any phenomena it presents. The words of one man are only phenomena or appearances to another; they strike his ear or his eye ; they seem to rouse or soothe his restless spirit, or his intelligence. He adopts, he loves, he uses, and agrees to use the words ; they seem to convey to his mind the certainty of truth. To him they re- present truth ; that something for which he might dare to die, rather than give it up, or confess it to be false ; that truth which he knows ; that truth which he feels ; that truth 8 8 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. m., § 6. which has made him free ! We must come, therefore, to some rational agreement and convention about our words, the words we use in common. Words, we say, do not and cannot express minds or things in themselves ; or the phe- nomena of other minds, or of other things, or anything else than the thoughts or meanings in the mind of each individual thinker and his thoughts alone. Man's conventions and mutual agreements about words, whether for the purposes of or- dinary life or for scientific discussion, do not alter the real nature of words themselves : they are the only representatives of human knowledge, the only records of human sci- ence. And surely it is time that men should feel some real responsibility for the words they use ; surely it is time that men of sci- ence, men who profess to lead and to teach their fellow men, should come to some rati- onal agreement, some convention more scien- tific than the agreement or convention made by every savage under the sun. There are true thoughts. We all admit and believe it. How are we to make, how are we to hold C. in., § 6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 89 fast, true words ? We have nothing else in the shape of truth to offer to our fellow men as the offspring of our minds, but true words. But perhaps you may say, that words are also external things, and, therefore, in them- selves unknowable like other external things ; but here lies the difference between words and all other things external or internal. Man's words can be, and are at the same time, and at different times, both external and in- ternal things to different men. They can' pass and repass, along different mens' incarrying nerves, and back again, along their outcarrying nerves, and can be returned from man to man, reviewed, and accepted or rejected ; or altered and improved from age to age, as Man is per- mitted to approach nearer and nearer to the Truth. It is surely time, therefore, that our truths should receive some intelligible shape, and that our words should have some scientific value, some known and acknowledged stan- dard, to which men of science should conform. This is the first step in, and this is the real problem of all true philosophy. Let us now consider it. What is true nominalism ? What are man's words in truth ? 9 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. iv., § 1 . CHAPTER IV. THE PROBLEM OF PHILOSOPHY. — WORDS. (1.) Recapitulation. — Let us first recapitu- late the course of argument hitherto adopted. The reader will have perceived that, starting with the admission of ONE existence, which we called knowledge, and which we showed that no one could refuse to grant us, without self-con- tradiction, we, by deduction from this WORD, signifying the thing called knowledge, erected a Trinity of things — a mind, a thing, and a word; the three factors in knowledge, of necessity, following by deduction from our first assumption. But, as knowledge is itself plural, including your knowledge and mine, and that of every man and being in existence, C. iv., § 1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 91 we have three classes or categories, which we say are the names of all admitted existences, none of which can be denied to us by any man who speaks, without he contradicts himself, viz. — Minds or mental things ; Things or bodily things ; And words, signs, or symbols — verbal things. But, as minds and words are things, we are compelled, for clear speaking, to assume a new name for those things which are neither minds nor words ; and we shall call them bodies, so that our three classes are — mental things, bodily things, and verbal things, Minds, Bodies, and Words. We think and say, that nothing else can be known or thought of but these three and their relations. Being, by presumption, or for the sake of argument, altogether ignorant of these three things, of their likenesses, or their differences, or of anything about them, save only their necessary — that is, their never-ceasing and distinct — existence, deduced from the ne- cessary or never-ceasing nature or meaning 92 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. iv., § 1. of the existence first admitted, we did, as bound by the laws of science and of scepticism, treat them at first, as in reason, all alike, and up to the present time undistinguishable in their nature ; and, therefore, assumed neces- sarily like symbols for each, and called those symbols units. By this process of making or manufacturing words or symbols, we found ourselves at once in possession of one, two, and three units ; and thence by repeating the process as often as we please, adding unit after unit, and giving a new name at each step, we arrived at all numbers and at all symbolic arithmetic. Numbers are, therefore, merely accurate words or symbols, or names, for bundles of units or signs, made alike by men. Nine, or the number 9, means all the units m nine, and so of every number, as far as we choose to count. If arithmetic be knowledge, which it cer- tainly is, it consists merely of signs, symbols, or words, made alike by men ; one and one are two, two and one are three, three and one are four — thus giving a new name at each step. We thus wholly avoid all philosophic squab- C.iv.,§2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH, 93 bling about abstraction; for, starting with assumed ignorance of Minds, Bodies, and Words, we had nothing to abstract ; and as to likeness and classification, we actually make the likeness with our mouth, our pen, or our printer's ink. Thus, as Pythagoras did more than two thousand years ago, we began with numbers as the first foundation of all human truth and certainty — our first step in knowledge. (2.) Numbers are General Terms or Uni- versals. — Numbers, therefore, are what phi- losophers call general terms, universal words — meaning all the units in the number. Nine means all the units in nine, and ten all the units in ten ; and so of every number, it is a general term, a universal word, a sign, mark, name, or ticket to a bundle of units — by which word, sign, mark, or name, men know it again or make their fellow men know it, who are able to make and use the same words or signs, and to so count or build up numbers in the same way. The certainty of numbers is, therefore, the cer- tainty of human words or signs — units made alike by man's voice, and hands, and labour. 94 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. iv., § 2. We then spent a little time with the old logical dames, Barbara and Celarent, refuting a great logician's very transparent absurdity of found- ing the certainty of numbers on induction, which itself includes numeration or numbers, and is founded thereon ; and not unwillingly found ourselves ranged on the side of Plato and Newton, in opposition to Mill and Spencer. We have since glanced at those problems which have divided philosophers in all ages, and are still as unsettled as ever, not with a view of discussing them, which is not the object of this work, but in order to show the need of some newer and better foundation for building truth on than has hitherto been adopted. In short, I have intended to lead the reader up to the fence we have to get over in our hunt after truth — a fence more full of ugly places, where philosophers have attempted to cross and been lost, than any fence in England — viz., how we are to show by words and signs how words and signs are to he understood, how words are to have some fixed and necessary meaning amongst philosophers and searchers after truth. Civ., §3.] THE SCIExXCE OF TRUTH. 95 (3.) Whewell and Mill on Language. — Alas ! poor human nature has been groaning and sighing after truth for six thousand years, and for one grain of wheat she has got six bushels of chaff at least. But all knowledge, all science, all philosophy, that ever has ex isted, or that ever can, so far as we know, exist amongst men, must be thrown into words or human signs and symbols. Know- ledge, science, philosophy, without words, is an absurdity, a self-contradiction. So men set out with their words to build a tower to reach Heaven, and the result is a Babel. Is it not so, gentle reader, learned or unlearned, who has climbed after truth, or longed for truth to come out of the mist, at the top of the building, of learned or unlearned words ? Is the foundation yet laid ? We can neither teach nor learn without language, yet read the following sentence from one of the most able and most learned men in all England — learned in all the round of sciences, one whose own History of scientific ideas is calculated to do more to show us how truth and certainty has been, or can be reached than any modern 96 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.iv.,§3. work that I know of in English. Hear Dr. Whewell. " Language is often called an instrument of thought, but it is also the nutriment of thought, or rather it is the atmosphere in which thought lives : a medium essential to the activity of our speculative power, although invisible and imperceptible in its operations ; and an element modifying by its qualities and changes the growth and complexion of the faculties which it feeds." l Here, indeed, is a Protean character for Lan- guage ! Truth is simple, and there is a truth hidden under this Babel of symbols. Words, we are told, are an instrument, a nutriment, an atmosphere, an essential medium, an ele- ment, invisible, imperceptible in its action ; yet that action modifies man's faculties ! Is this the simplicity, the certainty of truth? Is it not passing strange that able and learned men should go on digging for gold with no better pickaxe than what Dr. Whewell so graphically describes as the language of science 1 Whewell, " Hist. Scien. Ideas." Book III., chap, x., vol. i., p. 286. Civ., §3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 97 and philosophy? And "the History of Science" is, he tells us, his Dictionary — rather an extensive dictionary to open and turn up, in order to understand this " nutritious, in- strumental atmosphere," or to arrive at the " invisible operations of this essential medium upon man's faculties." Hear Mr. Mill, on the other hand, his logical opponent ! " We think, indeed, to a considerable extent by means of names [words], but what we think of are the things called by those names. There cannot be a greater error than to ima- gine that thought can be carried on with nothing in our mind but names, or that we can make the names think for us." l But then names, mere denotatives, says Mr. Mill, have, "strictly speaking, no significa- tion" so that we think of things, and, to a considerable extent, by means of nothings, or things with no signification. Dr. Whewell describes a Proteus, an invisible air, modify- ing man's faculties. "Pugh!" says Mr. Mill, u general terms have no signification. This 1 Logic, i., p. 200. 8 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. iv., § 4. Proteus is, strictly speaking, nothing; but we think to a considerable extent by means of it, nevertheless." Here is a nice dispute about words and language between two of the ablest men in England, but the dispute is as old as philosophy itself. (4.) The Logical Result. — In such a philo- sophic dispute, if bound to choose, I should prefer siding with the man who, at least, does not contradict himself. Dr. Whewell says words are something, and adheres to it. Mr. Mill says they are nothing, and does not adhere to it ! This is the logical view of the dispute. But we are discussing the fun- damental meaning, not the logical use of words. Adam Smith said that we might give any man a fortnight to tell us the meaning of the word " of," and at the end we need hardly expect a rational answer. Home Tooke solved that problem by an induction, which induces most Englishmen to believe that all words were originally nouns or verbs. When we have got that length, it is very easy, and I say necessary, for a logician to reduce them all to nouns or names connected C.iv.,§5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 99 by the copula. John beats Harry, means only John is [a beater of Harry] . With the greatest deference to Dr. Whately and Mr, Mill, I venture to think " attributives" and " connota- tives " wholly out of place in logic, in all true mental reasoning, however needful they may be in order to translate our reasoning into ordinary language and grammar. The copula appears to me to express always existence or equality — i.e., a proposition or an equation. Analogy, or qualitative reasoning, is the equality of ratios. A ratio is clearly a mental existence. Lastly, by quantifying the predicate, in my opinion, every affirmative proposition can be reduced to an equation ; but to reduce a negative proposition may re- quire the impossible quantity. Having thus shortly alluded to the existing state of the science of words in England, by two great examples of its confusion, I proceed to demonstrate what words are in themselves, and in fact and truth — i.e., in true thought, if we are consistent in the use made of language by all men whomsoever. (5) All General Words are Numbers. — We F 2 100 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.iv.,§5. • have already demonstrated that arithmetical numbers are general terms, or universals, i. e., words signifying all the units comprised under the name. Ten means all the units in ten, and fifty all the units in fifty. Pure arithmetical numbers, therefore, are general terms, the only perfect ones in any language, each number is distinctly marked and separated from every other number, whether our numbers are formed on the binary, quinary, decimal, or any other system of arithmetic, and as far as ever we can count, i. e., till we choose to leave off. As all numbers are general terms, so I say all general terms are numbers. This is a truth which every peasant who ever spoke, as well as every philosopher who ever wrote cr spoke, has, I say, admitted, and must admit. Of course, as long as error exists, men must contradict themselves. All error may be reduced to self-contradiction, for we cannot reason with a man till he will admit some- thing, and the object of the true and faithful logician is to gain the admission of a truth from which the self-contradiction may be de- monstrated. But all philosophers have ad- C. iv., § 5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 101 mitted in man the power to generalize, or make general terms by abstraction. Now, the meaning of every general term, in every language under the sun, is, that it shall stand for and represent the class; the whole number of things called by the term or name. When- ever we use the word man or tree, we always, whether peasant or philosopher, mean the whole number of things called men or trees ; man means all mankind, the ivhole number of men who ever did, or do, or shall exist, referred to by the speaker. The same is true not only of visible bodily things, but of invisible mental things ; say, virtue or intellect. We mean by virtue the whole number of mental thoughts and acts called virtuous, or by intellect the whole number of mental powers or processes called intellectual. A class, kind, or family, is the whole number of units called by the name of the class. General terms or names, therefore, signify to every man who understands the language the whole number of the units of the class called by the general name. Every man who speaks intelligibly admits this; that every general 102 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. iv., § 5. or universal word is a number, the whole number, so called. But you will say, we don't know the arith- metical number of the class ! Well, what of that ? we did not know the number of the planets till Le Verrier and Adams discovered mathematically an invisible planet, and there are, no doubt, others yet undiscovered. But the word planet means all the planets that exist, not those only which we have seen with our telescopes, It means the whole number of planets going round our sun, whatever their number may be. This is a truth of words which every man in the world, savage and civilized, expressly admits. Every general term means and includes the whole number of units called by the general term. Let us hold this truth firm and fast, and keep it, and not contradict ourselves by using at one time our words, like all the rest of the world, to signify the whole number of things called by the name, and then say, like Mr. Mill, at another time, that our words are mere deno- tatives, and have, " strictly speaking, no sig- nification." This is self-contradiction; it is C. iv., § 6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 103 error, and not truth. It is, or seems to me, the fundamental error in Mr. Mill's Philo- sophy, the contradiction that confounds and confuses his mind. Well, then, a general word is a whole num- ber, and a number is a number of units. But the units meant by a word are not the units meant by a number, which we must now call an arithmetical number, to distinguish it from a verbal number. But still they are units. One man or one planet is a unit quite as much as one dot or one stroke, or as an arith- metical unit made on paper, and called one unit. The units of every word are different from the units of other words, but they are all units, men, trees, laws, or attributes; minds, bodies, words, or ratios, all are units, (6.) All General Terms are Products. — Now, as we made our arithmetical units alike by drawing strokes upon paper, for example; so we can make our verbal units alike by drawing words upon paper, which was com- monly called by the Greeks defining the general term. It is merely taking words, signs, or symbols, which we either make or see. 104 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.iv.,§6. If we look through distorted lenses or coloured spectacles, our units are likely to be drawn distorted or coloured. But it is the object of discussion to remove the spectacles, or say, for example, to remove the stereoscope, and show one solidity vanished, and two pictures, both flat, instead of one picture apparently quite solid. What passes for the most solid truth is sometimes altogether flat, stale, and unprofitable. If, for example, I say that every man is composed of body and mind, and that every man's mind is composed of soul and spirit, then, when I speak of mankind, I mean the whole number of units, each unit being com- posed of body -f- soul -J- spirit, that ever were or ever can be called men, and my word man, mankind, or men, means, and includes, and expresses all the bodies, all the souls, and all the spirits of mankind. Arithmetical units are simple units, but men are compound units. But each body is also a unit, and each soul is also a unit, and each spirit of man is also a unit, so that my word man, meaning the whole number of men, means the sum of the C. iv., § 6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 105 sums of these compound units, and that, I say, is a product, or man = body x soul x spirit, or a spirit into a soul into a body. This is clearly demonstrable. To the arithmetician who has properly learnt the grounds and elements of his science, I say that this is manifest. The summation of equal compound units is multiplication. Everybody knows that three times four means adding three fours — i. c, three compound units of four each — or four times three is adding four threes — i.e., four compound units of three each — that is, in multiplication to find the product we add compound units, in the one case of four, in the other case of three, therefore arithmetical numbers are bun- dles of simple units, and products are bundles of compound units ; and general words, or verbal numbers, are products of compound units. Of course the reader will understand that the choice of likenesses, family or class likenesses, which makes man ticket a bundle of such compound units with a name, word, or general term, depends entirely on the true or false perceptions which we have obtained of F 5 106 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. iv., § 7. one or more of the units. We can either choose what we believe to be true likenesses, as I have done in saying body, soul, and spirit for man, or else false likenesses, and find very little difficulty in making general terms to express our meaning. But we cannot leave well established likenesses out of well known and understood words, if we wish to be under- stood. Sometimes men do not wish to be understood, and more often the likenesses are neither well known nor well established. But no one can possibly deny the fact that every general term or name is a whole number, and is the product of the general terms which express the likenesses of the class of com- pound units called by the name. I subjoin at the end of this chapter, a more strict or scientific demonstration of this truth, which I first published nearly twenty years ago ; but the general reader will probably admit, as proved by the example above, that every general abstract term is the product of the abstract likenesses of its class of units. (7.) Denotatives and Connotatives, or At- tributives. — The distinction between denota- C. iv., § 7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 107 tives and connotatives, or attributives, ap- pears, to my mind, mere mental confusion. It introduces grammar into logic, and intro- duces into philosophy, secretly, and not openly, the notion " that one thing cannot be the attribute of another thing, that there is some fundamental and admitted contradic- tion or distinction between an object and its form, colour, or other attributes ; but if this be the fact, it should be proved, not assumed. It is quite true, that in ordinary language men distinguish between thoughts and things, between mental and bodily existences. But this distinction is the distinction between Minds and Bodies, and not a distinction in Words. All words, in logic, are at the same time denotatives and connotatives, and mean mental existences, i. e., mean at the same time both thoughts and things. And although a man chooses to say he is reasoning about ex- ternal bodily existences, or other men's mental existences, yet it is clear, as we have already shown and proved, that he is only reasoning, and can only reason, about what is in his own mind; about his own thoughts of such ex- 108 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.iv., §7. ternal bodily or mental existences, and not about the external existences themselves* But to assume as well founded an original distinction in words, and to call the names of some sensible objects different from other words called names of our ideas, or of con- noted or connotable attributes of such objects, is to enable the reasoner to assume at any time as well founded a distinction in the things themselves, i. e., between the visible or sensible objects and the mental likenesses or attributes we discover in and attribute to them. We say, therefore, that every name, whether general or individual, every word, whether universal or singular, has, in honest logic, some meaning, some thought, some idea attached to it, and is, at the same time, both denotative and connotative, and it denotes an existence solely by its connotative meaning. We can turn every word into an adjective, and be perfectly understood, so far as the meaning is fixed. This is true even of proper names singular ; Socratic, Platonic, Kantian, connote certain loose ideas of the individual's philosophy. So in any family, any peculiarity C. iv., § 7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 09 of the individual is attached to the individual name. Such expressions as " Coming John over me" would be perfectly understood if John had any peculiarity sufficiently marked to justify the expression ; and every indi- vidual has such peculiarities known to his intimate associates. All England rang for some years with the name of Burke, the murderer, and every kind of violent destruc- tion was for a time called " Burking." The Reform Bill was to be " Burked," &c. And, a fortiori, all general names are always at the same time both denotatives and connota- tives, and signify both thoughts and things. The distinction, in short, seems to me only a covert and secret way of quietly assuming a distinction between certain things and certain other things ; between some ideas of external objects, and some ideas of other objects, not objects of our external senses. If such distinction exists, it must be proved, not assumed, as a distinction of words. All words are names of things, and connote the ideas or thoughts which give rise to, or are attached to the things. All words are, in 110 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.iv.,§7. truth, the bodies or embodiment of thoughts, and it is as absurd and erroneous to treat words as being ever at any time mere marks or denotatives, as to treat the dead body of a man as being a man : to treat a dead body without a mind as a man, is, in truth, the same thing as to treat a word as a mere mark or denotative only. If a word ever becomes such, it is dead, it ceases to be a sign of any- thing whatever, it has become an empty and unmeaning sound, an unintellisribleNblot. It is the duty, therefore, of every one who reasons about words, to express the factoids which in his opinion go to form the words. If he says the word is simple and indecompo- sable, then he is bound to show how, or by what observation or experiment, the thought can be produced in his mind ; to show what act or what action of body or mind produces the thought to which he intends his word to be applied by his fellow men. Let us now proceed, if possible, to exhibit some examples of the theory of words which we have been endeavouring to establish. We have deduced the word or thought of number C. iv., § 7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 1 1 from our first assumption, and we say that time and space are thoughts, and can also be deduced from our first postulate, and that they are not, as Kant supposed, mere vague, unmeaning somethings ; forms of thought necessary to all other thoughts, and yet not thoughts themselves. We deny Kant's assumptions, and propose to substitute in their place some clear and definite ideas and thoughts to be attached to these mysterious words, as some philosophers have considered them, Number, Time, and Space. Note. — To prove this truth ; that every general term is the product of the general terms, which express the like- nesses of the class of compound units called by the name, to those philosophers who get over geometrical problems " by intuition from a figure" {vide Spencer's Psychology), I give the following demonstration by a figure. Let the following figure be any number of units arranged in equal sums — 1+1+1+1 + + + + 1+1+1+1 + + + + 1 +1+1 +1 &c. If we stop at any time and count the units in the horizontal and perpendicular lines respectively, we have any two mul- tipliers, say 4 and 3, and we have three sums of four each looking at the page as it now stands, and four sums of three 112 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.iv.,§7. each by turning the page sideways, therefore n X n' = n' x n, and by multiplication therefore we mean the addi- tion or summation of equal sums, i.e., the addition of the compound units called sums, when we say four times three or three times four, and a product is a sum of compound units. We here, it will be again observed, make our sums of compound units equal without abstraction, in pure numbers-, for we have nothing to leave out, nothing to abstract ; that is, having in the beginning made our units as nearly equal as we could, we are wholly ignorant of their differences. But if we learnt to count on our fingers, we should have to abstract or cut off the differences of our fingers of course, until we learnt to make equal signs ; or, if the number cannot be arranged in equal sums, then it is a product -f part of a compound unit. Now, the mind goes through the same process exactly with every abstract or general term whatever, in consider- ing the units alike, and all philosophers say, and truly say, we abstract by not attending to the differences, though they be wholly or partially perceived. They say the mind knows that one man differs greatly from another man, or one tree differs greatly from another tree, and that when we speak of man in general, or trees in general, we abstract or leave out of our consideration our knowledge of these indi- vidual differences, and attend to the likenesses only. All philosophers agree in this, and it is quite true, so let us put the process into a visible figure. Take the abstract word, man or mankind. Each man, we have said = body -f soul 4- spirit. That is, my word, for each man, means one body 4- one soul -f- one spirit + a difference, say, a longer body, or a greater soul, or a finer spirit, therefore : Differences. John = body + soul 4- spirit Thomas = body 4- soul 4- spirit all &c. &c. 4- &c. 4- &c. and abstracting by cutting off the differences, as we have done by the upright line, then : all men = all human spirits C. iv., § 7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 113 + all human souls + all human bodies, which words all, &c, are again sums of the compound units, body, soul and spirit, the abstract general words so called ; therefore our abstract or general term, Man = Body x Soul x Spirit ; the product of the general abstract terms body, soul, and spirit. Or taking letters, let A be an abstract term, and a a' a", &c, the units called by the name A; and let the like- nesses be expressed in the same manner by letters. We then have the whole class or abstract word A = all as = a = b + c + d + x + y + &c. a' = b' + c' + d' + x' + y' + &c. &c. = &c. And abstracting the differences known or unknown, as we have done by the upright line, we have all as = A = all bs -f- all cs + all ds = B. C. D., or the product of the abstract or general term B, into the abstract or general term C, into the abstract or general term D, for it is evident that the same process must be gone through with all the bs, and all the cs, and all the ds, therefore a = b + c + d, and the abstract general term A = B. CD, where B, C, D, are all also abstract terms. Therefore every abstract general term = the product of the like- nesses of a unit of the class ; such likenesses being them- selves considered in the abstract. This, therefore, is the whole difference between a number and an abstract word, the number is a number of simple units assumed to be like by man ; the word is a number of compound units, assumed like by man, and being com- pound, is the product of the abstract likenesses taken to form the class called by the name of the abstract term. If we had called man a rational animal, Man = Reason X Animal, and so for any other definition we please to give. Of course the reader will see that we ultimately arrive at the most abstract term known on the subject, which is itself X unity ; for example, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, affinity, polarity, matter, form, and so forth. We thus arrive at abstract terms indecomposable, so far as human knowledge has yet extended. 114 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.iv.,§7. Some may object that the proper representation of the abstract term A would be B + C + D, and not the product B. C. D ; but this would deny that the summation or ad- dition of compound sums is what we mean by a product, which I have first proved ; but, of course, the complication of verbal numbers is different from the multiplication of arithmetical numbers, because the units are different and the mental process is different, but yet the symbols may well be the same. And all difficulty perhaps is removed by con- sidering or assuming each compound unit not as a sum but as a, product of its likenesses; or a=b. c. d, and the abstracted differences as additions to a product — i.e., a = b. c. d -}- x, and abstracting the x then A=B. C. D. Perhaps, still more properly speaking, it should be said that A varies as, or is a function of the product, B. C. D. This function depends, of course, on the internal relations of b. c. d — the likenesses which produce the general word; but logically, we cannot distinguish between a product and the unknown function of a product. Thus, for example, the great discoveries of Newton were simply these — viz., that force is the product, M. S. ~r, or of Mass into the Space divided by the Time; and that gravity is the product of M. =— or of Mass divided by the Distance squared. The definition of knowledge given in the T text should be written thus, M. T ^, where M is not matter, W but mind, and T. and W. things and words. For knowledge increases with the powers of mind and with the number of things, but does not increase, but diminishes with the number of human words or signs required to express the knowledge. In self-knowledge, of course, the whole three become unity. And so, as stated in the text, this thought of the compo- sition or product of self-knowledge does not violate the unity of the Godhead, when we consider it as a Trinity in Unity. C. v., § 1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 1 5 CHAPTER V. NUMBER, TIME AND SPACE. (1.) The Foundations of Verbal Truth. — We have demonstrated, beyond cavil, as we trust, if such a thing be possible, that every number is a general term, and every general term a number ; that the arithmetical number is a word, sign, or symbol, signifying a sum, or ticketed bundle of simple units ; and that a word, general name, or verbal number is a 'product, or ticketed bundle of compound units. Every man who speaks and understands the rudiments of arithmetic and reason, must admit our conclusions so far. What we have written will probably meet with two classes of opponents : the haughty scoffer, the idly indifferent ; those who will 116 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.v.,§l. ridicule what they will not understand, or cannot answer ; and those thoughtless ones who might stand at the brink of the deep foundations of some lofty building, on some low and level plain, and exclaim, what elabo- rate folly and trifling ! what waste of good materials ! lime, sand, and sifted stone thrown in deep below ground, where none will ever be able to see or use it. We cannot build safelv without a firm foundation ; but when a messenger knows his message to be true and important, he can stand the sneers and the jeers of a million of fellow beings. To such there is no reply, but charity, and pity, and love unfeigned. The thoughtless who ought to think, but never yet have thought, who skim their Paley or Coleridge, and have never felt any spiritual anxiety to settle the moral truth, or to solve the differ- ence, the life and death difference, between them ; or who read Whewell or Mill without any intellectual desire to know whether scientific truth is founded on induction or deduction; to these we would say, rouse yourselves, and strive to understand the im- C. v., § 1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 117 portance, the deep, the rational, the spiritual importance, the eternal importance of man's words, the words he uses or abuses, the words by which he will be judged ! judged as surely as there is a living God in or near to every one of us. Yes, God in or near ! that is the question which all of us have to answer for our- selves, each of us alone in his secret chamber, now, or at all events on his death bed. Is He in or near us ? What do your words really mean ? that is the hardest question ever put to man, and, reader, you must answer it for yourself, for no other man on earth can answer it for you, either now or hereafter. We may have a form of words, a form of godliness ; there is one in some of our hands once every week, and those who do not use the form, often profess to have more of the reality ; and what do we really mean by those words we use, or that thing we pray for, when we say on Sunday, " Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of Thy Holy Spirit." There is a use and meaning, as well as an abuse and no-meaning, of such words as inbreathing, inspiration, &c. It is better not 118 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. v., § 2. to use them at all, than to have no meaning to them. It is more honest to scoff openly, than to act the hypocrite, and scoff secretly on your knees in your heart. It is not neces- sary to confound the Creator with the creature, whether a thing or a person, to believe in idolatry or in Pantheism, or in the last Lo here! or Lo there ! yet it is necessary to believe that Christians u are builded together for an habi- tation of God through the Spirit." It is necessary to believe that " your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit," which God will give to those w 7 ho ask Him, " that Spirit of Truth which shall testify of Christ," and which he promised to send from the Father to dwell with man on earth. It is necessary to believe in the Word of God. (2.) Scientific Truth Requires a New Con- vention in Language. — We turn, however, to the scientific, and leave the moral question, what do our words really mean? I have shown you what they are ; true or false num- bers, of true or false units, and every man in the world admits this, or contradicts himself. But what do they really mean ? It is no use C. v., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 1 9 saying that general words are numbers, and that numbers are general words ; that is as bad as saying or thinking that induction is founded on numbers of instances, and num- bers on induction, per enumtrationem sim- plicem ! as if a little Latin would make sense of nonsense, or authorise a logician to beat round the bush in that way, and then pretend that he has caught the bird. Such logic, however, might get you the name of a very advanced thinker at Westminster. The reader will perceive that I am using very ordinary English words, and as far as I can in the ordinary and conventional mean- ings, so that every Englishman can under- stand what 1 say. But I have long ago candidly avowed that my scientific theory and conventional practice are entirely opposed to one another. I avow the inconsistency in express words, and I have shown you that it is the established convention of mankind, that in order to be intelligible you must be thus in- consistent. But I intend, God willing, to show how both you and I may, if we choose, avoid such inconsistency as far as our intellectual 120 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. v., §2. faculties and our moral qualities will enable each of us, i. e., better for the future, I hope. It is of no use, and very absurd to oppose or set oneself to violate the common conven- tion of all mankind in the use of words ; it is a breach of the original agreement made in infancy by us all, when we were taught our mother tongue. The agreement then made is made by all peoples, savage and civilized, in order to render themselves intelligible, viz., that ordinary words shall be signs or symbols of external things ; i. e., of things external to the mind of the speaker. It is also of no consequence to our argument, how language first began ; whether with such words as buzz, or whizz, or tick, or crack, to express verbs ; or with such words as cuckoo, and whip-poor- will, to express things. We have a language, and speak it under the implied condition and agreement to make our- selves intelligible to our fellow speakers. The original condition, convention, or agreement of all mankind, is that my word thought shall be deemed to be a sign or symbol, not only of the thought in my mind, but of the thought C. v., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 121 in the mind of other men also, and that your word thought shall mean the same thing. This agreement may have arisen from men having occasion at first chiefly or only to speak of ex- ternal visible things, and not of internal minds, and so settling the laws of language, that they could not be conveniently altered to suit in- ternal nature when it came to be spoken of. The fact is so, whatever the cause may have been. However, from Plato downwards, phi- losophers have been trying to get out of this law, of words meaning external things, by trying to make words mean not external things, but internal things ; ideas, sensations, reflections, impressions, perceptions, concep- tions, intuitions, &c, &c, &c, confusing and contradicting each other, till so far as meta- physics and philosophy are concerned, the old joke of those witty Greeks is still as true as ever; that philosophy, the science of sciences, is merely the profitable process of milking the animal that never gives milk into the pail that has no bottom ! True philo- sophy, says one of the ablest of modern metu- G 122 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. v., § 2. physicians, is still Plato, truly understood and false philosophy is still Plato misunderstood. 1 The game of words is still as lively as ever, and truth and certainty as far off as ever. The convention and agreement of the whole world, however, is that words in ordinary speaking and writing, shall mean things ex- ternal to the mind ; but the conclusion and conviction of all those intelligent philosophers from Plato downwards, with whom I agree, is that words do not and cannot mean things external to the mind, but things in the mind; and this, whether the words are to be classed with the words animal or tree, having, as we believe, external phenomena to represent ; or are to be classed with the words thought and memory, representing no external phenomena whatever, and having no external image to represent that we know of, or believe to exist anywhere, unless we accept Plato's theory of thoughts in the Divine mind. But the con- clusion is self-evident to any one who thinks, that so long as man's mind is clothed with a 1 Archer Butler. C. v., § 2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 123 body such as you and I have, my mind can never enter into, or be compared with your mind, and your mind can never into or be compared with my mind, and that we can only compare the sounds, signs, symbols, the words we mutually adopt and use to em- body our respective minds or thoughts, and that this old, original, and continuing conven- tion of mankind, as to language, is, therefore, false in fact. But we say also, that no truth has ever yet been arrived at until the old con- vention has been clearly abandoned, and some new verbal convention made and agreed to. If an arithmetician were asked what number is meant by the symbol 101, he would answer, I cannot tell till I know the basis of the system. It may mean 5, on the binary sys- tem ; or one hundred and one on the decimal system ; or one hundred and forty-five, on the duodecimal ; or many other numbers on other systems ; and he would laugh at the man setting to work to convince him that it mast mean one hundred and one, or any par- ticular number ! But the basis of an arith- metical system is merely the new original G 2 124 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.v., §3. convention or agreement on which the lan- guage of arithmetic, the arithmetical signs or symbols are to be understood, the units in all cases being conceived to be simple, or, as we have said, made so. Numbers being the sim- plest and most perfect general terms in lan- guage, have become the measure or make-sure of all other strictly scientific or accurate words. And no things whatever can be found to fall into the domain of strict and pure science until they are reduced to, and measured by numbers, which themselves are the just mea- sures of spaces and times, and all other things by which we measure. (3.) TJie Certainty of Numbers from the Senses. — Now, it is well worthy of observation, that Numbers are given to us by all our five senses. We can distinguish three distinct tastes, or three distinct smells, or three dis- tinct sounds, as well as touches or sights ; so that as long as any one sense remains, the human mind could form numbers from the senses, by considering sensations distinct and equal. All knowledge must begin with sen- sation. '• He that has no sensation/' said C. v., § 3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH . 125 Aristotle, long ago, " can neither learn nor know anything." But as we have already so often said, Numbers, or their truth or cer- tainty, cannot be founded without self-con- tradiction on any induction from numbers of instances ; for induction already supposes numbers in the mind. The certainty of num- bers, like all other human certainties, is from deduction only, depending on the certainty of the original assumption, the truth and equality of the units assumed. In the case of numbers the certainty depends on our own making and assuming our units perfectly equal. Their truth and certainty is the truth and certainty of human existence and of the human capacity to speak. Units are equal signs, because they are made equal by us not to our minds only, but to our senses, as many as we can apply to them. Numbering, of course, includes an act of the mind, because mind is & factor in all knowledge, and we recognise numbers and their relations as knowledge, and use them as the measures of everything. But we draw no conclusion by induction, but make our numbers by deduction one by one, 126 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.v.,§4. and show others how to do so. Each number being, ab origine, wholly distinct, and clearly separated from every other, and strictly de- duced from the preceding ones. (4.) Number, Space, and Time.— As general terms or universals have been the battle-field of philosophy and logic in all ages, so the things called Number, Time, and SPACE, have generally been amongst the chief windmills which each philosophic hero in turn pro- ceeded to encounter with his lance of verbal logic. Mr. Mill, for aught I know, is the first philosopher who denied their existence altogether. Numbers in the abstract he thinks are nothing, and infinite Space a mere superstition ! but I am not aware whether he has clearly expressed his opinion to his coun- trymen about time and immortality ; whether they are anything, or nothing but the bug- bears of priests to frighten women and chil- dren, or merely the phantasms with which Christian philosophers confuse their brains. It is quite as rational, in my opinion, to deny one's own existence as to say that the numbers, the words which we ourselves make C. v., §5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 127 as names for units, which we ourselves also make equal and alike with our mouths, or our pens, are nothings ! The certainty and truth of Numbers depends on the certainty and truth of our own existence, and our ability to give like names, and make like marks. From the first existence we assumed — viz., knowledge — we have deduced them strictly and without any induction. Their truth and certainty depend on deduction from our first assumption, and not on any induction whatever. The certainty and truth of the things called Time and Space is precisely the same, for they also, we think, may be strictly deduced from our first assumption. It is easier, and indeed, more rational to deny the existence and reality of the external world without us, than to deny the existence and reality of that internal world which each of us feels and investigates for himself. Dog- matic idealism is, if possible, more rational than modern concrete materialism, though both are logically self-contradictory to the human mind. (5.) Time deducible from our first assump* 128 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.v.,§5. tion. — As Numbers were deduced by merely adding like sign to like sign, and giving them names for ever, or as long as we please, or till we are tired; so that in fact Numbers fall into our third category as words or verbal things, synthetically built up and manufactured ; so, we say, Times are mental things, made alike by the phenomena being recognised by our minds, and enumerated by numbers. In Time we add like thought to like thought, and number them ; and so we can go on, as long as we please, to have and produce the sense of Time, by using numbers to measure, make-sure, or v record our Times, or like thoughts. Let us consider this a little carefully. As Numbers are bundles of ones, so Times are bundles of seconds ; one two ; one two ; or the tick tack; tick tack of the pendulum. We number the thoughts which like things cause in the mind. The recurrence and num- bering of like days and like nights, the recurrence and numbering of like solar ap- pearances, the recurrence or numbering of any like thoughts; that combination produces our C.v., §5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 129 sense of Time. However the thoughts are produced in the mind, if they are alike, we remember the former one, and with the second, the thought of time is produced. In short, as we obtained and deduced our num- bers from like words, so we obtain and deduce our times from like minds. The recurrence or numbering of like mental states, the repe- tition or numbering of like mental pheno- mena, in short, the enumeration of like minds, thoughts, ideas, perceptions, or mental states produces the sense of Time in every man's mind. Here we cannot appeal to our external senses for the likeness of the units of Time, for the unit of Time is a mental existence; but we appeal to each man's internal sense whether it is not the positive undeniable fact, that like mental phenomena produce in him the sense of Time. Therefore we say that we deduce Time from like minds, and make sure of, or measure our Time, by means of our first deduction, viz., Numbers, or like units. The 4th Proposition of Euclid, to use an ex- ample by way of analogy, is an appeal to every g 5 130 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.v„§5. man's geometrical sense ; that if two pairs of equal straight lines make equal angles, they may be superimposed so as to coincide alto- gether ; and the ends of the bases of the two triangles coinciding, then by the postulate or axiom that two right lines cannot enclose a space, we conclude that the two triangles are altogether equal. Much dispute, no doubt, for nearly 2,000 years, has been wasted on this fundamental proposition by puzzled headed logicians and philosophers, as to whether the reasoning is legitimate and lawful. But there it stands, and it satisfies every man who has any geo- metrical sense, and understands the definitions and axioms. Never, in the course of my ex- perience, did I hear or see a boy try by in- duction from a number of instances whether it was true in some cases and not in others ; but I have seen many boys who had no geome- trical sense whatever, and could not by any means be brought to see any geometrical de- duction whatever. So one finds boys and men who never get to understand the extension and comprehension of a term in logic, or how C.v., §5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 131 they vary inversely, or the logical force of the clearest syllogism. But the world is not to stand still for dullards, nor can we possibly admit Mr. Herbert Spencer's abominable non sequitur, that of an intuition, from the crooked asses' bridge before him, to all the straight asses' bridges that ever were, or can be, thought of. We were taught how to think geometrically, and how to get over the asses' bridge without any figure whatever, and without having any kind of definite or per- ceptible figure in the mind. I don't call, and refuse to call this, a habit, for the same reason that I don't call Seeing a habit. It is a sense, a Divine gift ; an original power and faculty. It is a fact, no doubt, that many men, intelli- gent and even able on other subjects, have no geometrical sense, just as some men have no sense of Sight. Such unfortunates never saw the force and beauty of geometrical reason- ing, or possibly of the syllogistic reasoning to which Euclid reduced it. But we can no more reason with such men about the force of geometrical reasoning, than we can reason with a blind man about colours. 132 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.v.,§5. But precisely as the 4th Proposition of Euclid makes an appeal to the geometrical ' sense of mankind; so do I appeal to the general human sense of Time. What is Time in the mind ? Think ! Have you any sense of time when the mind is thoroughly busy and occupied ? No ! Time has past unseen and unfelt. But if we look up and see the old familiar scene, a stroke of Time has struck, and we look at our watch. Whenever the same, that is, a second like state of mind occurs, or is forced on us, that is Time, and realizes or produces our sense of Time. To my mind, Time seems the negative of perfect mind. It is the obstruction to thought by the familiar sound, or sight, or other material interference with pure thought, which, as it were, compels the mind, enclosed in a body, to take in once more the old familiar state or thought, and so to feel a second of Time. However, it has forced itself clearly on my mind ; and I trust will force itself also on the mind of the reader ; that the only true view of Time is as the negative of perfect mind, and C.v.,§5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 133 that times are simply enumerated like states of mind produced by like phenomena, causing a repetition, or enumeration of old familiar thoughts in the human mind. There are two acknowledged facts that strongly support this conclusion : 1st. How short and imperceptibly time passes to the mentally active ; 2nd. How long time is to the man of one idea ; the same thought constantly recurring, and forcing the mind to repeat itself, and remember the one thing, and so number many like thoughts, for example, grief, sickness, remorse, fear. God deliver us from an eternity of remorse ! Times wasted, followed by Times remembered. It is unscientific and dangerous to truth, to assume anything you can trace higher ; and cer- tainly, when Kant assumed that Time was not thought, but a necessary form, or something inexplicable, necessary to thought ; when he said, " Time is given cl priori" it is not satis- factory to my mind, and he himself is un- certain ; as, in one passage, he seems to make number generate time, and in another, time generate number. 1 It seems, however, to my 1 Ante note p. 45. Mr. Mansel, whose study of pure 134 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.v.,§5. mind, very clear, that Time is thought ; it is thoughts enumerated, and as Numbers are bundles of like words, so Times are bundles of like minds, i.e., like states of mind or thoughts numbered. And I submit this fact to the sense of Time, of the thoughtful and candid reader; and whether I have not strictly- deduced Time from my original assumption, mathematics does not seem to have been of the very deepest, says, " Pure arithmetic contains no demonstration." And again, " Arithmetic is related to Time as Geometry to Space." And again, "To construct the science of arith- metic, in all its essential features, it is only necessary that we should be conscious of a succession in Time, and should be able to give names to the several members of the series." — Metaph., p. 256 — 258. To my mind, it might just as reasonably be said, that arithmetic is related to Virtue, as to Time. We number Virtues, and we number Times ; but we never time numbers. So we number spaces, but we never space, or attribute space to numbers. What can be meant by saying " Pure arithmetic contains no demon- stration " passes all comprehension, for it is all unan- swerable demonstration from first to last; demonstration to the senses and to the understanding. Possibly Mr. Mansel only learnt his multiplication table, and found there that 3 times 4 are 12, and never was shown any demon- stration of that fact, or that multiplication is only a short way of doing addition or numeration ; and the Times in the multiplication table have, by association of name, got con- founded in his mind with the sense of Time ; or he may think he is carrying out Kant's notion of Time generating Number, whatever that may mean. v C.v.,§6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 135 and lawfully and unanswerably included it, in my category of Mental things. (6.) Space Dedncible from the First As- sumption. — Whatever doubt the reader may have about my deduction of Time from num- bers of like thoughts, I really think he can have very little doubt but that every man's thought of Space is gained from number and time and the negative of body. It seems to me a most gratuitous and unfounded assumption to say with Kant, that Space is a form, or original something, we know not what, necessary to enable us to think of body or anything else. Put three bodies touching, and then — i.e., in time — take the middle one away, and every man would say, that is the space the body occupied. We first think Body, but our unit of Space is mentally deduced from it after- wards by number and time. The absence of body and its possible or actual return. — The emptiness left at any time between two bodies — that is, a unit of Space ; but deduced from several bodies, going and returning — i.e., being or not being numbered in Time. Thus we have our units of Space, 136 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.v.,§7. or spaces, as bundles of like negative bodies, or the same body, absent in time, and its returns capable of being numbered. (7.) The Infinity of Number, Space, and Time. — Hence, I think, Number, Time, and Space may be strictly deduced from our first conception of knowledge, as the product of minds, bodies, and words. True and accurate Science must ever be formed by assuming the least possible number of original conceptions, as the foundation of our reasoning, and thence deducing as strictly as possible, by unan- swerable reasons, the more complicated and recondite conceptions consistent with fact. The admission of the first existence as- sumed, viz., knowledge, gave us three ex- istences — mind, body, word. The assumption of the acknowledged human power, to make like sounds or like marks, equal units, gave us from these three, all numbers to infinity — i.e., without possible reason to stop, without end, or, as we say, Infinite Number. Numbers of like minds, like states of mind, gave us Time ; and, of necessity, the infinity of Number became applicable to our numbered times, C.v.,§7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 137 and gave us thence Infinite Time, which is only the Infinite Number of days, or seasons, or years, or limited times. Lastly, Body and Number, and Time for absence and return, gave us limited space, as the negative of limited body, numbered once in time and gone to return or not, as time may show ; but having got one limited space and Number, Infinite Space is only the infinity of Numbers applied to limited space. We thus have attempted, with what success, the candid and philosophic reader must judge, to deduce Number, Time, and Space — the three great measures of all external things known to man — from our first conception or assumption of Knowledge, as some single unknown Ex- istence granted and admitted by the reader. We have already observed that pure geo- metrical conceptions are deducible from the undeniable fact of the impenetrability of Body or matter giving to our reason a Surface which we can touch, but whose thickness is beyond our senses — i.e., nothing that we can measure; and having obtained a geome- trical surface, we get lines without breadth, 138 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.v., §8. as its limits, and points, without dimensions, as the limits of lines, all of which are necessary deductions from Body and Space. The most abstract conception of all Know- ledge, that I can form, is as the product of Mind upon all mental things, bodily things, and verbal things, expressed in words and registered in the Mind itself by numbers, times, and spaces. (8.) The Certainty of Deduction and Scep- ticism. — I submit that this deduction of Number, Space, and Time is a strict de- duction, by reasons which no man can contro- vert, founded on the first admission or assump- tion. It is strict demonstration to the mind, how our knowledge of minds, bodies, and words, not only may be, but must be, synthe- tically built up and accumulated step by step, if we desire to be accurate. Each of these steps, as well as the first assumption, no rational being can deny, without self-contra- diction. It seems to me much more rational, and I hope I have made it more satisfactory to the reader, to proceed thus step by step, than to assume such deep ideas as Number, C.v., §8.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 39 Space, and Time, a priori, as somethings, one does not know what, forms of thought ; things necessary to enable us to think at all ; or, still worse, as Kant proposed, to assume Time and Space, as fundamental ideas, " ne- cessary forms of experience ; " and to neglect Number, the very origin of all human truth and certainty, and of all our truest thoughts of the illimitable Infinite. Such Assump- tions, lying at the foundation of all thought, or alleged by a great philosopher to do so, enables any sceptical philosopher to blow the whole fabric to pieces, by denying the assumptions with more or less probability; and then, confusing all thoughts by calling Number and Space non-entities, the Sceptic ends by denying the accuracy of the foun- dation of the plainest and clearest truths that man has built up, from the days of Pythagoras and Plato to those of Newton and La Place. The denial creates doubt, and confusion, and difficulty in weaker minds. Even though the sceptic himself should be self-compelled to exhibit his own absurdity, and to substitute the magnificent inductions ; that night is the 1 40 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. v., § 9. true cause of day, unless it be that day is the true cause of night ; in short, that " the evi- dence of the scientific is built upon the unsci- entific," and that the Cause of all things is " the uniform sequence of events," from which it is undistinguishable ; that Law and Cause are one and the same, and the Universe a concourse of atoms, acting and reacting on each other, caused by nothing ! that the First Great Cause has retired, and delivered over his handiwork to a " great plurality of causes," or to " no cause at all !" (9.) The Conclusion. — Thus we say that numbers are only accurate words — the first, the simplest, and the most accurate that man possesses. So far as man is able to count, that is, to make numbers, he can never mis- take one number for another. A man who can count to 20, can never mistake 1 9 for 20. But if he can only count to 3, then he can never mistake 1 for 3, or 2 for 1. So if he can count to 100, or a million, or a nonillion, or chooses to give names to any higher num- ber, he can never mistake or confound one number for another. If he does, we say, he C.v.,§9.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 141 has forgotten how to count, and other men have no difficulty in setting him right. Num- bers, therefore, are true and certain words and symbols, made true and certain by man's own manufacture demonstrated to eye and ear. Man ought to be master of his own words at least. " What hast thou that thou didst not receive?" said St. Paul. If it be not our own use of our own mother tongue, I cannot answer the question. But, for my part, I see nothing very absurd in supposing that even this usage may have been received from another Spirit. Evil communication corrupts good manners of speech, as well as all other good manners. However, numbers are the measures or make sures of both space and time. But Number, Space, and Time, may be considered as great Units ; and then are considered as infinite number, infinite space, and infinite time, be- cause, as we find our numbers can never end, and that we can apply numbers, or are forced to recognise numbers in measuring limited times and spaces, and as strictly applicable to space and time, we carry the infinity or never 142 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.v.,§9. endingness of numbers to both of them. We thus reach the conception of Three infinite never-ending Units — Number, Space, and Time. Number is infinite words, Time is infinite thoughts, Space is the mental con- clusion from infinite bodies. Thus are the three deep conceptions of Number, Time, and Space, included in our three classes or cate- gories of rainds, bodies, and words. Ever since man first tasted that fatal tree of Knowledge, no man can, without contra- dicting himself, deny the existence of some knowledge. The admission of some know- ledge necessarily implies Minds, Bodies, and Words. One, two, three, gives us Number to infinity. The negative of perfect Mind is Time; the negative of Infinite Body is Space. The Infinity of both the last, is the same as the Infinity of numbers. The man who denies infinite Time or infinite Space must deny infi- nite Number, must deny his own words, must deny his own body, or must deny his own mind, must deny our first postulate, that knowledge exists, must deny the one Great God of Truth C.v.,§10.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 143 frotn whom all truth is derived. To his own master he standeth or falleth.* (10.) Kant's Forms of Thought. — Kant's notion that Space and Time must be assumed, as given & priori, and are the necessary forms of all pure cognition, is therefore evi- dently erroneous, for the one sufficient reason that he forgot Number. What is a number, if not a word deduced as I have described ? At all events, a number occupies neither Space nor Time. We think a number quite inde- pendently of both space and time. It is first, and independent of both. In what place does the number three exist, or in what time? We apply number to spaces and times, but not Space or Time to Number. Three is a thought in your mind, and my mind, and in every intelligent mind that ever did or can exist; but it occupies no space, it endures 1 Mr. Bain, in his able work on the " Senses and Intellect," has justly remarked that " Space might be conceived in the absence of an external world from the body's own move- ment in empty space, from the muscular movement." Man's own body is positive, and space is the negative, and is rendered positive by occupation of it by body. This seems our simplest thought of space, viz., thoughts of numbered movements of our own bodies. 1 44 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. v., §10. through no time. It is eternal and nedfes- sary; and so of every other number — it can never change. The meaning of the word three, and of every other number, is a cogni- tion, and utterly independent of both Space and Time — a cognition never-ceasing, un- changeable, eternal. If it even be said that the human mind cannot conceive three until it has spent Time in counting it, or learning it from three bodies, or fingers, or spaces in external nature, that may show the defect, or imperfection, or infancy of the human mind, or even that the human mind itself exists in Space and Time, but surely does not affect the meaning, thought, or pure cog- nition of the number three. Kant himself, as we have observed, is dubious between number and time. Dr. Whewell is also dubious. He seems to derive Number from Time by the idea of succession, but admits that some may ap- prehend Number by a direct act of intuition. 1 But succession is number in Time. He sug crests that " Space, Time, Number, Cause, and the rest, 1 " Hist. Scien. Ideas," bk. ii., ch. ix., vol. L, p. 143. C. v., § 10.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 145 may be termed different forms of the impulse of the mind to generalize!" 1 This, of course, is multiplying assumptions d priori, and not reasoning from them, and worsens the defect of his master Kant. However, I claim Dr. Whewell to be on my side ; or rather, I wish to say, with sincere humility, that I claim to be on his side when he is right. In his "Nov. Org. Renov.," 2 he says, " To count a num- ber, is from the first opening of man's mental faculties an operation which no science can render more precise. The relations of Space are nearest to those of Number, in obvious and universal evidence." — " The idea of resem- blance may be noticed as coming next to Space and Number in original precision." — " Then Cause, vague and general." — u But the other ideas on which science depends, are not un- folded till a much later period of intellectual progress." Also, at p. 171, he seems to admit that the true course of scientific ideas begins with Number. He is writing history, but I am deducing thought ; and Science has 1 "Hist. Scien. Ideas," bk. ii., ch. ix., vol. i., p. 146, n. 2 Page 62. H 146 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.v.,§10. grown by fits and starts irregularly. It is man's business to reduce his thoughts to order. Other metaphysicians improve on the defects of these great examples, by multiplying such defects more and more, assuming as many intuitions as there are thoughts which they like as principles ; and think their ipse dixit of an intuition a sufficient reason for its being granted as a fundamental principle of the human mind. 1 At last comes Mr. Spencer, who arrives at the climax of absurdity, by insisting on an intuition for every problem of Euclid, by which intuition he jumps to a conclusion, from the crooked figure he makes on the paper before him, to all the straight figures which ever did or can exist ! A species of seqidtur, which, no doubt, induced Newton to write in his Euclid, u Hie Liber aut nullns decies repetitus amatur" whence, by an in- tuition, quite as well founded, I might con- clude, Homo est bipes implumis — i.e., "an unfathered biped," as a Scotchman might pro- nounce it, and created by a concourse of atoms ! 1 Dr. Mc Cosh on Intuitions. C.v.,§ll.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 147 (11.) The Trinity of the Human Mind. — Our first standpoint was the deduction of a Threefold in our first Cognition, which we proved that nobody could refuse to admit. We have now reached another remarkable position. We have arrived by deduction, d, priori, from our original assumption of some knowledge as an existing thing, at Number, Space, and Time — the three great measures of all bodily existences under the sun. Having reached this very remarkable standpoint, we submit that we have reached our first stage in the true philo- sophy of minds, bodies, and words. Plain reason confutes the errors of scepticism, and establishes that logical Trinity, which has been dimly seen by some of the greatest and most thoughtful metaphysical reasoners, that the world has produced, from Plato to Newton, both included. This, Trinal symmetry in Unity, is the fun- damental law of the human Mind, the dimmed image of its Maker. Man cannot reason cor- rectly without confessing in words, logically, the greatest of all revealed truths. The human mind is also one, but it also has three com- II 2 148 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.v.,§ll. ponent factors, which all metaphysicians, more or less, have dimly perceived — Emotion, In- tellect, Will ; or Passions, Faculties, Senti- ments ; or the Sense, the Understanding, and the Reason — that higher Reason which domi- nates, directs, and purifies. The admission of one Existence does, of necessity, according to the constitution of man's mind, necessarily ad- mit and pre-suppose three original existences ; three Beings, not the parts, but the Factors, the Persons, the component Units in that Divine Unity. The very first step in knowledge, the very first cognition that man can possibly make, does logically confess this great truth, of three units, factors in unity — -the truth, which was, in the fulness of time, to be re- vealed in all its moral significance in the writings of humble and ignorant Jewish Peasants. Thus is the Moral Majesty and Wisdom of God vindicated, by confuting the hesita- ting wisdom of the world by the simplicity of the humble ; by directing their words, not to the intellectual, but to the moral, to truths higher than the intellect; enlarging, and C.v.,§12.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 149 extending, and raising, and purifying the thoughts of philosophers, by the moral thoughts revealed to the ignorant, and re- vealed in words, without the form of the logician, or the worldly skill of human sci- ence, but confirmed by man's highest Reason. " I thank thee, Heavenly Father, Lord of heaven and earth," said the man Jesus, re- joicing in Spirit, " that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them unto babes ; even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight." This is true Revelation, where the highest moral truths are not discovered by philoso- phers, but are proclaimed openly and plainly as God's truth, by the peasant, not in the words of man's wisdom, but so that the most wise and the most ignorant of human kind can equally hear or read, and morally understand, and therewith enlarge, elevate, and improve their emotions, intellect, and will. (12.) The Scientific Expressions Esta- blished. — The conclusions we have deduced from our first assumption, that knowledge exists, are these — The thought of the Self- 150 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. v., § 12. Knowledge of the First Existence is to man, necessarily, a Trinity in Unity, and a Unity in Trinity. Which is a logical confession of man's humility and ignorance of the consti- tution of the Godhead, save as a Threefold Unity. Human Knowledge = Mind into Thing, into Word = the product of Minds, Bodies, and Words. All things known to man consist of Mental , Bodily , Verbal Things • Things » Things. A number is a named sum of simple units ; A general word or Universal is a named pro- duct of compound units. Infinite Number is Unity into Infinity, or the product of one and infinity, or never-ending- ness. Infinite Time is Number into Mind, or the product of thoughts and infinite number. And Infinite Space is Number into Body, into Time, or the product of infinite Numbers of Bodies in Time. These three great infinite abstract words or C.v., §12.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 151 thoughts are strictly formed according to the rule in the last chapter — viz., as the products of the likenesses of the individual units of the class. Thus the likenesses which each number has to other numbers are the units it is com- posed of, and the power to go on and take an- other and another step that is never-endingness or infinity. Therefore, the Great Abstract Term, Number, is the product of unity and infinity. So the likeness which each unit of Time has to another time, is numbers or suc- cessions of like minds, thoughts, or states of mind. Therefore, by our rule, in the last chapter, the Great Abstract, Time, is the product of the two factors, Number and Mind or thoughts. So the likeness which each unit of space has to every other unit of space, is the suc- cessive possibility of a body in time filling it. That successive possibility of interaction, be- tween Body, and Time, removing and restoring it, is our conception of the unit of Space; and, therefore, by our rule in the last chapter, the Great Abstract Word, Space, is the pro- 5 2 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. v., § 12. duct of the three factors — Number, and Time, and Body, i.e., — Space = Number x Time x Body. But in this product body is negative. It is absence in time between numbers of other bodies, that produces our idea of Space. So I think the repetition of like thoughts, or Time is the negative of perfect Mind, and therefore, Time and Space are both originally negatives, but not therefore non-entities. Now, if we substitute in the above equa- tion for Space, the value of Time, already established, we should have Infinite Number twice over, or numbers upon numbers, and Mind and Body; and we thus arrive at an expression for infinite Space, as being equi- valent to infinite numbers upon numbers of minds and bodies ! We arrive, in fact, by deduction, at the solemn feeling and the sublime expression, which a Christian philo- sopher might find rising to his lips, on some starry night, when, gazing from his observatory, in the midst of some great centre of human life, and looking upwards C. v., § 12.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 153 to the infinite numbers of starry bodies, in the Space above his head, and downwards to the infinite numbers of minds like his own on the Earth at his feet ; and then dreams, like a child, of the power, and wisdom, and goodness, and the revealed purpose of his Creator, to people a universe of worlds with an infinity of never-dying, intelligent, and moral beings ! If such a philosopher, engaged in such contemplation, has had the sublime happiness to learn humility at the feet of Jesus, and has learnt to struggle, by the grace of God, suc- cessfully to some extent, to keep down that infernal pride which prevents man from hum- bling himself even to his Creator, he may pos sibly call to mind that first occasion on which, in plain and unmistakable words, a wayworn Jewish peasant, " wearied with his journey," sat by a well-side, and said to a guilty woman, " I that speak unto thee am He !" the Messiah ; " God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth ! The Father seeketh such to worship Him ! " Will not such a philosopher, I ask, as he looks down H 5 154 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. v., § 12. in contemplation on the millions upon millions of ignorant, and thoughtless, and guilty men and women on the earth below him, and up- wards to the many mansions in His Father's House, exclaim also, in the words of his Lord and Saviour on the same occasion, " Truly, the harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few ; pray, therefore, the Lord of the Harvest that he would send forth labourers into His Harvest !" C. vi., ■§ 1 .] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 5 5 CHAPTER VI. SCIENTIFIC TRUTH AND CERTAINTY. (1.) Scientific Certainty Numerical. — Let us consider what is meant by Scientific Truth and Certainty. We have demonstrated that every abstract word or general name is a number, the product of two or more factors, until we come to an indecomposable word, a verbal unit ; each factor of a compound word being itself the abstract word or general name for one of the likenesses in any unit of the class. The word plane-triangle, which means all the plane triangles that ever did or can exist, is, for example, the product of the thoughts or words, Plane-figure x three right lines. The most material and most certain part of this defini- tion is the number three, the numerical likenes 156 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vi., §1. which all triangles have to one another. Once we can apply a pure arithmetical number to the unit of any class as a likeness of all the units of the class, we at once have a definite class ; for a pure arithmetical number can never be con- founded with any other. We can never con- found a plane triangle with any other figure. Our senses may fail us, of course, in deter- mining whether any external individual falls within the class in seeing or touching the number of sides or angles, or knowing whether the sides are straight, &c, and so leave us doubtful, after full examination, whether the external unit belongs to the internal class or not; but the mind never can confound one arithmetical number with another. The con- crete application, the value and utility of our abstract conceptions may depend on our being able to count and measure external things, but the pure truth of our reasoning is quite independent of all external things whatever. Once, for example, that we have got the word isoceles triangle, meaning, having two equal sides, we can never mentally mistake a C vi., §1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 157 unit of the internal mental class for anything else. This numerical certainty runs through all pure and mixed mathematics, and all mathematical names are thus rendered cer- tain, viz., by taking a unit of space, a unit of time, a unit of velocity, a unit of force, a unit of mass, and so on, thus introducing the certainty of arithmetical number into all mathematical reasoning; each new set or class of units, becoming themselves measures of some higher and more compound class, and carrying with them the certainty of arithme- tical numbers, with such amount of external certainty as the discovered unit of the new class may possess. It does not appear to me, that the vital importance of this accurate numerical mea- surement of the units of a scientific class is sufficiently appreciated by natural philoso- phers. The accurate measurements in number, space, and time, where applicable, and of mass, and force, and velocity w 7 here measur- able, are the only road to certainty of thoughts concerning external nature, which is fall of numerical marvels yet to be dis- 158 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vl, § 1 . covered. 1 One plant or animal, the rela- tions of whose parts were accurately mea- sured and recorded numerically, might do more than years spent in loose comparisons and analogical arguments about qualities, likenesses, intensities, &c, &c. Number, space, and time are the three great measurers and certifiers of all natural external pheno- mena. No class can have any accurate scien- tific value till it is founded on number, space, and time, applied to the parts of the unit of the class. Types are useful, but numbers are true. Types are rule of thumb classification, but numerically measured parts are the only foundation of all true classification. Cuvier's discovery of the correlation of the parts of every organised being awaits the industrious measurements of all observers, in their own particular department of natural philosophy. The correlations are, without doubt, numerical and definite, if we only search deeply enough to find them. The very 1 As, for example, in Phyllotaxis or leaf arrangement, in Botany, and numerical symmetry in Chemistry, Crystal- lography, Physiology, &c. The correlations to be truly scientific, must be numerical, and nature is full of them. C. vi., § 1 .] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 159 hairs of man's head are numbered ; and, in my opinion, I think the time will come, when, from some obvious and self-evident pheno- menon, we maybe able to demonstrate in almost all cases, that the number of all the parts of an organism lie between the limits n and n\ When the laws of organised bodily structure have been studied with a true and accurate philosophical method, by numerical mensura- tion, I think this will be found to be the case. Extravagant as this may appear to philo- sophers who sit down contented with types, and degrees, and intensities, who still believe that there is some original and fundamental difference in nature, between what Locke called the primary and secondary qualities of matter, who do not see that the whole differ- ence lies in man's own dull perceptions, in his own dull bodily organization, which it is the business, and the pleasure, and the duty of his mind to remove farther and farther from age to age ; yet, surely, some of these philo- sophers ought to be shaken in their opinion, when they remember, that to many great 160 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vl,§1. philosophers of old, motion and velocity, and many other scientific words or thoughts, were mysterious, and gradual, and intense; that before the days of Newton force also was spoken of as synonymous with the " virtue" and the " influence," and the " power" of the planets or other bodies, and admitted of intensity and degrees, in place of units and measures in number, and space, and time. The primary qualities of Matter, as Locke called them, viz., solidity, extension, figure, motion, or rest, are no more in the external bodies we see, than our minds are in the ex- ternal bodies we see ; instead of in our own bodies. They are merely loose and inaccurate thoughts, mental existences, or things ex- pressed by words, and can only become true and certain thoughts and scientific words, when, and so far as, they are measurable by number, time, and space. So the secondary qualities of Matter, colours, sounds, tastes, smells, &c, as has been more generally admitted, are just the same; mere words for thoughts in our minds, and nothing in the objects themselves C. vi., § 1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 161 that we can possibly know. Solidity and colour are both mere unknowable somethings, powers to produce effects upon our dull and imperfect bodily organization. When it is said, " we cannot measure secondary qualities in the same way in which we measure primary qualities by a mere addition of parts," 1 that is merely saying that we have not yet discovered how to measure them by number ; we have not yet got or discovered true and certain measurable units. We do not yet know what a double colour or a treble colour is, just as before the days of Newton we did not know w r hat a double force or a treble force was. There is here, as I submit, a want of faith in the human mind* Why should we not go on with our photometers, pyrometers, hygro- meters, making better and better u examples of the systematic reduction of sensible quali- ties to modes of numerical measurement," 2 until some new Newton shall arise, who will tell us for certain what a double colour or a 1 Whewell, " Hist. Scien. Ideas/' vol.i.,p. 332. 2 Ibid, vol. L, p. 335. 162 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vi., § 1. treble heat is, and how it must be thought of, just as the old Newton told us what a double or treble force is, and how Force must be thought of by all men of science? Why should there not be a succession of Newtons? men beginning with the fear of the Lord of Hosts, the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, the One true and only God, men who may search with the simplicity of children and the energy of men, and may find means to bring the palsied minds of their fellow men further into the presence of the Divine Word ; who may take off the house top of human thoughts that hide the Truth from mankind ; and may be able in pure words to teach us new wonders from that ocean of truth, into which Newton has hitherto cast the most illustrious pebble? Newton himself disco- vered that the coloured spectrum of the Sun's rays can be reduced to the musical numerical scale, but the discovery has remained barren, and our harmony of colours has yet to be developed scientifically. 1 1 Mr. Ruskin directs us to peep through a square hole in a bit of card in order to find the harmony of colour in C.vi., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 163 (2.) Certainty by Space, Time, and Num- bers. Newton. — We say, however, that the truth and certainty of every scientific abstract thought depends on our finding some nume- rical measure for it, in space and time, i.e., some measurable unit, which can convert the imperfect verbal number into a perfect mental numerical number. The truth of this is, perhaps, best illus- trated by the dispute we have alluded to, the most illustrious that has occurred in the history of science. Before the time of Newton, the abstract word force was as vague and unsettled as any modern pseudo-scientific term can be. It was syno- nymous with power, and influence, and virtue, and was strong and intense, and admitted of degrees. Nobody knew, till Newton taught them, what to understand by a double force, or a treble force. The abstract term force had a meaning, but it was not numerical ox nature, and our walls are covered with speckled dabs called the Mediaeval School of Painting, fitted rather for savages than civilized men, and little attempt is made to search, with scientific precision, for the true laws of harmonious colouring. 164 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vi.,§2. measured by space and time, and was there- fore not accurate, or true, or scientific. When Newton, by an act of mental vigour, which has made him the most illustrious man of science the world has ever seen, perceived how this vague abstract term was to be truly measured by number, and space, and time, his conclusion was disputed by a phi- losopher only second to himself. Leibnitz and Newton were, perhaps, the two greatest philosophers and ablest men of science that ever lived at the same time together upon this earth. To th§ one we owe the wonders of modern astronomy, and to the other, to a great extent, the clearness of the modern calculus. Newton possessed the clearest thoughts, and Leibnitz the clearest words. The question was, how is force to be com- pared scientifically with space. What relation exists between the forces which cause a body to move and the spaces through which the body does move. Both these great men thought that they were discussing a question of real existence, and not a mere question of words. Both agreed that the momentum or C. VI., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 65 force of a moving body varied directly as its mass, and directly as its velocity, and Newton, whose thoughts were clearest, discovered and perceived, in his own mind, that a double velocity meant a double space in the same time, and said that force varied as the space ; but the Leibnitzians appealed to experiment, and measured the spaces which bullets urged by different forces would penetrate a bank of earth, and found the spaces vary as the square root of the velocity; and therefore insisted that force varied as the square of the space, and that they had proved it by experiment. If ever there could be a question con- cerning the truth of reality, or real things, this, at first sight, would appear to be such, and all the philosophers of Europe were divided, and warmly debated the question. It was clear fact, as some thought, opposed to Newton's clear thought or theory. La- grange, we believe, first suggested, that the dispute was only about words ! viz., What shall we call force or momentum ? But Words are things in science and philosophy, and Newton's thought was clear and true, 166 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vi., §2. and to us who have succeeded as it were to the rich inheritance of words prepared by Newton's thinking, it appears, and is, not only true but necessary. A clear-headed modern mathematician cannot conceive other- wise than as Newton thought ; he cannot conceive the contrary, or how a double or treble force could possibly be thought to send the same body in the same time through any other than a double or treble space ; and he at once distinguishes the Leibnitzian expe- riments into constantly diminishing forces. He pronounces Newton necessarily right, although no such single force, acting in space as Newton conceived, is known or proved to exist in external nature. Newton's thought of Force is clear, true, and necessary in the mind, and makes force a purely true scientific idea, or thought, or word, measurable by number, space, and time. It is the foundation thought or word of Newton's science; but such a force is not a real existence at all except as. thought is real in each man's mind, and words are real in each man's mouth. We can apply the thought to C. vi., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 167 deduce and measure the movements of the heavenly bodies, and to predict future pheno- mena; and so, with Newton's aid, mathe- matical astronomers compel the assent of those less gifted minds which are practical and not ideal, just as we can apply numbers to make a calculation, or to do a sum, or geometry to measure the length of a distant line, and tell the practical man to go and count, or measure, in order to verify our calculated result, and so convince himself of the truth of our science. Newton's thought of simple force, therefore, when once clearly perceived in the mind, is as true and necessary as the thought of number, the thought of space, the thought of time ; we cannot think of single forces otherwise than as varying directly with the space through which they move a given body in a given time. We test the utility of the thought by applying it to predict future or previously unknown phenomena amongst the heavenly bodies. This seems the universal test of pure truth or really true thoughts, viz., the Divine Power to predict future or distant events. And so far 1 68 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vi., §2. as we are able to predict the future in external nature, so far only may we believe in the external truth of our internal thoughts. But the necessity is verbal necessity. When, for another example, Cuvier, exa- mining only the jawbone of the opossum of Montmartre, predicted, before the rest of the skeleton was extracted from the stony matrix, that it was that of a marsupial animal, and, in the presence of his scientific friends, proceeded to remove the matrix of stone unti\ all anatomists were satisfied of the truth of his prediction ; he gave a proof, to a limited extent, of the truth of his own wonderful thought or discovery, that every part of an organized body possesses some fixed correla- tion to every other part ; which relations, it is the business of the science of organized bodies, to discover, and map out, and to mea- sure, and reduce to number, space, and time. So far, therefore, as human science enables man to predict phenomena, it is true and certain ; i.e., worthy of our confident belief, and no further. This seems the only test of verbal truth in the sciences of external nature. C.vi., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 169 When Leibnitz denied the truth of Newton's idea of force and its relation to space, the proper answer was this; by means of this word, by means of a primeval velocity sup- posed to be produced by a single tangential force acting on the planets, and of the force of gravity constantly acting by Newton's law, we can deduce, account for, and predict many new and before unpredicted phenomena in the motions of the planets ; our word is true. But we ought not to let our admiration of what Newton accomplished, lead us to sup- pose that any such thing really ever existed as a primeval tangential force, launching the planets into space with their enormous ob- served velocities, and in the tangents to their respective orbits. The supposition, or hypo- thesis, of such a primeval tangential force is a mere thought, to represent the known and observed existing phenomena of the tangential velocities of the planets. This hypothesis, of Force varying as the Space, probably at present obstructs the progress of knowledge, though it enabled Newton to prove the force of gravity as a law of nature amongst all the I 170 PHILOSOPHY; OR, " [C.vi., §3. planetary bodies, and Herschel to extend it beyond the limits of our system. Wonderful as Newton's discovery of the law of gravity was, yet it accounts for only a small number of the motions and known phenomena of the planets. It offers no explanation of their relative velocities in space, or of their rela- tive weights and distances, or of their rota- tory velocities on their own axes. (3.) Gravity a mere JVord, not a Reality. — Though Newton himself thought and said that he was not feigning hypotheses, but rea- soning from and about external realities, yet it is as clear as noonday, that Gravity itself is a mere word, or thought, and the time may come when it shall be resolved into some other word, or thought, and man may become able to show how gravity itself can be made greater or less without altering the matter of which at present we think it is a property. Newton himself latterly guarded himself from being so interpreted, and said expressly, " I do not take gravity for an essential property of bodies," 1 and he suggested a medium varying 1 Advertisement to second edition of " Optics." Can the C. vi., § 3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 7 i in density, as a possible " cause of the gravity of the heavenly bodies to one another." We can already create or increase the attraction of a magnet, without altering the mass, by merely passing a current of electri- city in a particular manner through an en- veloping wire, and the time may come when we shall be able to increase or diminish the attraction of gravity itself, or show how it may be done, without altering the mass. But the truth we contend for, and which we submit we have proved, is that in all true science we merely invent or discover abstract thoughts in the mind, which more or less perfectly resemble external phenomena, and express them in words, which more or less perfectly explain external phenomena to our fellow men. The true and measured thought is embodied in a word, of which we can speak, but concerning the real things or ideas them- selves we cannot speak. We conceive the attraction of gravity, as discovered or invented by Newton, but it is a effect of electricity passing through a helix enveloping a magnet, be in any way connected with Heat or Gravity ? I 2 172 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vi.,§3. mere thought or word by which we explain to the mind some of the apparent motions of the planets, and which word, Force of gra- vity, Newton first showed how to reduce to measurement by number, and space, and time, and so created, by deduction, the science of modern astronomy. Newton's own words for expressing his great thoughts have been superseded by the more effective and shorter words, which we owe chiefly to Leib- nitz, the words or signs of the modern cal- culus. Still, we ought not to suppose gravity a reality, which may not be superseded by some better theory or thought, which will explain, by one law, not only the central, but also the tangential and rotatory velocities, and the masses and distances of the planetary universe. It, no doubt, may sound strange to call the force of gravity a verbal truth, and to say that it is already become a mere idol, that obstructs the progress of knowledge ; but, for my part, I have very little doubt that it is at this moment rather a blind, hiding deeper truths behind it, than a truly useful hypo- C. vi., §3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 73 thesis, to embody astronomical progress, or scientific facts. By talking of the force of gravity, and no- thing but gravity, astronomers have got to talk so much about the mechanism of the heavens, that they half believe they under- stand our whole planetary system, whilst they are wholly ignorant of the greatest number of the phenomena, and cannot give any explanation of the greater number of the most obvious facts. Not only are the laws of comets wholly unknown, but the most ordinary planetary phenomena are wholly un- explained. Why are the days of our Earth and Venus from twenty-three to twenty-four hours long, or nearly in proportion to their mass and size, but that of Jupiter, which is one thousand times larger, not half so long ? Not one of the axal revolutions of the planets can this law of gravity explain in any way. Why has the earth one moon, and Venus, within the earth's orbit, and, again, Mars, without the earth's orbit, neither of them any moon at all? Why has Jupiter, the largest of the planets, only four moons, and Saturn 174 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vi.,§3. seven or eight, and Uranus more, some turned topsy-turvy, and going retrograde? Why do all secondaries turn nearly the same face to their primaries, i. e., turn on their axes in nearly the same time that they go round the planet, and yet the planets vary so much between their days, and years, and seasons ? Again, why does the moon take a month to go round the earth, and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn go round in a few hours ? The reasons for all the relative masses and dis- tances, and most of the motions of the planets, are wholly unknown ; and yet astronomers talk as if this law of gravity had taught us the whole mechanism of the heavens ! when it can explain neither the velocity of any one planet round the sun, not its own velocity on its own axis. What should we say of a man who saw the weights of the church clock, but could not explain how it was that one hand went faster than the other, if he proceeded to talk about his " knowledge of the mechanism of the clockwork," as our modern astronomers talk about their knowledge of the mechanism of C.vi.,§3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 175 the Heavens ? The simplicity and humility of Newton have been forgotten by La Place and his successors, for, speaking comparatively, with what hereafter may be known, we know indeed but little of the mechanism of the heavens. Why, therefore, should we talk as if we did ? Gravity, quite possibly, may be the fifth phenomenon of that wondrous pulsating fluid, of which light, heat, electricity, and mag- netism are probably divers vibrations, mea- surable by number, space, and time, and we possibly hereafter may be able to convert heat and light, and electricity an4 mag- netism, into gravity, just as we can now convert heat into light, and electricity and magnetism into each other, and into light. We can take the latent heat of any body, and make it visible as light; we can take light and extract the heat, or find it done for us ; we can take electric and magnetic currents, and exhibit them as light and heat, and convert magnetism into electricity, and electricity into magnetism ; when we can convert all and each of these four into gravity, 176 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vi.,§3. or gravity into these four, we shall possibly have solved the problem of all the motions of our planetary system; and may be able to treat the eccentricity of a planet's orbit as a mere single vibration of that wondrous fluid called Light. Do not the tails of comets teach us that the attraction of gravity is a misnomer, and that gravity is sometimes levity, an immense vibration of that all- pervading fluid Medium ? Can that be called the attraction of gravity which sends forth by repulsion a tail of a comet six hundred millions of miles in a few days ? It is levity rather than gravity. It is the opposite of gravity. It is possibly the outward pulse or vibration, of which gravity is the inward pulse ; but it certainly is not attraction, but repulsion. Do let us cease to talk of the mechanism of the heavens until we know more of their mechanism ; and let us consider whether the hypothesis of gravity is not one that has done its work, and taught us central forces, and let us strive to under- stand circumferential and rotatory forces and repulsions, and not merely the central C. vi., §3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 77 forces and attractions; or else, to combine them together into pulse and repulse, so as to account for the relative size, and velocities, and axal motions of the planets and their secondaries, and the phenomena of comets' tails. At least, let us be more humble, and ac- knowledge our ignorance, for we know the mechanism of the heavens much as the parish pauper who pumps the organ and sees the clock weights, knows the mechanism of the church clock. It was La Place who taught us that proud, empty phrase, " mechanism of the heavens." Newton was more humble. At all events, if man's body had been a vapour, and he had lived in Encke's comet, a physical body as large as the whole orbit of the moon, w r e might now have been speaking as freely of the sun's repulsion, as we do on earth of the sun's attraction, and we might have spoken perhaps of the vast annual vibration, which carried the latently hotter parts of our comet by attraction closer to the sun than Mercury, and repelled the latently colder parts into the distant regions beyond the orbits of Jupiter or Saturn. 15 178 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vi.,§4. Gravity, therefore, both on the authority of Newton himself, and according to the principle of this work, is a mere human thought or word, to express a bundle of appearances, and not anything really existing in external nature. It is not u an essential property of bodies," and the time is probably fast approaching when we shall have to give it up altogether. That time will probably be, as soon as we can bring the internal heat of the globe into measurable relations by means of number, space, and time, with the lengths of our day and year, and the law r s of heat, light, electricity, and magnetism. (4.) All Scientific Ideas Words not Reali- ties. — In short, we affirm, that if any man thinks that by the thoughts, words, or things called light, heat, gravity, electricity, or mag- netism, or by the words, chemical-affinity, polarity, definite-proportion, or substance, matter, cause, life, or mind, or any other scien- tific expressions, he has attained any kind of knowledge of the realities of the universe above him, or of the world around him ; he knows nothing yet as he ought to know it. C.vi.,§4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 179 He stands like a man in a temple of light, dazzled and bewildered by the magnificence of the sight before him, but with his eyes shut, and mistaking the flashes of his own dazzled bewilderment for the light itself, which has confused and puzzled his senses. These words, and all other words of science, Dr. Whewell calls ideas. I do not object to the term idea, which the wisest men the world has seen from the days of Plato till now, have thought fit and proper to assist the human mind in its search after truth. But the word idea is open to the just objection, that it never can be known that A's ideas agree with B's ideas ; but it can be known for certain, whether A's words agree with B's words, because they can say, we do agree, and our words demonstrate to eye, and ear, and understanding that we do agree. Men may dispute for ever about what they call ideas, but if they are careful, they cannot dispute for ever about the words they themselves actually manufacture. They can number and measure, that is, make sure of their words. They can never measure or make sure of their ideas. 180 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vi.,§4. No philosopher has ever given, and I say that no philosopher can possibly give, any sufficient reason why we are to stop at the end of the vibrations of our incar vying nerves, and think we are disputing, or can dispute, about the unknown something there produced in the mind called an idea ; instead of going on to the end of the vibrations of our out- carrying nerves, and to the effect made by the mind upon the larynx and pen, to the known or knowable effect, about which alone we can dispute — viz., the word which the human mind has caused those outward vi- brations to create, as an actual factor of human knowledge. The word is the creation of the human mind, the evidence of its ex- istence. The unknowable thing has passed into the idea, and the unknowable idea has passed into the word ; and words are the only things that can be known as they are in themselves by any child of man, let him talk as long as he may. To acknowledge and submit to this truth, is the first step in all true philosophy, and C. vi., §4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 181 the object of this work is to establish it beyond contradiction. The error I am combating, seems to me the true source of all the wretched vain mate- rialism with which the world of man is now filled; at one time Panatheism, at another Pantheism ; the two poles between which the materialist perpetually oscillates in doubt, ignorance, and confusion, not understanding the words he uses ; but which words prove the real existence of the human mind itself. If any man says, " Surely I know more of the real nature of this world, when I have learnt the great truths of gravity, or chemical affinity, or chemical composition and re- duction, than I did before," I answer, " No, sir, you do not; you have learnt to think with Newton, and Lavoisier, and Dalton, and to use Newton's words, and Lavoisier's and Dalton's words, you have learnt to think with the great modern astronomers and chemists, and to use their words. Neither they nor you know anything more about the realities of matter and the universe than you did before. You have learnt a number of appear- 1 82 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vi., §4. ances, which affect the human senses, and have learnt to give them orderly names, so as to speak correctly with your fellow men, who have examined the same appearances, and have agreed to use the same names or words to express those numbers of appear- ances. Both they and you are as ignorant of all of the realities in the things you speak of, as ever savage was. You have learnt some new human words, signs, or sym- bols, the breath from our larynx and tongue, or black marks from the end of our pens ; and how to make and use those words, signs, and symbols, in consonance and mutual agreement with your well-instructed fellow men, but you have learnt nothing more what- ever ; and any other imagination of your heart is mere folly, emptiness, and delusion. Why are men for ever to deceive themselves, and shrink from the clear, the notorious fact, that all human truth can only be true words and symbols, mathematical truth ? It is passing strange to see how the posses- sion of a few words and symbols reduced to order, mere signs or tickets to assist the C. vi., §4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 183 human mind to register a number of external appearances, of the real nature of any one of which man is wholly ignorant, puffs up the vain animal to think he has at length attained the mystery of nature ; and he talks of attrac- tions, and forces, and affinities, &c, as if they were some real things themselves, and not mere human words, mere signs and symbols made with his own tongue and pen, to assist his own and his neighbour's memory of the wonderful mysteries and unknowable operations which God has permitted them to glance at. They seem to me like pert sparrows hopping on the beam of a steam-engine, and mistaking its proper motion for the effect of their own proceedings, in condescending to fly about and take notice of its parts and motions. All scientific truth and certainty, therefore, is verbal truth and no more, and depends on deduction, and the truth and certainty of the first assumption, and of each step afterwards demonstrated. The value and utility of all science may depend on induction, but induc- tion can give us no truth whatever. Let us consider this more closely in another chapter. 184 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vii.,§1. CHAPTER VII. INDUCTION, DEDUCTION, TRUTH. (1.) Knowledge Begins with Sensations and Naming. — Although I have demonstrated that numbers may be deduced strictly ci priori, from the mere admission that some know- ledge exists ; and that what is usually called by metaphysical writers, generalization or abstraction, may be more truly represented as an admission of ignorance, instead of an abstraction of knowledge, yet I would not be understood to mean that the first elements of knowledge are usually, in fact, learnt by deduction ; or that the more general is com- monly learnt before the less general, or the abstract before the concrete. Man is body C.vii., §1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 185 and mind, and the body comes first, and the mind afterwards. He was first formed of the dust of the ground, and afterwards God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. The tree of knowledge is tasted through the body, but the pure fruit of that tree is not body-like but mind-like. The child of course learns to count by his fingers or by an abacus, or by things visible or things tangible. I have heard a child who had learnt to count far beyond ten, exclaim to its mother, " Oh ! mamma, you have a short finger." It was igno- rant of the difference of its own fingers, and went round the room to see if everybody had short fingers like its mother and itself, when it had been shown its own little finger. It was teaching itself by induction, and was not inclined to believe the marvellous fact that all men had little fingers, till it could find no instance to the contrary, asking about each member of its family in succession, and going to several, five or six in the room, to see with its eyes, that all had little fingers. I saw the process and helped to satisfy it. 1 8 6 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vn., § 1 . This, in learned phrase, was the highest species of induction, "post negativas tot quot sufficiunt super affirmativas concludere" The little philosopher was a little girl not five years old. Take another instance mentioned by Aris- totle of the Greek children calling out "wan/p" to a * stranger in the street, and which same thing may be easily verified with English children in their nurse's arms, calling out "papa" to a man as he goes by. This is gene- ralization, or making a general term. So a child of two years old will persist in calling the new nurse by the old one's name for many months. So I have asked a Scotch peasant child, " Whose house is that?" and received for answer, " It's the laird's hoos," but the name of the laird it could not give. So Adam Smith remarked, that a peasant knows no name for the rivers running by his door, except the north river or the west river, &c. Is this process of naming, abstraction of knowledge as philosophers generally say, or want of perception, say ignorance of differ- ences ? I think the latter. The child has for- C.vil, §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 187 gotten the individual difference, or does not perceive the difference. The dress or look of the men, the acts of the nurses, deceive the child, and it calls out the word that has pro- cured attention or kindness. In short, there is no novelty in all this. Whatever passes in the child's mind, we are wholly ignorant of it ; but it has been seen for 2,000 years, that all knowledge begins with single bodily sensa- tions, with singulars, and is built up synthe- tically by induction, and recorded by giving general names. Knowledge is not obtained by abstract deductions, at the first. The absurdity lies, however, in therefore conclud- ing that Truth is founded on Induction. That, I say, is a most ridiculous non sequitur. (2.) No Truth and Certainty from In- duction. — Let us grant the utmost that can be asked. There can be no doubt that all knowledge begins with sensations, which are transformed by the mind, judging by induction from numerous instances, into thoughts and verbal images, or words. It is equally clear that all science, which is knowledge rendered accurate by man's carefulness, begins with the 188 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vil, § 2. practical and concrete, and is gradually trans- formed by men of science into the pure and abstract. There cannot be a rational doubt, in my opinion, but that geometry was at first what its name implies — land measuring. That a straight line was a stretched string ; that the first definition of a straight Jine was, in all probability, " the shortest line between two points," derived from the actual concrete process of stretching, and so straightening a land measuring line, and finding it less than any other; and that the axiom "that two straight lines cannot? enclose a space," was arrived at and verified by stretching two lines from the same visible point. An angle was, no doubt, at first the corner of a field, and so on through all plane geometrical words. What then, is Mr. Mill right after all? and is pure geometry founded on the induction of generals from numbers of particulars, and its certainty and truth founded on induction ? That, I say, is Mr. Mill's own most absurd non-sequitur, a mere confounding the use of the body, with the truth of the mind; C.vn.,§2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 189 the use that we feel and see, with the truth that we think and speak. It is, in fact, merely a new form of that old materialistic snake which I have tried to exhibit and scotch throughout these pages; that wretched shuffle, which calls and desires to call the thinking and ^oft-thinking thing by the same name, to call A and not A by one and the same term, to call truth and not truth simply Truth, and then, to pass this process off for logic and philosophy ! Induction is as the body, and Deduction as the mind. Induction and the body may give us the materials for many sensations and useful guesses, but cannot give us one truthful thought. Our calliyig the process of induction a method of arriving at truth, or calling certain conclusions inductive truths, will not make them pure truths. Truth, pure truth, is the province of deduction only, and induction never yet gave us one pure truth, or anything more than a probable guess; or some very probable explanation, provisional only," till a better is found out. Let it be granted, therefore, that the senses 190 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vn.,§2. are the avenue to all knowledge whatever, as Aristotle said long ago. Induction is the process of the mind, gathering one conclusion from many sensations, whether with or with- out crucial experiments, negativing a sufficient number of possible explanations. The con- clusion itself is a mental conclusion, and the process is a mental process, entirely removed from the senses and from sensation ; it is the work of the higher reason, of the human ima- gination and of the highest mental faculties, and is duly completed by embodying the induc- tive thought in a word. Well, then, have we got a truth, a pure or certain truth, whatever number of crucial experiments, whatever number, tot quot sufficiunt, of negativing ex- periments we have made ? I say, no ! Man's mind can never exhaust the negative. The highest induction is post 7iegativas tot quot sufficiunt. But how are we to exhaust the negatives ? A is A, but not A is infinite. Every induction is an attempt to prove the negative, that NO other possible arrangement, no other possible cause, no other possible ex- planation can exist or be given. It is that C.vii.,§2.j THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 191 very argument from inconceivability, upon which, on other occasions, Mr. Mill can be so severe. Every highest induction includes, and is founded on this principle, that we have tried every other conceivable explanation and negatived it, but this is impossible to man. Every induction, therefore, gives us only a prohable guess, not truth. It is as different from pure truth as man's body is from man's mind. Men lose themselves in the concrete and sensuous, and worship the materialistic idols their senses have created, and then confound what is only probably true, in relation to man's senses and faculties, with what is' really true and necessary, or deny the existence of necessarv truth altogether. It is the labour of a logical Sisyphus to roll up words, pretending to establish " the justification of the scientific method of in- duction as against the unscientific, notwith- standing that the scientific ultimately rests on the unscientific." l All the argument in the world will never prove a negative, and 1 "Mill's Logic," vol. ii., p. 102. 192 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.vn., §2. the highest induction is founded on proving a negative. The scientific, we say, does not rest on the unscientific, it rests on the first assumption. From that it hangs, or ought to hang, by posi- tive links, strictly proved to mental demon- stration, otherwise it is only pseudo scientific false accuracy, it is not truth : it is not pure truth. But, on the contrary, if every step be so demonstratively proved by deduction, then the conclusion is as necessary, that is as never- ceasing, as is the first assumption. It hangs on the first one or more assumptions, and its necessity can never, of course, exceed the never-ceasingness of that first one or more assumptions from which it is deduced. By Induction we gain what we feel to be useful ; by Deduction we gain what we know to be true. No knowledge is strictly true or certain, that is not strictly deduced, and its truth and certainty depend entirely on the truth and certainty of the first principles assumed, and from which it can be strictly deduced. Induction is mere mental guess- work from bodily sensations, partaking of all C. vil, §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 1 93 the imperfection of the human senses, some- times right and sometimes wrong, words adopted because useful to the mind, as rest- ing-places till the mind can reach something higher. Deduction is the work of the soul, of the mind itself, working with verbal ab- stractions. All truth and all certainty comes from the soul and mind by deduction. No pure truth, no certainty, can ever come from induction ; and a guess, a probable guess, is the highest conclusion, which by induction, man can arrive at. The sensuous is transformed into the intel- lectual, and the intellectual into words. The rude, inaccurate concrete is mentally trans- formed into the pure and true abstract ; into that Platonic divine ideal which is perfect, true, and never-ceasing; into words, signs, and sym- bols, which can never be false. Land measuring was not pure geometry, was not pure truth or certainty, but only sufficiently true, i.e., not true absolutely, but sufficient for some prac- tical purposes. There it must have stopped on the earth, confined to a few rough contri- vances for the comparison of distant fields. K 194 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vn.,§2. This is not truth, but rule of thumb truth, as one can often see an accurate woman measure with her fingers, as well as a shopman with the exact length of Norman Henry's guard arm, which, by Act of Parliament, became an English yard. But has this any resemblance to pure geometrical or numerical truths ? It is not truth at all ; though it passes for rough, rule of thumb truth, sufficiently true for practical purposes. But when the mind has formed the true and pure ideal out of the impure and untrue actual, then it can develop by verbal deduc- tion new and altogether unforseen and unex- pected relations altogether remote from the observed actual ; and at first, and often for ages, the deductions remain without any ap- parent utility, or any connexion, or applica- tion to sublunary matters. Ages after their first development as Truth, they turn out to be Useful. Who ever tested by any induction the truths of the ellipse or hyperbola, whose properties were elaborated 2,000 years ago by the Greeks ? The properties of the ellipse thus discovered by pure deduction, remained C. vii., § 2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH . 195 practically useless for 1,800 years or so, till Kepler and Newton applied them to the earth and the heavenly bodies above and without us. The hyperbola, I believe, still remains without much practical application of its most remark- able properties, though they were discovered by pure deduction so many centuries ago. Surely, the man is trifling with words, or is wholly ignorant of pure mathematics, who asserts that the truth and certainty of the properties of the ellipse and hyperbola depend in any manner whatever upon induction. Induction had no more to do with their dis- covery than the sense of smell with a musical symphony. The smell may have told a blind fiddler where to find his rosin, and some men may say, if they choose, that the blind man's music w r as arrived at from the smell of the rosin on the fiddle stick by induction ! but that is merely giving a new meaning to the word induction not worthy of discussion. The hyperbola is the curve which fluids assume in the capillary tubes of organised bodies, and, therefore, actually exists in the Human Brain. It is a curve with its centre K 2 196 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vn.,§3. outside, which requires to be balanced with a similar curve on the opposite side of the centre ; a curve which approaches indefinitely- near, but never attains true contact with, the right lines, the asymptotes, that pass through its centre. The hyperbola possesses many more resemblances to the course of the human mind and reason towards Truth, than the common application of its name to hyper- bolical expressions and arguments. But induction is to deduction, as the human body is to the human soul, and this is not a metaphor, but an analogy. Induction can never be, so far as we know, wholly true. It can never give pure and perfect truths, but only partial and imperfect bodily truths, guesses in relation to the human senses, sug- gestive of words, mere resting-places for the mind. At last the resting-place becomes a sleeping-place, and the induction a dead body, stopping up the course of science. (3.) The Ptolemaic System an Induction. — The Ptolemaic svstem was an induction, and up to a certain extent, in a certain sense, a sufficiently truthful and useful induction. C. vil, § 3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 197 Nay, for some purposes, as, for example, to calculate eclipses, if we had to begin at the beginning without tables or telescopes, it would be more useful than the Copernican system, even including Newton's great disco- very of the laws of central forces. Motion is a mere relation, and to the eye of the modern mathematician, it is wholly indifferent and irrelevant, which of the bodies stands still and which moves, or where the centre is to which the relation must be referred. But we cannot prevent puzzle-headed men, who have not studied deeply enough, from seeing a puzzle where there is none, or from shutting their eyes, so as to let in only half the light. A few years ago, a learned Inspector of Schools, by shutting his eyes to the sun, as the acknowledged centre of our planetary system, persuaded himself and a great many equally puzzle-headed people, that the moon did not turn on its axis. In reference to the earth, she does not turn, but in reference to the sun, the acknowledged centre of our planetary system, she does. It would have been quite as wise, and just as true, to tell us that the 1 98 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vil, § 3. moon does not go round the earth in an ellipse, but performs vagaries in space more like the Vandyke work on a lady's collar 1 than an ellipse or elongated circle ; or if a person were to tell us that the earth does not 1 It is impossible to put upon paper anything near the moon's actual motion, so far as known ; but the above van- dyke skipping is nearer its true motion than a perfect ellipse, for if m m' m" be three new moons, when the moon is between the earth and the sun, and M M' two full moons, when the earth is between the moon and sun, and E E' E" E'" positions of the earth at new and full moon respectively ; while the moon has been travelling from m to M, the earth has travelled from E to E', so as to get between the sun and M at the full ; and so, by the time the moon has moved to the next new moon at m', the earth has got to E", and the moon has then to come back again, and so on ; so that having regard to the sun, moon, and earth, the actual path of the moon in space is very far from, and not the least like an ellipse or elongated circle, but more like vandyking on a lady's collar. But the man who would thence conclude that the moon does not perform an ellipse round the earth, and that Kepler and Newton were wrong, is simply ignorant, and must try and learn better what is meant by the composition of motions, and what it was that Kepler and Newton actually discovered. Dr. Brinckley is my authority for saying, that for the pur- pose of calculating eclipses, without tables or telescopes, the Ptolemaic is more useful than the truer Copernican System. C. vii., § 4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 199 go round the sun in an ellipse, because, as Sir J. Herschel tells us, she performs " a compli- cated spiral" in space, and an ellipse is a curve returning into itself, and to the same point of space ; but that the fact is, as is well known, that the earth never comes back at the end of its annual circuit round the sun to the same point of space, but to a different point, and so never completes its ellipse ; ergo, its actual motion is not an ellipse ; and, therefore, Kepler and Newton were altogether wrong ! This, in fact, would be no worse reasoning, and more justifiable than Mr. Mill and Mr. Spencer's trash about pure geometry; because to see its falsehood and absurdity, requires far deeper reading and more mathematical knowledge, than to see that the asses' bridge does not depend for its truth and certainty " upon induction," and is not proved " by an intuition" from any particular figure what- ever. (4.) Utility and Truth. — As the senses and body of man are dull and imperfect, and can never make a perfect instrument ; so in- duction can never give man a perfect truth. 200 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vil, § 4. The highest induction, as we have said, is founded on proving a negative, which is im- possible. Mr. Mill admits this in Causation : " We are, in no case, empowered positively to conclude that the addition of some new ante- cedent might not entirely alter and subvert the accustomed consequent, or that antece- dents competent to do this do not exist in nature." 1 This is true of the very highest induction; and however numerous the affirma- tive instances and the negativing experiments, a miracle is possible always. Induction, therefore, on Mr. Mill's own authority, never gives us 'pure truth and cer- tainty. Its conclusions, though called induc- tive truths, are not and never can be truth ; and should not be confounded with Truth. They are practically useful only, and not strictly true and certain. It is otherwise with deduction, which can and does give us per- fectly true and certain conclusions, though not with regard to any existences external to our own minds. The truths of arithmetic and pure geometry are perfectly pure and certain, 1 "Logic," vol. ii., p. 349. C. vii., §4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH, 201 and all pure mathematics gives us perfectly pure and certain truths, altogether true and necessary, or never-ceasing; truths which could not be otherwise than they are in any intellect whatever. But this is because they concern mere human imaginations, human words, mere creations of the human intellect itself. The units and symbols of arithmetic, and the lines, angles and figures of pure geo- metry, are pure mental existences. Euclid affirms nothing concerning anything existing externally to the human mind, however appli- cable to all external existences, but merely concerning mental imaginations embodied in defined words, abstract existences in the mind only of him who can create them. The rela- tions of mathematical lines without breadth, of surfaces without thickness, are the mere crea- tions of the human mind itself. The perfect units that an arithmetician imagines are merely mental existences, and their relations, where the mind clearly perceives them, are un- changeable and never-ceasing, i. e., necessary in every intellect able to create them. Ne- cessity is not " unconditionalness," but never- K 5 202 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vil, § 4. ceasingness. The necessity follows from the first creation of the abstraction in the human mind, it applies to no other than to the intel- lect that is able to create the abstractions. To the mind that has created for itself these abstractions, it is self-contradiction to suppose them or their relations changeable. A man who has created in his own intellect, perfectly equal units, not only cannot conceive them or their relations destroyed, but he cannot possibly alter their relations when once clearly known. No amount of intellectual exertion can make such a man suppose or conceive five and three to be nine. It is not that it is merely inconceivable, but it is se/f-contradic- tion. I cannot stand on my head, or believe that I do so, at the same time that I am standing on my feet, I cannot deny my own existence. It is not only inconceivable or impossible to a mathematician, but it is positive self- contradiction, to suppose the square on the hypothenuse either greater or less than the two squares on the sides of a right-angled triangle. It is a clear, positive, self-contra- diction, to think the contrary, after once C. vil, § 4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 203 admitting the definition of parallel lines. To tell a man who sees this as pure geome- tricians usually see it, that it is a mere habit, is like telling a man that he could and does walk on his head, at the same time that he knows that he is walking on his feet, and that it is a mere habit his supposing that he walks on his feet, or that of two things both cannot be first. The appeal is not merely to inconceivability, but to positive self-contradic- tion, to the denial of a man's own existence. Here is where concrete materialistic logic and philosophy depart from truth and cer- tainty. They confound truth with utility, they confound the human mind with the human body ; the pure creations of truth in the mind, with the imperfect sensuous existences, which the body feels to be useful. They confound the pure truths of strict deduction with the imperfect truths, but useful guesses, of the highest induction. In short, they desire to call and do call A and not- A. by the same name, the sacred name of Truth. Now, the utility of all abstract conceptions entirely depends on our being able to find in 204 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vil, § 4. nature representatives of our abstractions, and on our being able to reduce them to measure, by number, space and time. A measurable fixed unit in external nature is essential to utility, but not to Truth. When the Arabians, for example, measured an arc of the meridian in the sixteenth century, and recorded the result in barleycorns, the utility depends on the cer- tainty of barleycorns as measures of space. The uncertainty of the measure renders the proceeding of little utility or value to us, but does not in any way affect the abstract truth that if the earth is a sphere, then measuring the arc of a great circle will tell us its size. The truth of the abstract reasoning is quite independent and wholly unaffected by the utility of its concrete application. An accu- rate measure of space has remained a deside- ratum down to the present day ; but whether we actually measure with the length of a pendulum in a fixed latitude, or as English- men still do in common matters, with the length of Norman Henry's guard arm, now called a yard, cannot affect the pure truth of our abstract reasoning. C. vii., § 4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 205 It is, therefore, wholly unfounded, that any true " consequence in pure geometry follows from the proposition or first principle, that figures answering to the description of a circle exist in external nature" 1 The utility of geometrical deductions follows from this prin- ciple ; but their pure, abstract, perfect, and necessary truth is wholly independent of it, and bears no relation to it whatever, no more or nearer relation than the abstract thought in my mind bears to another man's body. The conclusions of geometry are true and neces- sary, and are quite independent of the real ex- ternal existence of any thing in nature called by men a circle ; the utility of those conclu- sions does depend on such external existences. Pure truth is in the mind alone ; utility has relation to the body and external nature: Inductive truths are only useful guesses, but pure deductive truths are not only true, but wholly unchangeable and necessary. But the necessity or never-ceasingness can never be greater than the truth and necessity of the first abstract creation, the first assumption, 1 " Logic," vol. i., p. 286. 206 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.vn.,§5. from which the deduction hangs by necessary- links of demonstration. (5.) Dalton's Law dedncihle and necessary Why? a demonstration of it. — Take, for example, Dalton's illustrious discovery of definite proportions in chemistry; the law that the ultimate particles or atoms of chemical sub- stances combine in definite proportions. To any man with a mathematical head, to a man like Dr. Whewell, for example, the mere state- ment of the law is, and must be, not only mani- festly an inductive conclusion from Dalton's experiments ; but by assuming the term ulti- mate particles, or atom, it can be made and becomes a mathematical, a pure, perfect, and necessary truth. It can never cease to be a truth in any intellect whatever. Mr. Mill lifts up his hands, or at least his pen, in asto- nishment, at such a daring statement from Dr. Whewell, as that Dalton's law is a neces- sary truth. But the confusion of materialistic logic, or its critical sneers, or wonder, cannot enable a tolerably clear head to admit self-con- tradiction. The law is easily demonstrated by the inverse method. Thus, for example : C. vil, § 5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 207 Proposition. — If A, a chemical substance, combines with B, another chemical substance, to form C ; the ultimate particles of A com- bined in C bear a definite proportion to the ultimate particles of B combined in C. Proof. — For, let a be any ultimate particle of A, and b any ultimate particle of B, and suppose the contrary hypothesis possible, viz., that a combines not only with n. b to form C, but also combines with (n -|- n') b to form C. We then have a particle of C = a. (n -j- n') b. But this is not an ultimate particle of C, be- cause by the hypothesis we are given a less particle, viz., C = a. n b. Therefore, not being an ultimate particle of C, the particle a (n + n') b can be divided. But every particle of C must remain C till we get to the ultimate particle of C, therefore in the division of the particle a. (n + n ) b, the particle a itself must be divided, and a given as the ultimate particle in the hypothesis, is not an ultimate particle, which is absurd, and a self-contra- diction. Therefore the contrary hypothesis is absurd. Therefore every ultimate particle 208 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.vn.,§5. a can only combine with a definite propor- tion, viz., n b, to form C. ergo, &c, Q. E. D. If materialistic logic cannot see the force of this reasoning, it is to regretted ; but we cannot be asked to contradict ourselves to suit the elastic logical perceptions of self- puzzled materialists; or, as Dr. Whewell justly says, to believe in a world of confusion and contradiction, as the handiwork of God ! Not only the intellectual but the moral per- ceptions of mankind reject the contrary absurd hypothesis, and establish the necessary truth of Dalton's great discovery. But now, in what respect, and why, is Dalton's law not only true but necessary f It is wholly founded on the fundamental assumption that all chemical substances have ultimate particles, or atoms, indivisible. From that it is strictly deducible, as I have shown and demonstrated above. We invent and manufacture the word, "ultimate-particle" or atom. Our demonstration, and the whole meaning and force of Dalton's law hangs upon that word. The mental conception represented by that word, ultimate-particle, C. vil, §5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 209 or atom, is a pure mental human creation. Of the wondrous constitution of things in themselves, we know nothing and affirm no- thing. Like children standing on the shores of the ocean of truth, we fling in our little pebbles, and strive to count the ripples that they make. Newton's own illustration of his own wondrous discovery of the law of the heavens above us, cannot be better or more properly applied, than to Dalton's almost equally wondrous discovery of the law of the minutest particles of unorganised matter in the world beneath our eyes. Yet so con- sidered, that law is not only true, but neces- sary and never-ceasing. But concerning that external world itself, Dalton's law, arrived at by induction, or so deduced as aforesaid, does affirm nothing. It is a verbal truth only, which we may freely apply until it shall be superseded by some abstract generalization, still wider and still more necessary, where the conception, or word ultimate-particle, or atom, may disap- pear from science altogether, as wholly in- sufficient and inadequate to represent the 210 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vil, § 5. phenomena which He, who is holy, just, and true, may think proper to permit some of his children to discover and understand. It never can be too often or too strongly impressed upon men, philosophers or not, that all human truth is verbal truth only. Induc- tive or deductive, it is alike in that respect ; call it truth or call it utility, it is and can be only words applied to practice. It is absurd to ask whether man's body or mind is most useful to knowledge, or in order to gain knowledge. Without a body, i.e., without sensation, " He can neither know nor learn anything." Without a mind, the same result must follow. It is equally absurd to ask whether induction or deduction is most useful as a guide to knowledge, i. e. 9 true knowledge. In man's present state, it is im- posible to say which is most useful. But, nevertheless, induction only collects the crude materials, as the body collects the crude sensations, from which deduction, like the mind, selects and purifies some few fun- damental truths, and thence leads the way along the paths of mathematics to the most C. vil, § 5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 211 beautiful and unexpected mental, and verbal, and bodily discoveries, both true and useful, and applicable to external nature; true, in words only, but useful and applicable to human wants and human doings in the world and universe around us. Note. — The objection that chemists are forced some- times to divide an indivisible atom, is not fatal to Dalton's theory, as Sir J. Herschel has remarked.* Proportion is not affected by division, however often continued; but throughout nature it is the apparent exceptions that should be curiously examined to suggest deeper views of her ope- rations. We must try and measure the anomaly numeri- cally. Water and bismuth seem to differ from all other substances by expanding on becoming solid from cold. Can the amount be measured, in proportion to their weight or density, numerically? It is from such examples that deeper views of the constitution of matter may be obtained. * "Essays," p. 232. 2 1 2 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. viii., § l. CHAPTER VIII. LIFE AND MIND. (I.) An Example of the PRODUCT Hypo- thesis in Verbal Discussion. — Let us illustrate by an example, if possible, what we practically mean by calling abstract general terms num- bers, products of abstract factors ; each factor being some supposed likeness of the unit adopted or chosen to mark out and limit the class. Let us select those very abstract terms Life and Mind. Certain philosophers of the present day earnestly seek to establish the doctrine of the identity of Life and Mind ; not that mind possesses some higher life, ana- logous only to the lower life of the body ; but that the human mind has grown and been de- C.viii.,§1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 21 8 veloped by some law of vegetable, and animal, and nervous growth. In short, that man grew on this earth according to some law, out of a lichen, a zoophyte, or protozoon ! The two classes here proposed for compari- son, are what men call living things, and what men call mental things ; not the mental acts of an intelligent spaniel, an ant, a bee, or a beaver, adapting their actions and materials to the peculiar circumstances in which they happen to be placed by nature, or may for experiment have been placed by man ; but that higher Mind or reason, that imagina- tion, those sentiments of benevolence, venera- tion, justice, or other higher human qualities influencing the human Will, which in all ages, from Aristotle downwards, have been recog- nised by intelligent men, as distinguishing mankind mentally, from the lower animals, and which mental sentiments or principles I would denominate, the Human Will; but which is commonly called the higher Eeason, or the human Mind. It is of course as old as the logic of the Greeks, to call in every discussion for a defi- 214 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. viil, § 1 . nition, consisting of the genus and essential difference; two words to limit the word or thing proposed for discussion. But if my theory of all words being numbers and 'pro- ducts be well founded, that theory which I insist I have demonstrated beyond possible contradiction by any man who speaks and can add thoughts or words together correctly ; I have entitled a reasoner to ask for, and de- mand expressly, every abstract word ox factor which is to compound the thoughts of, or words Life and Mind, in this discussion. The likenesses of living things in general, and of human mental things in general, must be given us, till we arrive at simple fundamental thoughts, or indecomposable words. What likenesses, I ask therefore, do you mean to say, produce the thoughts, Life and Mind, if you want us to agree with you ? Don't beat about the bush for a grammatical definition, but jot down all the factors which you say properly produce in us these deep and ab- stract thoughts, life and human mind. Let us turn up, therefore, almost any good book on physiology, and let us just put down C. viil, § 1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 215 some of the best established fundamental thoughts, or indecomposable abstract words, recognised by almost all intelligent observers of Life, as the likenesses possessed in common by all living things. Every living thing has, they tell us — Substance, or matter and form, Organization, Absorpfo'oTi, Assimilation, Secretion-, Reproduction ; So far vegetable life. Add Sensation, for a zoophyte : Add Nervous action, ~) . n. r ior animals. or intelligence, ) Your word life, or living thing, as distinct from human life, including Mind, or man's higher Reason or Will, includes all the above deep and difficult things, thoughts, or words. What do we know about all these deep and difficult actions and things ? Cuvier and Owen will fear to tread where Herbert Spencer, Mr. Darwin, and the " Westminster Review," will run a muck. 216 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C viil, § 1. Now, if the reader will patiently look over our list of the above, to some extent, recog- nised factors, producing the thought or idea of Life, or the word living thing, he will find seven words ending in Hon, each of which implies some secret ACTION or process, pro- ceeding actively in every living being, five actions in vegetable life, six in a zoophyte, and seven in an animal, all different, for which actions, physiologists have been compelled by phenomena, by facts clearly presented to their senses, to invent and adopt new and distinct names, in order to be understood. Of each of these secret actions, the most learned physiolo- gists are profoundly ignorant ! who can pretend to tell us any truth concerning the difference between the adjustment or arrangement in a dead crystal, and the adjustment or arrange- ment called organization in a living body? One simple-minded man did indeed think that he had produced a mite in his galvanic battery, when he expected a crystal of alumina to ap- pear. If the A earns Crossii is to be received as a distinct species into the animal kingdom, we must go back to crystallization. But what C. viil, § 1 .] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 217 do we know about the growth or production of organs in living beings ; the absorption of the peculiar food by the roots or absorbent vessels; the judgment, the discrimination ex- ercised in seeking and absorbing only the proper food, and so on ; each action of the living body as it were widening in its mira- culous circle, and becoming more and more obscure at every step, more obscure to the patient, and thoughtful, and conscientious observer. But if the light within is darkness, pos- sibly the darkness thinks itself enlightened by the long words in which physiologists tell the thoughts produced in their minds; the long words which express that something, that has passed along our minute incarrying nerves into our infinitely minute nervous brain cells ; and there been inspected and recorded by man's intellectual faculties, and then sent forth once more along our minute outcarrying nerves, to the larynx and the tongue, or to the ends of our fingers and the pen, and turned into long words. But all this manufacture of words is only L 218 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. viil, § 1 . the first process of the human intellect, that intellect which to some extent man shares with the ant and the spider. We have not yet reached the threshold, or I had almost said within an infinite distance of the threshold of the pure human Mind or higher Reason, those higher sentiments, that human Will which shakes us with love, veneration, justice, wonder, remorse or FEAR, if it can yet com- mence in the MIND of the philosophic reader. Yes, FEAR ! the beginning of wisdom and knowledge, that fear and awe of God, that should agitate your nerves as you contemplate the wondrous scene without, and the more wonderful scene within your brain, and should bring you down in humble adoration of the Being, whose laws of mind and matter you have so often wilfully violated ; ay ! tens of thousands of times, hating where you should have loved, despising and scorning where you should have venerated, violating justice and truth in thought, and word, and deed; and for years, from boyhood to manhood, wilfully stifling remorse, and shutting your eyes to the brink of that eternity on which you have C. viii., § 1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 219 always been standing. Oh ! may we yet be able to say, "I will arise and go to this Father, and will say unto Him, Father, I have sinned before Heaven, and in Thy sight, and may we find peace, that peace which can make us, not as others are, which have no hope." But to return to our discussion of Life. Is there any resting-place between considering life and mind, wholly distinct ; and the other theory, that every particle of matter, or- ganised and unorganised, possesses intelligence enabling it to think and to select and make choice of its companion particle or particles, in the same way as a man selects and chooses his own companions, books of words, bodies of things, or minds of persons, to act and react upon his own mental frame, for his own mental pleasures and moral purposes ? Why are we to begin with life and organisation ? Why not go back to crystals and unorganised matter ? The particles of a chemical mixture, of almost any kind, for example, exhibit affini- ties, likings, dislikings, preferences, and per- versities, quite different, but quite as strange and mysterious, and causally unknown, as do L 2 220 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. viii., § 1. the absorbent vessels or the organs of a living being. The facts and phenomena we see and observe ; but the reason and meaning we hide under a word — the word chemical affinity; a disposition to unite ; elective or selective, and, moreover, definite — under Dalton's law nume- rically proportional ; actually mathematical, and, as I have shown, ante p. 207, and abso- lutely necessary, if we admit the word ulti- mate particle or atom to mean anything at all. Oh ! but you will say, life is not definite, it is not chemical affinity. Life suspends che- mical affinity, more or less. Life selects, but not in definite proportions. The organs are not the same, and the absorption will vary a little, even in the same living being at different times. The assimilating process will vary; the secretions will vary, even in the same organs, within certain limits, and at different times ; there is a variableness in Life, and not a definiteness. In short, there is a tendency, one might say, to free will, within certain limits, in every living body. And when we Gome to sensation, and nervous action, and to C. vm., § 1 .] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH . 221 intelligence in animals, there is more and more tendency to free will or to free choice, within certain limits, instead of to any hard numerical proportions or dejiniteness. The way in which life is supported, and is continued or reproduced, is not definite, but varies more and more, the higher the kind of life examined. The hard mechanical necessity of living on one spot, and dying there like a plant, if its appointed food is not brought to its absorbent vessels, gives place to loco- motion. The young of a fixed zoophyte will play and disport themselves, till they settle down into the fixed sponge ! Perfect animal locomotion follows, till at last all life is spent in the search for animal gratifications. Well, it seems that a discussion of life tends rather to free will than to necessity. As life de- velopes before us, in the succession of natural living creatures, it does seem more like the true and real development of absolute free tvill, than like a procession to any iron-like or unbending necessity. We go on from lower life to higher life, gradually increasing free will, until nerves do not seem to follow any 222 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. viil, § 1. absolute laws whatever, but seem gradually to be able to exercise greater and greater free choice or will. " I confess/' says Agassiz, " that I cannot say in what the mental faculties of a child differ from those of a young chim- panzee." — On Classify p. 89. — " But then," he adds, " organisation cannot be caused by physical agents; it is utterly impossible to maintain the idea of any genetic connexion between them. A fish, a crab, a mussel, living in the same waters, breathing at the same source, should have the same respiratory organs, if the elements in which these animals live had anything to do with shaping their organisation." — Ibid, p. 93. In short, life varies and rises, and free choice ox free will extends and developes itself. Here we have only glimpsed at the wonders of absorption by endosemose, and at the growth of varied organisation, under like sur- rounding circumstances, the two first only of our seven selective actions clearly involved in animal life. Who can describe the varied mysteries of assimilation to each different living being, selecting what it will assimilate C. viii., § 1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 223 to itself and its tissues? or the still more varied mysteries of secretions within the bodies of each living being, to produce its various parts ; each selecting organ selecting its own peculiar want, and working out its own pe- culiar produce by its own functions, varying from time to time its modus operandi, so as to produce as near as may be even a deformed likeness of the type it prefers ? Then come the deeper mysteries of the reproduction of plants and animals, widening and widening in difficulty as we contemplate infinitesimal germs. We find embryos insheathed in em- bryos, and germs enclosed within other germs ; yet, neverthless, all endowed with some un- known power to select and choose the peculiar matter which they like, from the matter which they do not like, whereby to nourish the youthful being, " after its kind." But it is needless, nor am I at all competent to proceed with any proper and full description of all the other free actions of life and intel- ligence in the animal kingdom, below the moral mental life of man. No one who thinks, or has even casually studied the ordinary won* 224 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. vm., § 1. ders of animal life and animal intelligence, in physiological works, can possibly suppose that our knowledge of life, and its processes and actions, is already such as to enable us to form the most dim guess of probability, whether the nervous intelligence of an animal could de- velop itself into the reason and higher powers of a moral and religious-minded man — of, for example, a Socrates. But, one thing does seem more probable than another, and it is this : that all the marks and symptoms of a free and inde- pendent will do increase as we rise higher and higher, until we reach mankind, whose indi- vidual arbitrariness, whose absolute free will, within the limits of his faculties, would be established by analogy and induction, if any such question can be proved by induction or by analogy from the life of the lower animals. Life, therefore, seems to lead us up to the human mind and human free will, not by growth of particles, but by a kind of analogy. If we find choice and selection of activity existing in every department of nature, wi- dening, extending, and increasing its free choice and free action, as we rise through the C. viii., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 225 vegetable and animal kingdoms, till we find it culminating in man — the most fickle, and changeable, and uncertain being upon earth — it must require a most marvellous defect of reason, for this being to think that the law of nature has stopped short with him, and that he is subject to some iron necessity, instead of taking and arriving at the very opposite conclusion ; that free will and free choice, the absolute power to select his own modes of action within their limits, must have received in man, its greatest worldly development, whether as a reason for his responsibility or not. But how is this nervous free will to be compared with the higher mental freedom, the moral qualities and powers peculiarly human ? (2.) Tlie Factors of the Human Mind — Power, Wisdom, Goodness. — Physiologists, in general, have given us the factors of life — seven or more mysterious and wonderful actions. Let us turn to the metaphysicians for the factors of the human mind, which are to be compared with the factors of Life. Almost all metaphysicians have recognised, under some terms or another, three very L 5 226 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. viil, § 2. marked and separate, but connected, like- nesses of all human minds, which I submit, therefore, by general consent of metaphy- sicians, may be called, and are, the three factors of the human Mind considered as one mental being — viz., Sense, Feelings, Emotion. Understanding, or Perceptions, or Intellect. Reason, Sentiments, Will. I prefer the three last words to express my thought of the human mind in its totality ; viz., animal, intelligent, and moral powers, animal Emotions, intellectual Judgments, and the moral human Will. Man's mind has not parts ; it is not made of these three parts, as if they were separable and distinct. Emotion is a mind, Intellect is a mind, Will is a mind, but yet they are not three minds, wholly distinct in the human body, but one mind — the Mind of a man. In one man the emotional mind is too strong and in excess: he is the passionate man, whose intelligence and moral sentiments do not restrain his emotions, his violent pas- sions, his animal propensities. In another C. viil, § 2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 227 man the intelligence is in excess : he is the clever, intelligent, cold, hard, immoral, and unfeeling, selfish individual ; intelligence, un- checked by animal feelings and affections, and unguided by moral sentiments ; the very in- carnation of a demon upon earth ! Thirdly, there is the sentimental man, full of fine moral thoughts and sentiments, without strong emo- tions or great intelligence, and incapable of action either for good or evil; wilful, but weak, fickle, and falling; the slave of some stronger human will, and possibly atoning by some affections and by remorse, by a broken heart and worldly wretchedness, for its defects of intellectual wisdom and of moral Will. Here, however, is the broken image ma has to contemplate within himself. Emotions give general human power! Intellect gives general human wisdom ; and Will gives general human goodness, or ought to do so. We thus behold limited powers to act, limited wisdom to see, and limited goodness to direct ; but, alas! how defiled, and how defaced, how misery-worn is the coin which bears so plainly written on it, this image and superscription — 228 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vm.,§2. Power, Wisdom, and Goodness. Are they not abused and misdirected, and in every man that breathes, at some time or another, wholly degraded and lost ? Let us adopt the words of an author from whom we have so often differed, and from whose published opinions on human society we differ even more widely, if possible, than we have differed from him on philosophy; let us take the words of Mr. Herbert Spencer, and, for once, acknowledge their truth, and thank him for the description of the fallen human Mind. " Throughout the rest of crea- tion we find the seed and the embryo attain- ing to perfect maturity without external aid. Drop an acorn into the ground and it will in due time become a healthy oak, without either pruning or training. The insect passes through its several transformations unhelped, and arrives at its final form possessed of every needful capacity and instinct. No coercion is needed to make the young bird or quadruped adopt the habits proper to its future life. Its character, like its body, spontaneously assumes complete fitness for the part it has to play in C. viii., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 229 the world. How happens it that the human mind alone tends to develop itself wrongly ? Must there not be some exceptional cause for this ? Manifestly !" l Manifestly, indeed, there must be a cause for what Mr. Spencer justly calls " this anomaly in nature." Mr. Spencer advocates social equality, and no property in land, as remedies for this anomaly in nature ! Homo homini lupus, says the motto assumed by an ancient Saxon family, who saved their lands in the days of Norman Wil- liam, and who still live on the naturally secluded spot they then occupied. The hills are cleared, the marsh is drained, the river is bridged, and the moat filled up, and the u Social Statics" of English liberty, founded on Christianity, has saved a single family for 800 years and more, proprietors of the same spot of ground. But glance back, not for 800, but for six thousand years, during which, man, unlike all other animals, has shown no more mercy on his kind, no more mercy than a wolf on its prey. Is it possible, after all, that the story of Moses is true, and that, of 1 " Social Statics," p. 187. 230 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.viii.,§2. the two first children of the first woman, the elder slew the younger ? Verily, on that fatal evening the family of mankind assembled to a bitter supper, and the first man may well have wept like a woman on the neck of the only son that remained to him. How is it that the Hebrew story, " the Hebrew myth," as Mr. Spencer calls it, still seems to speak to man's heart in words that cannot be ex- plained away. Are these really living words ? Is it possible, moreover, that the first murder was committed in assertion of equality, and because of religious hate? "And the Lord had respect unto Abel and his offering ; but unto Cain and to his offering He had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell, and the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth, and why is thy counte- nance fallen ? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted ? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." But the Lord had more respect unto Abel and his offering. Did the God of Heaven violate equality, or did He violate Justice? C. viii., § 2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 231 Yet every good gift, and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of Lights, " with whom is no varia- bleness, nor shadow of turning," says the Apostle who said also, " if any man offend not in wordy the same is a perfect man," It is, however, clear, that according to this story, the free will and sense of equality in Cain's mind was offended, that even God Himself, for His own purposes, should exer- cise that free choice which he, Cain, the child and the creature of free will, did not approve ! Nay, the promise of worldly power over his own brother, willingly obedient, was not able to restrain him from taking vengeance for his offended dignity, on the unoffending cause; or from striving to wipe out his inequality before God in his brother's blood ! Therefore, the passion for equality caused the first reli- gious hate, and tbe first murder and the first human death, that ever occurred or is re- corded in human words ! This is an example of the Human Mind, of its intellect, emotions, and will. The free will of the creature was offended at the free 232 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.vm.,§2. will of the Creator ! Thou shalt not prefer my brother before me, said the countenance of Cain. All men are born free and equal, said the first murderer, and God Himself shall not violate equality on this earth whilst I, the child of free will, have a right hand to avenge the wrong to the principles of equality, done in my person, by seeing my brother preferred before me, or his offering more highly respected than mine, even by Him who made us both ! The promise of worldly power over the humble and submissive, will not restrain the pride and anger of selfish equality at seeing the humble preferred by God. Jealous equality, therefore, produced the first passionate emotion of the human mind, and is responsible for the first murder ever recorded in human words. Is this, in any way, like Animal Life or Nervous Action ? In truth, however, the Mind, the free will of man is a chaos until he can turn like a little child to its parent, and submit himself in all childish truth and simplicity to his father and his God, with his intellect con- vinced, that He alone can teach him true C. viil, §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 233 wisdom ; with his heart broken with penitence, and his free will subdued and, like a child's, anxious and willing to be enlightened. Then, and only then, will the words of Holy Writ strike on his mind, as in every syllable the best adapted that wisdom could devise to help to restore in man the noble image of GOODNESS that sin had defaced. Oh! teachers of that absolute religion, which is absolute nonsense, the FEAR of God is the beginning of wisdom, and without that fear we cannot learn to LOVE. But it is the Spirit that quickeneth the human mind, and the very words of Jesus, they are spirit, and they are life. " No man can come unto Me, except the Father draw him," said Jesus; but is He not the Father, and will He not draw all those who ask for that Spirit, in sincerity and in truth, as the same Jesus declared? The Spirit may be life in the mind ; but the life in the nerves is not mind, but the instru- ment of such mind as the animal is endowed with. Just analogy, therefore, and the highest reason, but not any law of vegetable or animal 234 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C. viil, § 2. growth, may well lead a man's thoughts up- wards, by observation of life in the thing, to truer thoughts of life in the mind, and from free will in the person, to thoughts of a re- newed life in the broken image of the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, which we can discern within our own minds ! " Nature, as well as Scripture, tells me, ' that I am the image of God.' He that understands not thus much, has not got his first lesson, and has yet to begin the alphabet of man." 1 The mysteries of the life of the body may well teach us by analogy the still greater mysteries of the life of the mind. The proper life of the body may lead us upwards to the living unity of emotion, intel- lect, and free will, returning, in the Spirit, to its One Redeemer and Father, instructed, redeemed, and sanctified ; active, enlightened, and living, because thoroughly humbled, and converted from the error of its way ; and now once more receiving the free gift of eternal life, a spiritual life within. Thus only does mind become life or life-like. The 1 Browns "Relig. Med." C. viii., § 2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH . 235 attempt to identify life and mind, except by this constantly used analogy of Scripture, confounds body and mind ; confounds the life of the body which comes from within and below, and the life of the mind, which must come from without and from above. No man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man that is in him. The spirit of man is the life of the mind, and if that spirit be not the Spirit of God from above, it will most assuredly be the Spirit of Evil from below. There is a Life of the Body and a life of the Mind, but who can suppose them in any wise the same ? One thing, however, seems quite clear from this example ; that to attempt to discuss the identity of such deep abstract thoughts as life and mind, by means of such definitions as the " the adjustment of external and internal re- lations," is a most inadequate method of pre- x senting to the mind the true meanings of such abstract words. This, which is Mr. Spencer's definition of life, is also absurd — for the word add-just-ment assumes, in fact, or may be made to assume, the very mental question 236 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C. viil, § 2. in dispute ; but the truth seems to be, as he also seems to admit, that the adjustment of life is the adjustment effected by God and perfect ; and that the adjustment of mind is the adjustment of man the broken image of his Maker, and not only imperfect, but alto- gether u an anomaly in nature," which Mr. Spencer himself very properly calls man, or the mind of man. This imperfect or fallen human mind cannot, therefore, possibly have grown, on his own showing, out of the perfection of animal life, unless perfection do breed imper- fection. That fall from perfection, which Holy Scripture has revealed to man, may require to be explained, but the admission of it negatives the identity of life and mind. The life of the body is quite different from the living spirit of the human mind, though both co-exist in mysterious unity in every man that breathes. Our object, of course, is not to discuss this great question in a few pages, but to give an illustration of an im- proved method of defining the terms to be compared, viz., Life and Mind. We submit, therefore, by this example, that C. viii., § 2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 237 the old Greek system of definition by Genus and essential difference, and by selecting such terms, as may be put into an ordinary gram- matical sentence, is utterly inadequate to express what all well-informed men, modern physiologists, and modern metaphysicians, mean and understand by such abstract terms as life and mind, We must dig deeper and go to the roots and factors of our knowledge, to the inde- composable terms, organisation, absorption, secretion, reproduction, &c, before we have any semblance of a definition of what is really meant, amongst moderns, by the words, life and living things. We must discuss and understand what is meant by human Emo- tions, Intelligence, Sentiments or Will, before we have any semblance of what is really meant amongst us by the words Mind and human mental things. How can we argue about Mr. Spencer's definition, " The continuous adjustment of internal to external relations " ? — which might mean the Foreign Office under Lord John Russell — or indeed about any other of the 238 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. viil, § 2. grammatical definitions which have been given for life, such as Coleridge's "Tendency to Individuation," or Cuvier's "Vortex," or Dr. WhewelPs "Constant Form of Circu- lating Matter." We lose, in such definitions, the whole force of the thoughts of all the living motions and actions discovered by Phy- siologists, and comprehended under our word Life. When, however, we reach the material and fundamental factors of Life, the likenesses of living things taught us by physiology, the organization, the absorption, the assimila- tion, the secretions, and the rest, we can, to some extent, compare the absorption of a living body with the so called absorption of a living mind, and so on. Are the ab- sorptions of a living body and of a living mind the same ? Then we perceive that the supposed likeness is not identity, but the mere analogy of human language, rising to and teaching the higher by means of the lower ; and our conviction becomes confirmed that body and mind are not the same, thai the higher human mind has no kind of iden- C. vin., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 239 tity with the principle of natural life in the living matter of a bodily being. Body has a life and mind has a life, but the two lives are not in any way the same or identical, or con- nected by growth. The analogy is a verbal likeness, not an identical sameness, a likeness of which we need not be afraid ; seeing that we have the highest authority for its use ; " the Life is more than meat — I am the bread of Life — the words that I speak unto you they are Life" the Life of the Mind. Some of the same materialistic philoso- phers who seek to confound life and mind, also lose themselves in the confusion of cause and law; a confusion of much older date, and for which we might go back to the phi- losophy of Greece. Let us also shortly glance at this old question of the world being a machine — a concourse of atoms, which wound themselves up at the first, and have ever since been running down or up, some might say, accord- ing to law, with no active, living Governor whatever, no MIND perpetually present ! 240 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. ix., § 1. CHAPTER IX. LAW AND CAUSE. ( 1 .) The Cause, Plurality of Causes, no Cause at all.— The mind of man, as I have said, is a trinity in unity, a product of three factors — Emotion, Intellect, and Will; an emotional mind and an intellectual mind, shared to some extent with the lower animals. But, alas ! the noble free will, the holy mind or human self-governor, is defiled and debased, an anomaly in nature. Emotions represent Power ; intellect, Wisdom ; and will, Good- ness. This degraded free will of Man, dead while it seems to live, is itself the product of a' number of distinct faculties, when we think C. ix., § 1 .] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 241 of it as the reason ; that higher reason which places man above the rest of the animal crea- tion. The human will has also, at least, three factors — love, veneration, and justice. Man's will is a chaos, which requires the moving of the Spirit of God on its tempestuous waters to restore or redeem it, and to reduce it to light, order, and truthfulness. I am not writing a treatise on metaphysics or on the human mind, but am desirous of showing the way to the first step in Philoso- sophic truth — the only way, as I conceive, in which men can come to some proper scientific convention about the words they use, in order to arrive at some scientific certainty on phi- losophical subjects. The attempt to confound law and cause is certainly one of the most curious attempts contained in all the history of the fallen mind of man, to ignore his Creator, and to hide the nakedness of his rebellion under a con- fusion of words. Here, as in all languages and amongst all men, a falsity never shows its face. It wraps itself up in a " wrap rascal" parcel of words, M 242 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. ix., § 1. as Coleridge says — looking both ways at once, hiding its confusion and contradiction in the folds of the cloak. Let us examine this cloak ! " The uniformity in the succession of events otherwise called the Law of Cau- sation." 1 Or take the following : " Causation, in our view of it, not being fundamentally different from order in time." 2 Such ex- pressions, we say, afford a cloak of words, out of which, in due time, to develop what Mr. Mill calls " the Fundamental error of Bacon," viz., " overlooking Plurality of Causes " for " one phenomenon ; " " so contrary," he says, " to all we now know of nature " ! Until at last, we actually are told, that " The pheno- menon of which he [Bacon] sought for the one catcse, has oftenest no cause at all! And when it has, depends, as far as hithertQ ascertained, on an unassignable variety of distinct causes ! " 3 Here, then, is the conclusion — an actual phenomenon j with a plurality of causes or no 1 "Logic," vol. ii., p. 104, 2 Ibid, vol. ii., p. 133. 3 Ibid, vol. ii., p. 318. C.ix., §1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 243 cause at all! or a variety of distinct causes, which you please ! Now, a plurality of causes may mean what I should call a compound cause, but a variety of distinct causes must mean variable causes for the same effect. But a phenomenon with no cause at all! That indeed must be a phe- nomenon worthy of philosophic examination, by a philosopher who sets out by saying that words in his work shall always be spoken of as u the names of things themselves." " A thing itself," called a phenomenon, produced by no cause at all ! One's first feeling, on collating these words of Mr. Mill, is to laugh at the absurdity of the farce ; the second feeling is to grieve at the tragedy of a noble intellect confused and bewildered by its own words on the most im- portant subject that can engage the attention of a rational being ! If " Order in Time be not fundamentally different from Causation," then the phenome- non with no cause must have been before time began, and not in the days of Bacon ! If it had no cause at all, it was the First Cause M 2 244 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.ix., § 1. itself ! But it is idle to discuss the possible meanings of Mr. Mill's words, which are evidently absurd, and in themselves self- contradictory. If things have even an order in time, they cannot be in disorder; if a thing was a phenomenon in the days of Bacon, it cannot have been without an ante- cedent in order of time, or without a cause at all ! on Mr. Mill's own view of causation. In short, a uniformity without uniformity is a simple absurdity or self-contradiction. It is evident, upon the face of Mr. Mill's own words, that " order in time," "cause" and " law," have " no signification," no fixed meaning whatever, in Mr. Mill's mind or intellect, if we can judge of that mind and intellect by the words he uses. He can think a law no law ; a cause no cause ; a uniformity not uniform; and a consequent sometimes with, and sometimes without, an antecedent ! His mind seems a chaos on the subject of causation, utterly confused and self-contra- dictory. But Mr. Mill seems, to me, entitled to the credit of more candidly disclosing his confusion than some other writers, if he will C.ix.,§1.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 245 excuse a compliment to his conscience, at the expense of his verbal 1 understanding. 1 While correcting this sheet, the Westminster Review for April, 1861, has come to hand, and the first article, that on Mr. Kingsley 's "Essay on History," affords a good illus- tration of the utter confusion of thought, the no-meaning of "advanced thinkers" on the subject of Law. The reviewer has no meaning whatever for the word Law, but always connotes to Law the various subjects on which laws are known. " Thus," he says, " who does not see that the Law of Gravitation and the Law of the Decalogue are ideas which have little more in common than the sound of an organ and the sound of a codfish ? " — evidently connoting the ideas of Gravitation and of the Decalogue to the word Law. And so throughout the article he pretends to answer Mr. Kingsley, by telling him that " Law is not Cause ; " and then quotes Mr. Mill's definition of Causation, which actually confounds Cause with Law — viz., the simplest of all laws — i.e., Antecedent and Consequent, or order in Time, " otherwise called the Law of Causation" ! Law is the product of Word and Order, and aU laws are orderly words laid down by lawyers and lawgivers ; and so, the Laws of Gravitation are orderly words from the writings of Newton ; the Laws of the Decalogue are orderly words from the writings of Moses ; the Laws of Population are orderly words from writers on Population, &c. The question between Mr. Kingsley, whose essay I have not read, and the Reviewer, seems to be whether laws of human history are to be found in the laws of mind or the laws of matter. Mr. Buckle, and self-dubbed " advanced thinkers" in general, or modern materialists, as I understand them, contend for the latter, and Mr. Kingsley, apparently, con- tends for the former, insisting on not confounding persons and things. Mr. Buckle thinks, or rather says, speaking from my memory of his work, that physical facts are the causes of human history; whereas I would contend that human minds are the causes of human history and that 246 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.ix.,§2. Let us, if we can, try and clear up a little this very ancient attempt to confound two such clear and distinct thoughts as law and cause, and to reduce the universe to a machine or a concourse of atoms, to a Law without a super- intending Cause. (2.) A Cause at Law and in Nature. — Let us take the lawyer's use of the words, Law and Cause, and examine it in the first place. A cause at law is an action between a plaintiff and defendant. The plaintiff comes first and the defendant comes after ; and when they, the parties, are both present together, there is a legal hubbub — in short, a few WORDS between them ; and the cause comes into court before a judge, an admitted pos- sessor of a certain amount of power, wisdom, and goodness. The judge applies or lays down the law in words, and the hurlyburly of the cause is at an end ; the plaintiff and de- fendant sink into their new positions in peace, physical facts are not the causes, but the limits or restric- tions upon human powers — i.e., upon the human mind, very important to know, but not Causes Limits. C. ix , § 2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 247 and the law-cause is at an end, and has be- come, in lawyer phrase, a law-case, laid by for future reference. Just as we put a book in our book-case, good and bad ; so we put our law cases registered altogether till we want them. Therefore, we have a law cause, the product of Parties x Action x (power, wis- dom, and goodness) ending in a law case. But we have seen, ante, p. 228, that mind is a product of power, wisdom, and goodness, in greater or less development. Therefore, a cause equals or is the product of Parties x Action x Mind ; and the thing produced is a case of law or law case. Thus the lawyers, at all events, mean by cause, a thing com- posed of parties, action, and mind, pro- ducing an effect or new arrangement of things and parties, called a law point or law case. The cause ends in a case ; the U in the word, the hubbub, or mutual action of the parties, having been settled and excluded by the Power of the judge. Now, I say that, not only all lawyers, but all Englishmen commonly use the word Cause in this manner, viz., as a confused action of 248 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.tx.,§2. parties settled by the Power of Mind. Suppose, therefore, that in place of bringing into court a plaintiff and defendant, two persons, we brought into court an acid and an alkali, two things, or an electric current and some water, in short, any active things, or things in acti- vity; and a hubbub follows between them, action and reaction, ending in a neutral salt in the first case, and two gases in the other, or some other effect or consequence of the action in every case. Well ! the cause begins, pro- ceeds, and ends ; and in place of an acid and an alkali, we have a neutral salt, or, in place of water, we have two gases, or at the end of the action and reaction we have some other consequence ; we have, in short, in every case, a case of chemical law. We thus have two or more law points, or law cases in chemistry. Well, then ! is the difference very startling, or, in truth, is there any difference whatever to our human apprehension between the Law- yers' and the Chemists' use of the word Cause? Two or more things or particles, not minds or persons, come, or are put together, and there ensues a hubbub or hurlyburly between them, C.ix.,§2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 249 which we do not in the least understand, but which we call a cause, or antecedent, and it ends in an effect or consequent, a case of natural law. And the chemist or natural phi- losopher endeavours to pick out the law of the chemistry case, just as a lawyer in his chambers endeavours to get at the law of his law case. In the one case we have persons in action, in the other case we have things in activity. This is the plain unsophisticated truth, and every Englishman so speaks, and verbally admits it, when he uses the word Cause. Now, I have certainly yet to learn, why we Englishmen are to use the word cause in any other sense, in the courts of natural philo- sophy, than we do in the courts of our country ; or why we are to leave the power, wisdom, and goodness of the judge out of court in the one case and not in the other. For my part, I will not leave it out till some sufficient reason be given; and, there- fore, in the cause between the acid and the alkali, or electricity and water, or any other cause in natural philosophy, I refer the conse- quent, the neutral salt, or the two gases, to M 5 250 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. ix., §2. the due and proper application of Power or mind by the Supreme Omnipotent Judge, by Himself or His agents, universally present in Court; just as I refer the final arrangement between plaintiff and defendant at West- minster to the application of power or mind by the judges there, and endeavour, by searching and examining all the circum- stances from the beginning of the cause to the end of it, to find out the law which the authorities must reasonably have intended to lay down. I cannot refer to the judge himself in the one case or the other ; but I can if I choose, in both cases, start a new and similar cause, or try to do so in order to hear a new and more lucid judgment if possible. The advantage which natural philosophy has over the practice of the law is, that you are more sure of not receiving different answers to the same question in the one case than in the other ; but how Cause can be confounded with Law, or how an antecedent or former state of things can be confounded with the law or dead rule according to which the living C. ix., § 2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH . 251 power, wisdom, or goodness of the judge, pro- duces a new state of the same things; or how Cause can be confounded with Succession in Time, appears to me a most surprising abuse of words. Cause is, parties, action, Mind. Effect is, parties, new arrangement. And Law is the verbal expression or rule which the judge lays down, or which the lawyer or the looker-on adopts in order to express the change which has taken place, devised by his judgment from the facts of the whole cause, carefully examined from the beginning to the end. Law is words in order. Lawyers misinterpret cases, and so do natural philosophers. It is often needful at law to go and search the records of an old cause to find who all the parties were, and whether there were not some other parties than those mentioned in the reports, in order to account for the strange conclusion. But it would be a most surprising effort of reason, we came to the conclusion that the judge had left the court, and that the judgment pro- ceeded without him, and that the cause was 252 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.ix.,§2. settled by the parties ending their difference according to the clock at Westminster, that is to say, by order in time, or tossing up which should go first, and which last, or ending in " a phenomenon with no cause at all !" A consequent without an antecedent ! We say, therefore, that in the courts of nature the Judge is always present whenever a cause ends in a case of natural law. And we say that a law of nature is merely our words to try and explain to ourselves the reason of the cause ending in an effect or case of the law. When we are puzzled, we try, if possible, to put the parties ox particles to the question, as Bacon recommended. We take them separately, and, if possible, crucify them till they tell us their whole history, and how they came, and what they would do in other circumstances, and whether they are single or double, and so forth, and turn them round and round, and backwards and for- wards, and inside out, if possible, both while the cause proceeds, and before it begins, and after it ends, and we register every answer they give us ; and, without doubt, the Great, C.ix., §2.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 253 and All-powerful, and All-wise, and All good Judge in the Courts of Nature, approves of man's searching disposition. He says, "My son, get wisdom !" External nature was intended to rouse our sluggish spirit, to elevate us from the plea- sures of sense to the pleasures of intellect, and from the pleasures of intellect to the glories of that Divine goodness which is dimly shadowed in the best feelings of mankind. But what possible excuse is there for any man who admits the existence of an Omnipotent God, to hide this plain state of the case with " order in time," and " the uniformity of the succes- sion of events ;" and, as it were, to use the very goodness, and clearness, and certainty of God's law, as a reason for turning the judge out of his own court, in the decision of the cause between his own subjects, his own crea- tions, his own particles of matter ? Now, how is this absurdity attempted to be supported? first by shuffling cause; which does of necessity, according to all English usage, imply compound parties, and some action be- tween them, into a single antecedent ; and se- 254 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.ix.,§2. condly, by shuffling the new state of the par- ties when the cause is concluded, also into a single consequent ; , and calling this new state of parties, the effect of the first state ; just as if this new arrangement was effected without any mental power or interference whatever, as if arrangement? were made by blind par- ticles of wo/i-thinking things of their own accord, and according to the most beautiful, sublime, and subtle laws that man can conceive in his loftiest mind, and express in intelligible words and symbols ! However, if materialistic philosophers choose to use the word Cause in a manner different from all Englishmen, who understand by cause, an action between two or more per- sons, and thence by analogy, transfer it to action and reaction between two or more external things or particles, and consider cause as an action between two or more things ending, in both cases, in some new arrangement of persons or things, by the fiat of a powerful, wise, or good Judge, they are bound to give us some clear and intelligible new meaning for the old w T ord cause. What C.ix.,§3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 255 produces the thought of cause in their mind ? in short, if it be not as I say, the product of parties, action, mind, ending in a new arrangement of the parties, the persons, or things, called the law Gase ; either the muni- cipal law case, or the natural law case, or the moral law case : what do they mean ? Can these philosophers give us any meaning without being self-contradictory as above, like Mr. Mill? and can they avoid talking of a conse- quent which had no antecedent, i.e., " a phe- nomenon with no cause at all," or of " order in time," with no order at all, i.e., a variety of distinct causes for the same effect. We are not bound to give up our plain English words for self-contradictory trash of that kind, even on the authority of such a great logician and philosopher as Mr. Mill. (3.) The Infra Dig. Argument. — But the most amusing excuse of some of these philo- sophers who propose to turn the Great Judge of the Universe out of his own natural court, and to make causes between things decide themselves by order in time, or the clock at Greenwich Observatory, and without His pre- 256 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.ix., §3. sence, and action, and power, is what may- be called the infra dig. argument. It is, in short, beneath His importance; it is infra dig. for the Great Judge to be called in to decide a question between an acid and an alkali, or two atoms of matter. In short, let us speak it with reverence, He must be too busy to attend to such a multiplicity of trifles as we from habit think the wondrous laws and operations of nature in the meanest par- ticles of matter. What a wretched shuffle this is, to try and hide God's particular pro- vidence, His omnipresence, and omniscience ; and in thought to try and exclude Him from this wondrous universe which He has created, and now sustains at every moment in every particle. In short, this confusion of Cause and Law seems a mere opinion, founded on a personal dislike to the thought of God's particular providence, to God's omniscience, and to His omnipresence. Weak and wicked man strives to thicken the vail that sepa- rates him from his Maker, and would rather think of this universe as a great clock wound up by a watchmaker, and then mankind and C.ix.,§3.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 257 all left to work itself down, free from all responsibility to any Being; but, of course, leaving the original maker of the watch responsible for all irregularities ? That seems the whole secret, and the whole reason that exists for confounding law and cause. Phi- losophers not only dislike to acknowledge the free will of man, and his fall, and just punishment, but would, if possible, conceal from themselves God's omnipresence and om- niscience, His Divine particular Providence operating in the meanest particles of matter. However, we shall continue to hold, both in the laws of nature and in the laws of man, that Cause is the product of parties, action, and Mind ; and that Law is the verbal rule or order laid down, the product of words and order, which brings, verbally, the old state of parties into the new arrangement. There are very many causes in nature of which we are ignorant ; but our business is to search for the first or antecedent arrangement of the parties or things concerned, and thence to find some verbal rule which will reduce them to the new or consequent arrangement. 258 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.ix.,§4. The order and the uniformity are a part of the law, that is of our verbal expression of it, and not any part of the cause, or of the effect. But all our discoveries are still only human words. Our verbal expression of the law must, of course, be orderly and uniform, or it is no laiv at all; i.e., not by us laid down properly for an intelligent creature to understand. As soon, however, as the Judge is admitted to be always in court, and nothing too mean for His attention, all other difficul- ties will vanish from the devout and conscien- tious mind, and he will seek the laws of nature with that faithful humility and rever- ence which are most fitted to enable us to discover what is both true and useful. (4.) Pantheistical Objections. — But some poor bewildered mortal may possibly exclaim, Why this is Pantheism! Is God in every particle of matter, and in every action and reaction that takes place between every two or more petty particles? To which I answer —Is the Judge at Westminster in the parties to the cause, or mixed up with their squabbles, which he settles and determines ? No ! Well, C.ix.,§4.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 259 then, why are we to suppose any such folly in a natural cause, or a natural action ? The power, and wisdom, and goodness of the Judge are not in the particles of matter, but everywhere, operating and enforcing good, wise and powerful laws, and only just as long- as He thinks fit ; but the Judge Himself is Mind, not matter, nor in any matter. Pan- theism is as absurd, and as self-contradictory as Pan -Atheism. This is only, as we have so often said, the constant old shift or shuffle be- tween the folly of materialism and the folly of dogmatic idealism. When driven from one refuge, the defeated philosopher flies to another equally absurd. Thus, however, we are not obliged to use the word cause in two senses, or in none at all. The analogy between persons and things, between parties and parts, between minds and bodies, is perfect throughout, but they cannot be confounded. If the devout mind will but always remember, who the Great Judge, by whose laws, discovered and laid down by man in human words, all causes between material things and their parts and particles, are 260 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.ix.,§5. settled, he will be in the best frame of mind to discover the truest verbal expression for those laws, after he has carefully examined a cause or case of natural law. But if you per- sist, like a child, in asking for some verbal expression for what you and I cannot under- stand, I can but fall back on the verbal expression revealed to Moses in the infancy of man's moral education, and say, that the Spirit of God moves on the face of the earth, and is ever ready to enter the chaos of human free will, and to say, let there be light, to the humble and penitent searcher for the light of Truth. "If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children ; how much more shall your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him." (5.) Fundamental Differences and Mr. Mill. — " I have no toleration for false words, and don't wish to have any." If I think them evil malefactors, I desire to crucify them with the truth. It is such words as " strictly speaking," "not fundamentally different," &c, which suffice to baffle an intellect even as powerful as that of Mr. Mill ! What can a C.ix.,§5.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 261 logician mean by such trash? What is Mr. Mill's notion of a fundament ? and what amounts to a difference? Is a fundamental difference the same as a differential funda- ment ? How can men speak such folly, and make it applicable even to the First Cause ; that first Emotion or active Cause in the Divine Mind that we assume to have produced all things ? " Order in time is not fundamentally different from causation !" Why, this admits a difference, and says it is not fundamental. Does fundamental mean to found-a-mental- thing-upon, or find a mental thing for? Well, if he cannot found a mental thing upon the difference, and yet admits there is a difference, he should admit his ignorance, and not call two different things by the same name. " The succession of events," otherwise called the law of causation ! Night the cause of day, day the cause of night ! Every first the cause of every second ! and every second the cause of every third ! and so on ; any amount of absurdity rather than confess ignorance, and become humble. Now, is it that Mr. Mill cannot found, or cannot find, a mental thing ; and 262 PHILOSOPHY; OR, . [C.ix.,§5. not being able to find or found, thinks him- self entitled to confound order in time with cause, though he knows and admits that he knows them to be different? When he next undertakes to enlighten the world about such things as causes and general words, I trust he will have found a Mind, a fundamental thing in every cause; and general words, which, strictly speaking, always have some signification, and will be able to use them to better purpose than to manufacture language calculated to mislead men of weaker intellect than himself, and to exclude the Creator from the Universe He has made. 1 1 Here I take my leave of Mr. Mill and his Logic, and would do so with respect and esteem if it were only for his Essay on Liberty, and its affecting preface. I trust that the memory of the love of the creature may lead his mind more and more upward to the love of the Creator, whose laws and whose truth have, in my opinion, been outraged by the words in this Chapter remarked upon. On some other occasion I may, perhaps, consider his political parallel between the death of Socrates and the death of Jesus ! But when he has more carefully considered the true signification of words, I trust that he may be more ready to admit that the truth of a moral revelation in words is not only a thing possible, but a thing actual ; that he may feel morally the deep truth and wisdom of that Holy Book which makes the pure love of man for woman the highest type of the love of God for man, his friend : and that a book that pretended to be a revelation C. ix., §6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 263 (6.) Works and Words — Efficient and Formal Causes. — We thus have discussed shortly law and cause, by reducing these words to their factors ; and hope that if any reader, who in times past, has found his mind in any-wise bewildered between formal causes , and efficient causes, and moral causes and final causes, will candidly read over and consider the verbal solution which we have given, he will discover that it is a pathway clear and distinct across the weary wilderness of words, through which even great philosophers have vainly endeavoured to pass, in the settlement of this question ; and that he will acknowledge that our explanation is one which can be ren- dered throughout perfectly clear and intelli- gible. Of course it depends on our assumption that the word Cause is a product of parties, action, judge; or in external nature, things, action, Mind, L e., the mind of God, whenever from God, and which did not openly declare that which to man's mind can only be represented as God's absolute free will, or, as we must say, in reference to man's ignorant mind, " God's caprice,'" i.e., His right to act in a way unin- telligible to man's highest reason, would have carried on its face a clear and manifest proof that such a revelation did not come from the Infinite Author of this Universe. 264 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.ix., §6. we refer to external nature, subject to Him. It of course assumes that there is only one meaning for the word cause, and it adheres to that meaning throughout, and shows that in his most ordinary language man still con- fesses the Maker whom he sometimes wishes to deny. When the things become mental things, i. e., human persons, and the action becomes human words, and the mind becomes a judge at Westminster, we have a cause at Westminster; but when the things are ex- ternal bodies or particles, and the action not the words of persons but the works of par-* tides, and the mind becomes the Creator of the universe, then the cause becomes a cause in Nature. But, on the one hand, to confound the mind of the universe with the work of particles of matter, is, we say, mere superstition and idolatry ; and, on the other, to deny His pre- sence in every natural cause, in every action of every particle of matter, is to deny His omnipresence, omniscience, and power. There is not a hair of our heads that is not num- bered. There is not a sparrow falls to the C.ix.,§6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 265 ground but by His will ; not one of them is " forgotten before God." There is not a particle of matter which works or operates but by his express knowledge, permission, power, and will. Oh ! that all men would see and acknowledge this truth of a Divine par- ticular Providence, a truth as far removed from superstition and idolatry as it is from infidelity and blasphemy ! The reader may have perceived that I have, in the preceding discussion of law and cause, assumed the word action as some indecompo- sable thought, sufficiently understood and recognised amongst mankind, whether it refers to actions of persons or actions of things. An action of persons at law is a bundle of words of men; an action of ex- ternal bodies in natural law is a bundle of works of particles or natural things. We thus are justly compellable to state the dif- ference between works and words. " The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life," said Jesus. " Though ye believe not me, believe the works that I do." Or, for example, when Jesus, looking N 266 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.ix.,§6. up to heaven, sighed and said, " Lazarus, come forth!" was He saying words or doing works ? Whatever thy belief may be, reader, thy words are thine own alone ; the works of thy larynx and thy tongue, or of thy pen worked by thy arm ; or of thine eyes and body, moved by thy mind and adopted by thy will. Words are the works of mind, and works are the words of bodies. From our three classes of minds, bodies, and words, in order to distin- guish the verbal actions of minds we call them words ; to mark, as it were, the verbal actions of bodies moved by minds other than man's, we call them works. Works are therefore the actions of bodies, and words are the actions of minds ! A word of man is an action of man's mind, producing an action of his larynx and tongue, or of his arm and pen, and adopted and acknowledged by the mind. In our original conception of Knowledge as the product of mind, things, and words {ante, p. 17), " word" was more proper than " action," because an action does not become the subject of knowledge until it has received C.ix.,§6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 267 a name and become a word. When an action has received a name, then alone can it form a part or factor in human knowledge. Let these few sentences suffice to prevent the cavil which might otherwise have been raised on our use of the word action, to include both words and works. We are not writing a treatise on the theory of growth or development entertained by those philosophers who endeavour to confound life with mind, and law with cause ; but are endeavouring to show how truth and certainty are to be better arrived at by means of our words, viz., by fixing and agreeing to fix the factors which go to produce the abstract words we discuss, in place of the old Greek logic of a definition. But it is very worthy to be remarked, in reference to life and mind, and law and cause, that there is a Providence which rules man's words, and seems to make it impossible to establish error without our words becoming themselves self-contradictory, and betraying the falsity. Truth is one and simple, and so commends itself to the average of mankind who enact the laws of language N 2 268 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. ix., § 6. in ordinary matters, that words, in the long run, tend to correct themselves by the very inconsistencies of that selfish free will from which their errors proceed. Men make idols of some verbal truth seen in the partial and one-sided glass of their own mind, and set it up as conclusive against God's truth, which includes all that is verbally true in the human idol. Thus, for example, the same class of phi- losophers and moralists who struggle to con- found life and mind, and law and cause ; who seem to desire to remove the primary Ex- istence to an infinite distance from the affairs of the world and of man ; who seek to prove some " pre-established harmony" of growth, whereby the dead matter of a fire mist grew into a planet, and into a plant, and into a protozoon, and from a protozoon developed into the mind of a Socrates or a Plato, ac- cording to law, are, for the most part, inclined to deny that during the countless ages which they assume to have passed since the first fiat of the law of nature was enacted, any C.ix.,§6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 269 subsequent fiat of law, or, in short, any suc- ceeding miracle can ever have occurred. But is it not passing strange, nay, contradic- tory and absurd, that men, who can believe in, and endeavour to establish some law of growth, which is able to produce out of an infinitesimal germ floating in water, the mind of a Socrates and the thinking of a Plato, should believe and assert that the same, or some other, law of growth could not " possibly" produce, five hundred years later, what we Christians term the miraculous birth of a Being or a spirit superior to man from the womb of a virgin ? How utterly self-contradictory and inconsis- tent, we say, must be that mind which enter- tains as possible this monstrous hypothesis of the growth of Socrates out of a lichen or protozoon, and holds it as not only possible, but in some degree credible and probable; and yet, at the same time, turns round and tells us, along with the inventors of the " absolute religion," and other self-dubbed advanced thinkers of the present day, that a " miracle is not possible, and involves a contradiction"! If law could evolve the mind of a Plato or 270 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. ix., §6. Socrates out of a monad or protozoon, even with a " rudimentary eye," why should not some such law five hundred years later, evolve a Jesus, a Spirit, much more powerful, and able to teach mankind a still higher life ; and to develop in man a still higher mind ? why not a Being, a man with a Spirit, as much superior to Socrates and his demon, as So- crates was superior to a monad or protozoon ? why not a Being, able of his own mere Will to modify and control all inferior laws of dead or living matter, or to suspend them altogether, just as the life of any animal sus- pends the inferior laws of chemical affinity. Is not every life a suspension of the laws of mere dead matter ? and why are we to stop short with the life of Socrates, and not go forward at least in " possibility," to the re- corded life of Jesus, and to the Life Eternal which he offered and promised ? If mind, as these advanced thinkers pre- tend, grew out of matter, why may not Spirit grow out of mind ? If dead matter grew into living matter, and then got up and walked, and reasoned as a man which became a Socrates, C. ix., §6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 2 71 why should not living man at a later period grow into a Jesus, a Spirit able to raise and rising from the dead ? Absurd as most of us think the original hypothesis, sure we are, that for the same mind to entertain that hypo- thesis as possible, and then to deny "the possibility" of the miracles of Scripture is a self-contradiction still more absurd than the hypothesis itself. But the truth is, that these advanced thinkers simply confound analogy with growth. External nature was, doubt- less, intended to lead man upwards, to educate him for those higher purposes to which, in some future stage of existence his powers may be adapted. In my "Father's house are many mansions." The universe is wide enough to worthily employ the highest facul- ties of all God's humble children, even though each required a planet to himself. But mind and matter are, and must ever remain to man wholly separate and distinct, and he cannot confound them without self- contradiction ; and the confusion of Life, and Mind, and of Law and Cause are mere cloudy contrivances to hide this self-con- 272 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. ix., § 6. tradiction. Matter is the instrument of mind, and every man who speaks, is at some time or other compelled to admit and ac- knowledge this truth, in order to distinguish between himself and his body, between the ego and the non ego, between the part of himself which can be, and the part which cannot be separated from consciousness and conscience. There is that something, and the man who says it is matter, merely desires to call A and not A-by the same name in the same discussion. In short, lie is a logical shuffler. He may do this unconsciously, and often does so through bad habit ; more often perhaps through bad habits of thinking, than through any conscious dishonesty of mind ; but the fact remains, and cannot be gainsayed, that materialism and Pantheism are mere verbal shuffles; an endeavour to call the thinking thing and the ?i0?2-thinking thing by the same word. If any man admits that there is a thinking thing, and also a non-thinking thing, then he is a mere verbal shuffler if he is a ma- terialist or a Pantheist. But of course he C. ix., §6.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 273 may be subject to what we may call word- blindness, and may be, and ought to be in that case, an object of affectionate pity for such a deprivation of light. " If the light that be within be darkness, how great is that dark- ness." We can, or ought in such case, to pity and pray for him. But there must always be many men also, who hold inconsistent opinions; men in whom moral feelings are superior to their logical in- stinct. These men will admit the premises, or not be able to see their way out of the pre- mises, but yet will refuse to draw the logical conclusion, because it contradicts their moral sense. We wish to speak with sincere respect of all three, when we say, that Sir John Herschel seems to us to stand in this position between Dr. Whewell and Mr. Mill. He throws the weight of his authority first into the scale of Mr Mill's premises and logical principles, and then, afterwards, into the scale of Dr. WhewelPs conclusions. We did not happen to meet with his observations till this essay was written ; but we cannot reconcile light and darkness on authority. We cannot do better N 5 274 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. ix., §7. than conclude this chapter, by referring to what Sir J. Herschel says. (7.) Sir J. Herschel on Law and Cause, and Induction and Deduction. — When it is said by this great astronomer, confirming some of Mr. Mill's logical lucubrations, that " the inves- tigation of truth is to be distinguished from the mere interpretation of a formula," That all truth is obtained " by reasoning from par- ticulars to particulars;" in short, by induction, or by Baconian, rather than by Aristotelean logic. We answer simply that it is not, and we have ventured to take issue on this logical question, and say that no truth whatever can be arrived at by induction or arguing, from particulars to particulars; that it is con- founding truth with convenience and utility to call conclusions by induction truths. It may suit loose talkers, and rule of thumb practicians, to speak of inductive truths ; but truth is too high and pure a word to be thus confounded with that inductive guess work, which some new and more careful observation or experiment may at any time overturn and blow to the winds as a falsity. And we say C. ix., §7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 275 that all truth is the strict interpretation of a formula, and that our certainty depends alto- gether on the certainty of the original axioms and principles from which the truth can be strictly deduced. It is, we say, confounding truth and error, to confound these two things, deductive truths, which are necessarily true, if the principles or first assumptions from which they are deduced, are true and neces- sary; with inductive guess work, though such guess work is very frequently called inductive truths. Do we therefore undervalue induc- tion, or the Baconian method of investigating the wonders of the universe ? we say nay ! we rather establish it, by placing it on its proper foundation, as. merely provisional ex- planations, till better can be devised and ob- served ; thus encouraging the utmost care, and examination, and observation, and expe- riment, not only at first, but over and over again. We say that it is absurd and in- consistent, and unworthy of a philosopher and astronomer, to call induction " the inves- tigation of truth," and at the same time to say, that " it must he at once admitted that no 276 PHILOSOPHY ; OR. [C. ix., §7. conclusion from inductive reasoning, i.e., from the observed to the unobserved, can enjoy more than a provisional security" l What do men mean by truth enjoying a provisional security? truth with a provisional security only ! that is not truth at all ; yet this is the only kind of truth possessed by every conclu- sion, by induction, according to both Sir J. Herschel and Mr. Mill. It may do for ordinary life and practical matters to talk in this loose manner, but surely it is time that such language was banished from the domains of science, and from the writings of philoso- phers. Calling such provisional guess work truth, is confounding truth and falsehood. It is a gross abuse of language wholly unworthy of searchers after truth, and it leads directly to that materialistic idol worship which con- founds law and cause, and life and mind. The same great astronomer who thus, at one time, lends the sanction of his high name to the illogical trash contained in Mr. Mill's logic, speaking of it as " one of the greatest 1 Sir John Herschel's "Essays," Review of Quetelet, p. 366. C.ix.,§7.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 277 steps yet made in the philosophy of logic, almost a discovery," feels as strongly as I do the shocking absurdities to which it leads, and whilst he is thus deluded and hoodwinked by the verbal skill of the logician, yet neverthe- less starts back from the final moral preci- pice, and rejects the necessary conclusion to which Mr. Mill's philosophy and logic lead the reason. He is pleased with the elevation by Mr. Mill, of the idol Induction, though he refuses to be absolutely chained to its car, or to throw his own moral existence beneath its wheels. We cannot, perhaps, do better than conclude with Sir J. Herschel's own i observations on another occasion, showing the hesitation of the philosopher, and the confu- sion that he feels about the words law and cause, at the same time that he rejects the immoral conclusion which we have been con- tending against. We did not meet with his observations till this work was written, but they afford a full apology and satisfactory reason for attempting a " careful analysis of the widest of all human generalizations," of which Sir J. Herschel clearly perceived 278 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. ix., §7. the necessity, and towards which careful analysis we trust we have made in this essay, some few effectual steps. He says, 1 " 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 ex- plain the phenomena of nature by referring them to their Causes ; on the other, that the inquiry into causes is alto- gether vain and futile, and that science has no concern but with the discovery of Laws. Which of these is the truth ? Whichever view we may take, one thing is certain — the extreme inconvenience of such a state of language. This can only be reformed by a careful analysis of the widest of all human generalizations — establishing a rational classifi- cation and nomenclature. So long as uncertainty 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 feel- ing, and give rise to accusations and recriminations on the score of principle 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 — as when we are told, for example, that the successive appearance of races of organised beings on earth, and their disappearance to give place to others, which geology teaches us, is a result of some certain law of development in virtue of which an unbroken chain of gradually exalted organization from the crystal to the globule, and thence through successive stages of the polypus, the mollusk, the insect, the fish, the reptile, the 1 Address to British Association, " Essays," p. 674. C. ix., §8.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 279 bird, and the beast, up to the monkey and the man (nay, for aught we know, even to the angel), has been, or remains to be evolved. Surely, when we hear such a theory, the natural human craving after causes, capable in some con- ceivable way of giving rise to such changes and transforma- tions of organ and intellect — causes why the development at different parts of its progress should divaricate into dif- ferent lines — causes, at all events, intermediate between the steps of the development — becomes importunate. And when nothing is offered to satisfy this craving but loose and vague reference to favourable circumstances of climate, food and general situation, which no experience has ever shown to convert one species into another; who is there who does not at once perceive that such a theory is in no respect more explanatory than that would be which simply asserted a miraculous intervention at every successive step of that unknown series of events, by which the earth has been alternately peopled and dispeopled of its denizens ? "A law may be a rule of action, but it is not action. The Great First Agent may lay down a rule of action for him- self, and that rule may become known to man by observa- tion of its uniformity : but constituted as our minds are, and having that conscious knowledge of causation which is forced upon us by the reality of the distinction between in- tending a thing and doing it, we can never substitute the Rule for the Act. Either directly or through delegated agency, whatever takes place is not merely willed but done. The transition from an inanimate crystal to a globule ca- pable of such endless organic and intellectual development is as great a step — as unexplained a one — as unintelligible to us, and, in any human sense of the word, as miraculous as the immediate creation and introduction upon earth of every species and every individual would be. . Take these amazing facts of geology which way we will, we must resort elsewhere than to a mere speculative law of development for their explanation." (8.) God in Everything but Evil Minds. — 280 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.ix,§8. We trust that we have made it abundantly evi- dent that it is a most transparent verbal shuffle, the usual materialistic shuffle, to attempt to confound law with cause, and life with mind. The ordinary use of the words clearly ac- knowledges the difference of the things them- selves ; and the men who strive to confound them, either have no meanings whatever to their words, or are unable to give any intel- ligible explanation of their meanings. They simply desire to call A and not-A, by the same name in the same discussion. We have shown that Mind is the product of power, wisdom, and goodness; that Cause is the pro- duct of parties, action, and mind ; that law is the product of words and Order, and there- fore, only our verbal rule adopted with provi- sional security until we can discover and lay down a better rule ; and that Life is the pro- duct of all those, at least seven unknown and mysterious words or actions set forth in order at page 215, of all of which man is profoundly ignorant. We cannot tell in the least why any one single living being selects and absorbs the food fitted to prolong its life; and absorp- C. ix., §8.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 281 Hon is only the first and simplest of those seven living actions having not the least reference whatever to the power, wisdom, and goodness of the human mind. We are, therefore, by our ignorance, com- pelled to find and acknowledge "God in every- thing," living or not living, save only and except in the wicked, fallen free will of sinful man, in wicked MINDS of which man is one example. That is the sole exception known to us, where God's power, wisdom, and goodness is not universally displayed, at every moment, and in every action or act of things and beings. Is there anything in the least superstitious in such a view of nature and of man ? We say no ! It is the doctrine of the Bible and the doctrine of true reason. In Him we live and move, and have our being ; and the most worthy object of each man's existence is to strive to restore, the Divine Image, the King- dom of God within the human souls, first of himself and then of all those within his verbal influence. But what possible reason exists for thinking MAN the only evil MIND ? 282 * PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.x. CHAPTER X. CONCLUSION : TRUTH AND NECESSITY. As I look back over what I have written, in order to conclude this essay on first princi- ples ; and to take leave of the reader, with a short summary of my doctrine ; it appears to me, that the words which will give most offence, and to some of the most worthy of those readers who have followed me thus far, is the positive declaration that all truth — i.e., all human truth — is verbal truth, words and nothing but WORDS ! " Rather than believe that," I hear some reader exclaim, " I hardly wish to be considered on the same side with the author of this Book ! All human truth is not verbal truth !" Gentle reader, for if thou C.x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 283 hast read so far as this page of this volume, without being able to clearly explain this verbal puzzle to yourself, I feel convinced that thou art destined to be carried to thy fathers in the shape of a young or an old woman, pos- sibly a scientific old woman ! Gentle reader, of what are we speaking? If thou art so faithful as to say of God's truth; I answer well! And is not God's truth, His moral truth contained, as I believe and say, between the two boards of a book called the Bible, in so many words, which gentle and simple, and wise and ignorant, are almost alike able to understand, and to apply to the improvement of their moral qualities? 1 That volume is just a volume of words, for the most part 1 We have the authority of the learning of the Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, for saying, that which I most heartily believe, that the thoughtful, intelligent, English reader, with his English Bible, and nothing else, in his hands, can attain as accurate and thorough understanding of the meaning of the original as the man with a roomful of commentators. For almost all, or, in fact, the whole substance of what we know about either the Old or the New Testament, their writers and their words, and the persons and things, or stories they describe or report, is contained in the volume itself! ("Essays and Reviews," p. 384.) One almost forgives the follies contained in this notorious volume for the frank confession of this one truth. 284 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.x. written by humble and ignorant men, and for the humble and the ignorant ; and each man, thank God, can now please his conscience what meanings he will attach to those words in his own mind, and as he shall answer to his God and my God. Therefore, I sav that the whole of God's revealed truth on earth is words, and nothing else but words. Do not be afraid of this truth ; but rather go to your knees, and pray Him to enable you to understand and put a true meaning in your own mind on the true words you have received, by His Providence, which made you an English child and re- sponsible for the blessings of English child- hood, and English manhood or womanhood. But if thou art " an advanced thinker," or some scientific old woman, still involved in this verbal puzzle, and shalt say that the truth we are speaking of is in one or both our minds ; or in tilings themselves, and not in the words merely, whether of the original authors, or of the translators, either of our sacred books, or of any or all our books of Science ; then I again agree with you, that according to the C.x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 285 usual convention of language made by all nations, savage and civilized, we are speaking of the truth of minds and of the truth of things themselves, and not merely of the truth of words. But that convention is, I say, and have proved, founded in manifest and clearly exhibited error. The truth of minds is clearly beyond the possibility of your knowledge and my know- ledge. One mind alone can be known to each of us — our own mind, the mind within ; for " no man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man, which is in him." The truth of things themselves is also beyond the possibility of your knowledge and my knowledge ; for what we know are only the pulses and vibrations of each of our own nervous systems, and things as they are in themselves are utterly beyond man's ken. There remains, therefore, only the truth of words, and with that we must humbly be contented, and feel our vast responsibility for that " fire, that world of iniquity, the human tongue," which at times " defileth the w 7 hole 286 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. x. body, and setteth on fire the course of nature, and is itself set on fire of hell." This is the law, the constitution, the essence of our human nature ; and composed as Man is, of mind and body, man can possess verbal truth only. Let us call it Mathematical Truth. The truths of minds and of things, whether contained in the volume of God's inspiration or in any volume of human Science, consists of signs and symbols, words,- and words only. The minds and things themselves are beyond our knowledge, and ever must remain so while our minds are clothed with bodies. Our greatest discoveries, our so-called laws of nature, are mere verbal guesses at truth, " with provisional security only," until we can find and adopt better and more apt words and symbols, in order to express the vibra- tions and pulsations of our hearts and minds, of our feelings and our intellect, guided by our will, as each man contemplates with humility the wondrous scene without, and the more wonderful scene within his own breast. The best established position in all philo- sophy is, that things as they are in themselves C.x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 287 are unknowable. The external Thing pro- duces vibrations of the incarrying nerves, which end in a Thought ; the Thought pro- duces vibrations of the outcarrying nerves, which end in a Word : and the only part of the whole process, which can possibly be compared or discussed by mankind, is the Word which is produced by the unknowable Thought. But some may say, words are external things, and, therefore, also unknow- able. But this is a mistake ; for words differ from all other external things. Words are the medium between A's thoughts and B's thoughts, and pass into both minds them- selves ; and though the thoughts cannot be compared, yet the words can be compared and registered, or altered and returned from B to A. Whenever, therefore, A says that he is speaking about things themselves, or that " his words are the names of things themselves," however justified he may be by the erroneous convention of ordinary language, he is talking absolute nonsense ; he cannot possibly speak of things themselves, but only of his own 288 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.x. thoughts or ideas of things themselves. So whenever B says that he is speaking about general human idea's, or that " his words are the names of general scientific ideas — i. e., of the ideas of A, &c. — he also, however justified by the same convention, is talking nonsense to others; he can speak of his own ideas, but he cannot possibly speak of A's ideas, but only of A's words for his ideas — i. e., of human words. Consequently, C can only set them right, if at all, by establishing some new convention about words, and endeavouring to induce them to use their words with greater accuracy and precision, or as he, C, says the words ought to be used. 1 But it follows clearly from this position, that all words are logically, at the same time, Things, Thoughts, and signs themselves. I say that words are logically the Things and Thoughts themselves, not merely signs themselves. Men of course profess to dis- tinguish between words and Things and 1 In this case A is Mr. Mill, B is Dr. Whewell, and the reader must judge how far this book is entitled to the position of C. Let it be spoken with all humility. C.x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 289 words and Thoughts in speaking and writing ; they profess to speak or write of Thoughts and Things, and not of words, but as it is clear to demonstration that men cannot in truth have any knowledge, i. e., they cannot possibly speak or write any true words con- cerning Things or thoughts as they are in themselves external to each man's own mind ; and as each man's own internal thoughts can- not possibly be truly known or spoken of by any other man than himself — Man can think, but not speak about things; he can speak only about his own thoughts, and can reason only about words ; but he can by words teach his fellow-man to think truly about thoughts, things, and words. In short, if external things themselves are unknowable, we cannot make any TRUE signs of such unknowable somethings. If my own thoughts are the only things really and truly known, then all true words can be only signs of my own thoughts, and not of external things, or the external thoughts of other men. Hence, although we all admit that knowledge requires, and is produced by, or is a combi- 290 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.x. nation of, Thoughts, Things, and words, yet the only part of, or factor in knowledge, in which men can possibly agree, or which they can discuss, is the words which express the knowledge. The words, therefore, are not merely the signs of the thoughts and things in human knowledge, but are the thoughts and things themselves in knowledge, L e., so far as thoughts and things can be truly known by any man who logically understands the words. The words are the knowledge so far as man can know it, and they are logically the thoughts and things he says he knows, so far as he can truly know them. When, for example, we say, the sun is a hot body, we can affirm, and are affirming nothing about the sun in itself, or about hot bodies in themselves, but assert merely the verbal identity in our own individual mind of the thought of the sun, and the thought of hot bodies ; and we invite our fellow-men to try and get the same thoughts into their minds, and to use the same words to express them. Any man who thinks or says that he does or can affirm, in any case, anything more C.x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 291 than this mere verbal proposition, contradicts himself and contradicts the best established position of all philosophy, viz., that things and thoughts in themselves, as they are ex- ternal to each man's mind, are wholly un- knowable. Of course we cannot prevent men contra- dicting themselves. We cannot prevent a man first admitting the truth of philosophy, that things, as they are in themselves, are un- knowable, and then afterwards asserting that he can give us some knowledge by his words of the things themselves, and not merely of his words for his own thoughts of the things. We cannot prevent men thus contradicting themselves, we can only expose the contra- diction when we discover it, and as well as we are able in words. Thus, when Mr. Mill says and admits that " The idealists have es- tablished their case," and also savs that his words are " the names of things themselves, and not of our ideas of things," he contradicts himself, and is in confusion about his words, and thoughts and things, and does not see their true relations to each other; and so 2 292 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.x. he contradicts at one time what he admits at another time. Either the idealists have not established their case ; or words are not the names of things themselves, but only the names of each man's own individual thoughts about things. This is as clear as the sun at noonday, in true words and true logic, and so we leave it. But assuming that we have proved this ; then it is equally clear, that every word is at the same time, in the knowledge of truth, a sign, a thought, and a Thing itself. The word sun, for example, 10 a sign of my thought of the sun ; it is 9 also, the general human thought itself of the sun to all those men who agree with me to use the word for the purpose of human communication on the subject of the sun ; and it is also logically the external thing itself, so called by all men, and believed by all men to exist ; in short, the sun is the sun itself. I say the word is thing itself in logical or verbal truth, i. e., in the only truth which man can know. We are speaking about the ivord, and thinking about the thing ; we are not speaking about the thing, but about C.x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 293 our WORD for the thing. It is merely mental confusion and ignorance of philosophy and of the true limits of human knowledge, that pre- vents men from admitting this logical truth, viz., that man's words are, to every man who understands them, at one and the same time logically signs, Thoughts, and things them- selves. Of course, in affirming this I am affirming nothing about thoughts and things external to man's mind, for that is impossible; but I am affirming only a verbal, a logical truth, an undeniable truth, a truth of words which all men must admit or contradict themselves. God has placed man's body as an impassable barrier between man's mind and all other ex- ternal bodies and all other human minds, and has thereby effectually reduced man's know- ledge of truth to words only. The vibrations of my nerves and the vibrations of your nerves cannot possibly be compared ; but our words can be compared, for they are our own crea- tions, and exist in both our minds, and are perceptible to both our senses. But it is cer- tainly of no use, and very absurd, our pre- 294 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [Cx. tending to know that which God has made it impossible for man to know, viz., the truth as to thoughts and things external to our minds and bodies. Let us, therefore, become humble, and be satisfied to know truly our own thoughts and our own words, and feel ourselves responsible to God for the truths of our minds and for the signs we make to express them truly to our fellow-men. I have, then, shown, that as ordinary lan- guage contradicts this truth of philosophy, a new convention for all scientific language is necessary ; and I have demonstrated that all men admit words to be numbers, and that words are not simple numbers, but compound numbers, or products, and I then have traced all human truth and certainty to its foundation in arithmetical NUMBERS. This theory is clear, distinct, and demon- strated by deduction from a first principle, which no man who speaks can possibly deny. I have given two great examples ; one the highest truth of mind, the other one of the highest truths of Bodies — viz., the Doctrine of the Trinity and Dalton's Law of Definite C.x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 295 Proportions. Both are verbal truths only, but are necessary, never-ceasing, aud undeniable truths. I repeat, that men who use the words, God, knowledge, person, factor, must either contradict themselves or admit the truth, the verbal truth of unity in Trinity, and Trinity in unity ; for self-knowledge, ac- cording to man's nature, necessarily implies three distinct things in one thing : how com- bined we know not, even in the least know- ledge we possess ; and, of course, we are infinitely more incapable of knowing, in refer- ence to our knowledge of the nature of the First Cause of all things. Each man feels and knows in his own mind the clear dis- tinction between emotion, intellect, and will. Each of these has a mental activity, a life of its own, and is in itself a mind ; but how they are combined into one human mind we know not, and the nature of God, His Emotions, Intellect, and Will, must be infinitely more incomprehensible to man than man's own nature to himself. But, nevertheless, the verbal truth of the Trinity is strictly deducible from the two 296 PHILOSOPHY; OR, [C.x. assumptions of a God and of knowledge, such as man can conceive and know. It is the law and constitution of our human mind, and unless we verbally contradict ourselves, we cannot either deny that there are three persons, units, in the Godhead, or that there are three factors in knowledge. Men, of course, can verbally deny both truths, but if they attempt to prove what they say, they must contradict themselves, and call A and not-A, by the same name. They are obliged to say that thinking and not-thinking are the same thing, which is contradictory ; or, as we have proved, that all knowledge is a threefold Unity; and, therefore, all self- knowledge is also a threefold Unity ; the three factors in self-knowledge must be personce of self, or otherwise they must say that self is not self, which also is contradictory. This truth, therefore, is a necessary, never-ceasing, and undeniable truth. But deep and mysterious as is the doctrine of the Trinity, and necessary as it is to the truthful, inner, moral convictions of man, it is still only a verbal truth. JSTo man can say more C.x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 297 than that men must and ought so to think and speak of the Deity. No man, perhaps, would be so presumptuous as to say, or even venture to think, that he has attained any knowledge of the real nature of his Creator, because he has learnt both from revelation and from reason to speak and use certain words for the moral building up of his own mind, after the manner of the Bible, or in the words of Trinitarian Christianity. He will humbly try to use the verbal truth in the way his Bible teaches him ; to pray for the gift of the Holy Spirit, to worship the Father through the Son in spirit and in truth. But the nature of God still remains wholly unknown, except in words, signs, and symbols only. The other example I have given is Dalton's Law of Definite Proportions in the Constitu- tion of Matter. This I have demonstrated is strictly dedu- cible a priori from the word atom, or ulti- mate particle. Grant me the word atom, or ultimate particle, as applicable to every kind of matter or chemical substance, and you have granted me Dalton's law of definite pro- 298 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C.x. portions as a necessary, never-ceasing, and undeniable truth, unless you choose to con- tradict yourself, as I have proved above, p. 207. But, of course, every man may refuse, if he chooses to grant either the existence of God, or the existence of knowledge, or the existence of atoms or ultimate particles of matter. And if he holds his tongue about the Deity and knowledge, he is safe from being proved self-contradictory. But if he persists in talking, and affirms anything whatever, then we can, as I have done, Chap. I. and II., prove him self-contradictory for denying the existence of knowledge ; and also self-contradictory for denying that knowledge has three factors ; and also self-contradictory for denying the three factors or persons of the Deity, whose self-knowledge he admits. So, of course, if he ventures to talk about par- ticles of matter, or chemical Bodies, he must either affirm the infinite divisibility of every particle of matter, or grant us Dalton's law as a necessary and never-ceasing truth, or, otherwise, he contradicts himself; a thing C. x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 299 which I have shown it is very easy for word- puzzled logicians and advanced thinkers to do without their being at all aware of it, amidst the confusion of ordinary language. The remedy which I have proposed for what Sir J. Herschel justly describes as an " extremely inconvenient state of language," is a very simple one, viz., that men of science shall give us always a list of the indecom- posable factors of the words they discuss. I have shown that every word is either an indecomposable word like electricity, or che- mical affinity, or polarity, or organisation, or absorption, or secretion, or all those words expressing fundamental facts in nature, be- yond which we have not penetrated ; or else the word is composed of factors, of which a man of science who writes on the subject ought to give a list, as good a list as he can, or hold his tongue about the word, and the thing it represents. I have endeavoured to give several examples of the factors which go to compose my words, or thoughts, or things, KNOWLEDGE, NUMBER, TIME, SPACE, LIFE, MIND, CAUSE, &c, and until better and more 300 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. x. reasonable factors are named, I submit them to the judgment of my countrymen as more carefully than hitherto defining these very abstract words, ideas, or things. All true words, however, are from God alone. Words without understanding are bodies without a soul, are altogether dead. Verbal truth, living truth, therefore, can only be words understood. Your understanding can never be mine, or any other understanding than your own, and for it, you alone are answerable, and no one else. If your under- standing be truthful, it is full of truth ; but if you think that you can possess truth without Truth possessing your understanding, you know nothing yet as you ought to know it, you have not yet acquired one truthful thought, you have not yet filled with MIND one truthful word. Your words are dead, whilst you think they live. Your mind is darkened whilst you say, we see. God is light and God is truth, and He is as much light and truth in discussing and understanding the verbal truths of external nature, as He is light and truth in discussing or understanding the C.x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 301 verbal truths of your own internal existence. A direct reference of verbal truth to Him, and Him alone, is as much necessary or as never-ceasing in the one case as in the other. It has been said, that " the laws of nature are the thoughts of nature, and these are the thoughts of God ;" but our laws of nature are our thoughts expressed in our words, and these words are man's creations, and can have only temporary and provisional certainty to aid and fix man's thoughts ; but man's thoughts expressed in man's words, and strictly deduced by man's reason, have all the certainty, and all the truth of the original words, signs, or symbols, from which they are strictly deduced, and so far as the original words and thoughts are necessary and truth- ful, man's words so deduced are Truth. A law of nature expressed in man's words, and strictly deduced from some original and ne- cessary thoughts and words, have all the necessity of such original and necessary thoughts and words, and no further, and no otherwise. The man who denies such neces- sity, or denies such truth, denies his own 302 PHILOSOPHY ; OR, [C. x. existence, denies and obscures the truth which God has given to man. He denies the image of God within him. Necessity, therefore, or never-ceasingness, as applied to truth, can only apply, of course, to verbal truths; and moreover, can never exceed the necessity of the first verbal assumptions, from which the truths are deduced. But as all truth resolves itself into verbal truth, reason and revelation both concur in declaring the vast, the unutterable importance of human words. Reason tells us, as we submit we have proved beyond dispute in this work, that all human truth is words, and God has most clearly revealed this truth to man, that "by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned ; " " That for every idle word that men do speak, they shall give account in the Day of Judgment." That the reader may clearly see, learn, and be morally strengthened in this great truth, confirmatory of the truth we have been asserting, that all the truths of minds and bodies known amongst man- kind, all resolve themselves into truth of C. x.] THE SCIENCE OF TRUTH. 303 human words, and words only; that the reader may hold this fast, and feeling the emptiness of mere human scientific truth, may be thereby lead to follow more and more after " righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness, and to fight the good fight of faith, and to lay hold on eternal life," offered him freely through Jesus Christ, is the final prayer, as it has been the main object of this book. Farewell ! THE END. F. Shoberlj Printer, 37, Dean Street, Soho, W. 1 -^