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SUBJECT AND OBJECT, 
 
Subject and Object; 
 
 AS CONNECTED WITH 
 
 OUR DOUBLE BRAIN, 
 
 A New Theory of Ca^tsation. 
 
 J' 
 
 By RfVERITY. 
 
 "Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas."— Virg. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, READER, AND DYER. 
 
 1870. 
 
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CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Origin and Causation of Consciousness . . i 
 
 II. Origin and Causation of Perception . . . ii 
 
 III. New Theory of Causation 20 
 
 IV. Dual Constitution of First Causation ... 34 
 V. Our External and Internal Objectivity . . 43 
 
 VI New Method of Inquiry by Causation ... 70 
 
PREFACE 
 
 We have not yet found a complete philosophy in di- 
 vinity, metaphysics, phrenology, or physiology. But 
 perhaps we shall one day blend what is true of each 
 into one correlated Whole. 
 
 In studying the human brain and its comparative 
 anatomy in connection with this idea, the Author has 
 arrived at the views developed in the following pages 
 relative to the functions of those central mechanisms 
 of the brain which join together the Sensoriinn of 
 the physiologists with the Convoluted Sni^face of Gall 
 and Spiirzheim, and which thus complete its struc- 
 tural and functional unity, duality, and multiplicity, 
 as necessary conditions of all the forms of Conscious- 
 ness, both in man and the mammalia. 
 
 The Author himself belongs to those who rest in 
 truth, and not in doubt. This has led him to make 
 known his conclusions to all who take an interest in 
 philosophy as the Science of Causation. They are 
 not presented as complete expositions of the subject, 
 but as ideas requiring the aid of time and thought to 
 bring them to perfection. 
 
SUBJECT AND OBJECT. 
 
 ORIGIN AND CAUSATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 I. All our knowledge comes from two sources. 
 First, from the union of ourselves with the external 
 world ; and then from the union of ourselves with our 
 own ideas and sensations, as subject and object, by 
 means of the conscious reflex action of the double 
 brain. Hence, whilst we ever remain one in con- 
 sciousness, as subject, we find ourselves related to two 
 kinds of objectivity, one external, corresponding to 
 our perceptions ; the other internal, corresponding to 
 our ideas and sensations. Hence, also, these unions 
 necessarily constitute two kinds of Experience, the 
 external, represented in Philosophy by the Methods 
 of Induction and Verification ; and the internal, repre- 
 sented by those systems of Idealism which more par- 
 ticularly appeal to the phenomena of Consciousness, 
 as the basis of Certitude. These phenomena, how- 
 ever, are not ultimate facts, as hitherto generally sup- 
 posed, but are products arising from the combinations 
 of the mental forces or potentialities of our nervous 
 
2 Origin and Causation of Consciousness. 
 
 system, either with one another, or with those of the 
 external world, according to their respective laws and 
 affinities. It will be necessary, therefore, to inquire, 
 first of all, into the origin and causation of Conscious- 
 ness ; its various kinds, as sensation, thought, emotion, 
 and will ; and the parts and mechanisms of the cere- 
 bral system with which they are correlated. The 
 next objects in order of inquiry will then be the 
 origin and causation of Perception ; the phenomena 
 and theory of Causation ; the dual constitution of 
 First Causation ; and lastly, the difference of know- 
 ledge according as it is derived from External or 
 Internal Objectivity; in other words, from Perception, 
 or Ideation. All the materials will now be ready 
 for constructing a new Method of Inquiry, based on 
 the laws of causation and the logical order of our 
 intellectual system. 
 
 2. As far as we are capable of judging, there is 
 no Consciousness in the lower forms of organic life. 
 Even in man and the higher classes of animals we 
 find most of the vital functions are performed by 
 mechanisms which operate without consciousness; as 
 the rythmic beating of the heart, the circulation of 
 the blood, the assimilation of food, the nutrition and 
 development of the body, the secretions of the glands 
 and membranes, and the unconscious reflex actions 
 of the brain and Spinal CJiord. These excitements 
 are confined, for the most part, to automatic ganglia. 
 
Origin and Causation of Consciousness. 3 
 
 and do not extend to the centres of sensation, ex- 
 cept when heightened by abnormal disturbance. In 
 ordinary respiration we are not conscious of the re- 
 flex action of the nerves by which it is performed. 
 But when congestion and pressure irritate the air- 
 cells, we then feel sensations of distress. In such 
 cases something additional takes place in the nervous 
 centres, which calls into play the conditions neces- 
 sary for consciousness. Hence certain boundaries are 
 passed and other parts are excited, making the dif- 
 ference between consciousness and unconsciousness. 
 We have just said, when the respiratory nerves are 
 acting under normal excitement only, there is no 
 consciousness, but when this excitement is increased, 
 then consciousness ensues. Now as the respiratory 
 nerves derive their origin from special seats between 
 the Restiforni and Olivary bodies in the Medulla 
 Oblongata, what does this new state of consciousness 
 signify but that the excitements of the Respiratory 
 Tract become extended to the sensory centres of the 
 Optic Thalami with which its fibres communicate .'' 
 We then are conscious — which we were not before. 
 
 3. The conditions necessary for consciousness are 
 by no means simple. We have not only to account 
 for that part of the phenomenon which is objective, 
 but for the subjective "We" which is related to it; 
 and the " We" necessarily involves a participation of 
 the brain, or at least of one hemisphere, in communi- 
 
 B 2 
 
4 Origin and Causation of Consciousness. 
 
 cation with the Optic Thalaini. The unusual excite- 
 ment, therefore, attended with consciousness, coming 
 from the pulmonary nerves must not only affect the 
 Respiratory Tract, but must extend to the Optic 
 Thalavii and the hemispheres themselves. This is 
 not difficult to demonstrate. The longitudinal bands 
 running along the posterior sulcus of the Spinal 
 Chord, and terminating in the Optic Thalavii, show 
 the channel by means of which the communication 
 is effected. The problem we had to solve was how 
 and where excitements coming up the Spinal Chord 
 from the body and the Sensory Tract became trans- 
 formed, or converted, into conscious states. We feel a 
 sensation. Why do we do so 1 What are the parts 
 concerned, and what the anatomical mechanism en- 
 gaged .-* From the facts just stated we may consider 
 that conscious life and personal sensation begin in 
 the Optic Thalanii. 
 
 4. These organs fulfil the function of Sensory 
 Centres as the Corpora Striata fulfil that of Motor 
 Centres, as we shall hereafter see. They are not 
 otherwise appropriated ground. They supply all the 
 conditions necessary for that function. They crown 
 the summit of the Sensory Tract whose fibres plunge 
 into their substance. They are the largest, most 
 highly conditioned, and most central ganglia of the 
 brain. Downwards, they are connected by bands and 
 filaments with every part of the Sensory, Spinal, and 
 
Origin and Causation of Consciousness. 5 
 
 Cerebellar systems ; and upwards, each on its side, 
 with the Anterior, Middle, and Posterior Lobes ; with 
 the converging and transverse fibres of the great 
 hemispheric and interhemispheric commissure, the 
 Corpus Callosicm; with the reflex and efferent fibres of 
 the Motor centres, the Corpora Striata; with the Qua- 
 drigeminay the Fornix, and the complex apparatus of 
 expression at the base of the brain, which terminates 
 in the' Tuber Cinereiim, the Corpora Albicantia, and 
 the commissure of tHe optic nerves. They commu- 
 nicate intimately with one another, and with the 
 opposite hemisphere, not only by their own decus- 
 sating filaments from side to side, but by the bands 
 of the Posterior and Middle Commissures. In short, 
 there is no part of the nervous system with which 
 they are not either directly or indirectly connected ; 
 so that whilst by this order and arrangement our con- 
 sciousness .is ever changing in form and expression, 
 and undergoing endless modifications during a life- 
 time of thought and action, commensurate with what 
 afiects us both from Within and from Without, yet, 
 owing to the perfect anatomical mechanism by which 
 the unity of the Thalami and the brain is effected, 
 we never feel otherwise than one and the same indi- 
 vidual. We are one, and we are many, and this is 
 the character of our consciousness. 
 
 5. These are their titles to be considered the seat 
 of our Personal Sense, where the various specific 
 
6 Origin and Causation of Consciousness. 
 
 excitements of our cerebral system, of our nerves of 
 sense, and common sensibility become transformed 
 into conscious states by uniting with this special ac- 
 tivity of the Thalanii. In this way do they give us that 
 ever-present, deep-rooted, organic Sense of our Per- 
 sonal Self, whose unity underlies all our various and 
 varying states of consciousness, in sensation, percep- 
 tion, thought, emotion, feeling, and will. And through 
 the conscious reflex action of 'Ca^ Anterior Lobes, as 
 subject and object, we have the corresponding idea of 
 the unity of our Personal Self, and of ourselves ; the 
 sense and the idea forming together that complex 
 Ego, whose unity and multiplicity of consciousness 
 have been the despair of metaphysical thinkers. The 
 Ego, or Spirit of Man, is thus, not a product of 
 introspective Reason alone, but a synthetic fact of 
 Sensation also. 
 
 6. It is well known that if any part of the Poste- 
 rior Spinal Chord is injured by disease or accident, 
 the parts below the injury lose their susceptibility of 
 feeling. Irritation of the limb will indeed produce 
 unconscious reflex movement ; but all communication 
 with the Thalanii by means of the posterior longi- 
 tudinal bands being cut off, consciousness is lost. 
 This shows again how all forms of excitement are 
 carried to the Thalanii, which not only convert them 
 into sensations, each after its kind, but make them at 
 the same time part and parcel of our conscious selves, 
 
Origin and Causation of Consciousness. 7 
 
 which before they were not. The special quahty of 
 action belonging to the Thalaini combines itself with 
 the excitements coming to them from the brain and 
 Spinal Chord, so that these together constitute by 
 their union a cause of which sensation and conscious- 
 ness in all its various forms are equivalent effects. 
 
 7. We now come to a most important question as 
 to the modits operandi of our mental mechanism. 
 Are both Thalanii necessary for all forms of con- 
 sciousness } Does not consciousness necessarily imply 
 conditions of duality — those of Subject and Object — 
 the conscious subject, and the object of which it is 
 conscious 1 It would seem, therefore, that subject and 
 object must be identified in sensation as well as in 
 thought and other forms of consciousness. We can- 
 not be conscious, for instance, of a sensation, before it 
 has conditions of existence ; and where else can it be 
 formed in all its integrity, and be posited objectively, 
 but in one of the Thalami, which then sympathetically 
 and inductively affects its correlated fellow-organ en 
 rapport with the hemisphere representing the subject, 
 and so full consciousness of feeling and thought 
 results } that is, there are present in one hemisphere 
 the subject who is conscious, and, in the other, the 
 feeling of which he is conscious ; subject and object 
 being identified in thought or feeling through the 
 duplicate structural mechanism of the brain, as already 
 explained. 
 
8 Origin and Causation of Consciousness. 
 
 8. It will follow from a consideration of these 
 views that all abnormal and peculiar states of per- 
 sonal consciousness, and of heightened or perverted 
 sensibility, will be especially due to functional or 
 organic lesions of the Tlialami ; and that partial or 
 complete interruption of the communications between 
 them and their corresponding hemispheres, will satis- 
 factorily explain the curious phenomena of double 
 consciousness after recovery from accidents affecting 
 the brain, or after the termination of some cases of 
 brain fever. In these cases, only one Thalamus and 
 one hemisphere are in their natural state. In the 
 same way, we can account for the unconsciousness of 
 the true somnambulist, and of the magnetised clair- 
 voyant, whose subjective hemisphere becomes pas- 
 sively respondent to the influence of the magnetiser. 
 The isolation of each hemisphere, too, from contrac- 
 tion of the folds of the Callosuni, and consequent 
 pressure of the subjacent parts and the Thalavii, may 
 reasonably be regarded as the proximate cause of 
 sleep. Hemispheric intercommunication and con- 
 sciousness are then simultaneously suspended. But 
 when excitements of portions of the brain overcome 
 this contractile tendency, and traverse the connecting 
 commissures, both the hemispheres become partially 
 engaged, and a confused state of consciousness results. 
 Then is sleep broken by dreams. Sleep is thus as 
 much a positive as a negative state of the brain, pro- 
 
Origin and Causation of Consciousness. 9 
 
 ceeding from contraction of the Corpus Callosiun upon 
 itself as a ball, and consequent suspension of inter- 
 communication between the hemispheres, particularly 
 when exhausted by fatigue or debilitating illness. 
 There is then no antagonising influence to the con- 
 traction of the Callosiun. It is physical pressure on 
 these parts which produces the abnormal sleep in 
 cases of apoplexy and depression of skull. So, again, 
 sleep ensues when they are disabled under the sedative 
 influence of alcoholic drinks, opium, and anaesthetics. 
 9. The TJialami and the Anterior Lobes may thus 
 be regarded as the essential anatomical conditions of 
 self-consciousness and personality. These exist in 
 more or less force in all the Vertebrata, but are 
 absent in the inferior forms of animal life. In man 
 alone are they complete, and further enhanced by his 
 higher mental and psychical potentialities. Through 
 the duplicate and reflex action of the Thalavii we 
 are conscious we feel ourselves one and the same 
 person ; through that of the Anterior Lobes we know 
 it, and know that we know it ; through both, in con- 
 junction with the component parts of our nervous 
 centres, we obtain a perfect synthesis of our Ego, 
 which we may define as a Conscious Centre in sym- 
 pathetic correlation with all the duplicate parts of 
 our organic whole. Were it not for the second 
 hemisphere, we should have, not a conscious, but an 
 automatic life. The double brain is an exquisite 
 
lo Origin and Causation of Consciousness. 
 
 instrument by means of which we are made con- 
 scious of the external world, our own selves, and the 
 relations of the two together through sensations, per- 
 ceptions, and ideas. We cannot constitute our Ego, 
 or affirm ourselves in consciousness, except in union 
 with sensations or ideas ; and these, again, according 
 to the law of causation, cannot be caused and pro- 
 duced, except by the union of ourselves with the 
 external world. We thus owe our conscious existence 
 to the objectivities with which we are continually 
 combining. When these unions cease, consciousness 
 ceases also, so that, when considered per se, we, as 
 subject, are a mere potentiality. Hence the necessity 
 of the double brain to supply the relation of Subject 
 and Object. 
 
n. 
 
 ORIGIN AND CAUSATION OF PERCEPTION. 
 
 10. It is now generally admitted that we can only 
 know external objects in the way we are constituted 
 to know them. We may know them truthfully as 
 far as our powers extend, but not per se, should our 
 powers not extend so far, of which, however, we are 
 ignorant. We can, therefore, only perceive them in 
 relation to ourselves, that is, in a limited manner, 
 according to the measure of our limitations, if we are 
 so limited. Hence Perception is supposed by some 
 to be simply a mental affection — a modification of 
 our consciousness, or of ourselves, and consequently, 
 that all our knowledge is subjective. But a short 
 examination of these notions will show they are 
 erroneous. 
 
 11. An external something we call an object acts 
 upon our Sensory and Percipient apparatus by ex- 
 citing and uniting with their activities. By this act 
 of union sensation and perception are caused and 
 produced. What then is the cause of perception, 
 and what is perception itself.? Evidently, the union 
 in one of the percipient and the noumenon ; the per- 
 cipient, as an ultimate fact, having a susceptibility, 
 or property, of being conscious of external things 
 
12 Origin and Causation of Perception. 
 
 and their qualities. It is then said, zve undergo a 
 modification of our consciousness. But take away 
 the external object, and perception instantly ceases. 
 Or, remove the percipient, and it equally ceases. So 
 that, separated, the percipient and the object are 
 only potential co-existences. But directly they come 
 together, they by their act of union constitute the 
 cause of perception, and, by the union itself, they 
 constitute also perception as an effect. So that, in 
 analysing perception, if we find it is a mental affec- 
 tion of the subject, it is so solely by reason of the 
 causative presence of the external noumenon. 
 
 12. We know nothing of the percipient per se, 
 or of things per se ; we only know them, as a com- 
 pound, when united in perception. Nor can this be 
 otherwise. For how can we be conscious of an object 
 without its presence in the percipient subject .'' It 
 would be expecting to have an effect from one thing 
 alone ; but we shall see presently that no causation 
 can proceed from unity. This being the case, per- 
 ception can only take place by the union of the two, 
 viz., the percipient and the noumenon. It may thus 
 be said to bring within our consciousness the nou- 
 menal qualities of the external world, united with the 
 correlated powers of the percipient subject. But some 
 will still say that perception is only a modification 
 of the subject. Granted. What, however, is this 
 modification, but the virtual presence of the noumenon 
 
Origin and Causation of Perception. 13 
 
 in the percipient ? The two together, by uniting into 
 one, constitute a cause, producing the modification 
 called perception, as an effect. Hence the union of 
 the noumenon with the subject is immediate. And as 
 the noumenon by its presence is the only new ele- 
 ment introduced into our consciousness, we are con- 
 sequently conscious in perception of the noumenal 
 qualities of external objects. Our knowledge, there- 
 fore, although relative to the powers of the percipient, 
 is certain, and truthful, and founded on sure grounds. 
 13. Our experience of external noumena corre- 
 sponds with our experience of internal noumena, or 
 ideas, when it relates to analogous objects; showing 
 that the modification which cannot come of itself, is 
 really the presence of the external noumenon in the 
 subject; so that our knowledge objectively and sub- 
 jectively, being concordant and the same, is of an 
 absolute kind as far as it goes, and is only relative 
 to the limitation of the subject, if such be the case — 
 bearing out Spinoza's sixth axiom that a true idea 
 agrees with its correlated object. If, on the contrary, 
 external noumena were not truthfully correlated with 
 the percipient of the subject, then our ideas and our 
 perceptions would not be in harmony. Were the 
 noumena different, the resulting perceptions would 
 also be different by the law of causation, and would 
 not harmonise with our ideas ; whereas our ideas and 
 perceptions are in perfect accordance, with this dif- 
 
14 Origin and Causation of Perception. 
 
 ference only, which corroborates the point in question, 
 that the accession of the organs of sense, and the 
 actual presence of the external object, intensify the 
 state of consciousness, but do not modify its nature. 
 
 14. What, then, is the difference between per- 
 ceptions and ideas ? It is the actual presence of the 
 external noumenon in the one case, and the absence 
 of it in the other ; and this implies the participation 
 of the senses and the Sensory Tract in the causation 
 of perception. A larger area and additional parts of 
 the nervous system are engaged. Therefore, although 
 our ideas agree with our perceptions, they are not ab- 
 solutely identical, because they do not involve the 
 actual presence of the external element. It is true, 
 however, that the external object at some former 
 time left an impression in the Anterior Lobes which 
 is recalled in ideation. What does this mean but 
 that external noumena participate in the causation 
 of our ideas by their virtual, as they do in that of 
 our perceptions by their actual presence } 
 
 15. What can Idealism answer to this? It has 
 no ground to stand upon. The reflex action of the 
 Anterior Lobes suffices alone for the causation of ideas ; 
 but for perceptions we want both the Anterior Lobes 
 and the Sensory apparatus as well. Ideas and per- 
 ceptions have this in common, that they both require 
 the Anterior Lobes for their production. This is the 
 reason why ideas are correlated with their objects 
 
Origin and Causation of Perception. 15 
 
 without being identical with them, and why a true 
 idea must agree with its object. Our mental powers, 
 like external noumena, are merely potential, and 
 require the actual or virtual presence of objects for 
 the causation and production of consciousness, whether 
 under the form of perceptions or ideas. Fichte 
 begged the whole question when he assumed " the 
 activity of the Ego " in order to construct the external 
 world. This activity was the act of ideation ; and 
 ideation without subject and object could not take 
 place. Causation requires the union of the two in 
 one, and that one is the mental product. The unity 
 and multiplicity of consciousness has been already 
 discussed in a former paper, to which the reader is 
 referred. 
 
 16. In this way there exists a hierarchy of ideas, 
 from sense to our higher forms of thought, perfectly 
 agreeing with their appropriate counterparts in the 
 external world, though not identical with them ; and 
 this doctrine of Proclus and Hegel is upheld by the 
 two kinds of Experience, the external and the internal, 
 we appeal to in the Methods of Consciousness and 
 Verification employed by Descartes and Bacon. 
 There is partial truth, no doubt, in both Idealism and 
 Realism, but more truth in both together. The great 
 defect of Idealism is, not seeing that external nou- 
 mena are component parts with the percipient in the 
 formation of perceptions. It calls these modifications 
 
i6 Origin and Causation of Perception. 
 
 of the subject only, but it does not see that no per- 
 ceptive change can occur without the addition of 
 something external to the new state of consciousness. 
 Changes do not come from nothing. As said before, 
 this new something is the noumenon, which, uniting 
 with the percipient in one, constitutes simultaneously 
 the cause, and the modification as effect. The modi- 
 fication is in fact the noumenon itself posited in the 
 percipient, and therefore in our consciousness, which 
 establishes Truth, and at the same time destroys 
 Idealism and Scepticism at one blow, by absorbing 
 them both in one synthesis, viz., the perception itself 
 And we know this must be so, by the fundamental 
 law of causation, that the effect is in the cause, and 
 the cause in the effect, and that one is equal to the 
 other. What we call intelligence is only nature made 
 conscious in ourselves, and this is effected by the 
 duplicate constitution of Subject and Object in our 
 cerebral system. 
 
 17. We thus in every perception not only make 
 and modify our consciousness, but are continually 
 developing and transcending it, as it were, by the 
 adjunction of external elements ; perception being 
 the union in one of the Subjective percipient and 
 the Objective noumenon. Perception could not take 
 place without them both. And it is scarcely a stretch 
 of language to say, that our consciousness in percep- 
 tion is as much objective as subjective. We have no 
 
Origin and Causation of Perception. 17 
 
 conscious perception until the noumenon by a series 
 of cumulative causations in the nervous apparatus 
 becomes united to the percipient, and then afterwards 
 the percipient to the sensory centres of the Thalaini, 
 the seat of personal consciousness. 
 
 18. The five senses and the nerves of common 
 sensibility have their seats of sensation in the poste- 
 rior columns of the Spinal Chord. These run in a 
 body through the Thalauii to the group of organs in 
 the Anterior Lobes which subserve perception, and all 
 sensory excitements coming from the organs of sense 
 and sensibility pursue the same track, gaining sensa- 
 tion and consciousness in their passage through the 
 Thalanii, and occasioning perceptions, emotions, and 
 so-called modifications, each after its kind, by union 
 with the several potentialities of the percipient and 
 sentient parts of the brain with which they are cor- 
 related in function. Form, colour, taste, touch, music, 
 love, beauty, sympathy, passion, thought, will, wonder» 
 and every form of conscious life are thus all com- 
 pounds of ourselves and the external world, and when 
 we feel and perceive them, and know that we feel and 
 perceive them, we do so through the reflex action 
 of the Thalami with one another, and through that 
 of the hemispheres which takes place by means of 
 the commissural transverse bands of the anterior and 
 posterior folds of the Corpus Callosuni, as seen in the 
 anatomical construction of the brain. 
 
 C 
 
1 8 Origin and Causation of Perception. 
 
 19. Again, the Anterior Lobes being in direct 
 communication with the Thalanii througli their own 
 efferent fibres, and with the whole cerebral system. 
 through the radiating fasciculi of the Callosicm, 
 all perceptions and ideas report themselves to the 
 Sensory Centres, on the one hand, and on the other, 
 rouse into sympathetic action, through interior lines 
 of communication, those powers and motive affections 
 seated in the Convoluted Surface of the brain, accord- 
 ing to the circumstances of the case, and what is 
 occupying the thoughts and attention of the individual 
 at the time. 
 
 20. We are all born with a definite system of 
 powers, which constitutes our human individuality, and 
 whose activity is our consciousness. These powers 
 being in harmony with external nature, our percep- 
 tions and ideas are likewise in harmony ; for our ideas 
 are nothing more than their internal activity, and we 
 know that our perceptions consist of this activity in 
 union with external noumena. We have thus know- 
 ledge through both our internal and external expe- 
 rience. We have a world Within and a world Without, 
 with a truthful relation between them. It is our 
 warrant that we see external things as they really 
 are, and that our knowledge, although relative to our 
 powers, is certain and absolute. 
 
 21. In conclusion, it may be shortly said, there 
 are potentialities in the percipient to be conscious of 
 
Origin and Causation of Perception. 19 
 
 external noumena. Hence perception, which is this 
 consciousness, takes place when the two come to- 
 gether, and so we are conscious of noumena, or things 
 pel'- se. This happens as the effect of a cause, and the 
 cause is the act of union, in one, of the percipient and 
 the noumenon. Take away one or the other, and 
 perception ceases also. You destroy the cause, and 
 the effect ceases. Perceptive ideas, however, remain, 
 which lie latent in us until they enter into new mental 
 combinations with other ideas according to their 
 potentialities and the laws of causation. 
 
III. 
 
 NEW THEORY OF CAUSATION. 
 
 22. The prevailing theory of Causation at present 
 is very much the same as that handed down to us in 
 the writings of Hume. No progress has been made, 
 so Philosophy is now in consequence thrown aside with 
 contempt and taunted with impotence. It is but too 
 true that our latest metaphysical writers still teach us 
 the old doctrine that in causation the cause is the 
 antecedent, and the effect the sequent, and that there 
 is no necessary connection between them. Reason 
 and experience, however, forbid our assent to this 
 proposition, and it will be found on examination that 
 the very reverse is the case. 
 
 23. What, then, is causation ? It consists simply 
 of potential objects, more or less in number, uniting 
 together in one for the production of an effect ; their 
 act of union being the cause ; the union itself, the effect. 
 We apprehend causation by our reason just as we 
 perceive events and facts by our perceptive faculties. 
 When we witness an instance of causation, it is our 
 percipient which takes cognisance of the phenomenal 
 part, namely, the objects defo?'^ uniting together, 
 called the antecedent, and the same objects when 
 united, called the sequent. But it is our reason which 
 
New Theory of Causation. 21 
 
 apprehends the dynamic or causative element in the 
 act of union constituting the cause, and the causation. 
 As long as these objects remain separate and distinct, 
 they are not the cause. They are only co-existences. 
 But as soon as they unite together in one, they be- 
 come sii!mltaneoii.sly both cause and effect. We then 
 cannot separate them in fact, or in idea. Hence cause 
 and effect differ only in this, that the forces or powers 
 which are dynamic in the act of causation, become 
 again potential, or static, in the effect. It is the law 
 of the conservation of force. As the act of union is 
 the cause, and the union itself, the effect, one cannot 
 take place without the other. Like object and subject 
 in thought and perception, they are necessarily con- 
 nected and correlated. One implies the other. The 
 cause is in the effect, and the effect is in the cause, 
 and they are co-equal. 
 
 24. There are, therefore, no such states or relations 
 as antecedents and sequents between cause and effect. 
 The objects called antecedents exist only as such 
 before the causation takes place ; and herein has been 
 the source of error. As a cause, therefore, must 
 necessarily be more than one, there is a fatal fallacy 
 in Spinoza's First Definition, where he makes a thing 
 its own cause, and so involving existence ; and there 
 is the same fallacy in his Third Proposition where he 
 speaks of one thing as the possible cause of another. 
 
 25. When we have seen and understood instances 
 
2 2 New Theory of Causation. 
 
 of causation, we acquire the generic idea of its uni- 
 versality as law, and, similar objects and circumstances 
 presenting themselves, we know beforehand from this 
 knowledge, that on their uniting together, cause and 
 effect will ensue, just as we know by experience on 
 seeing an apple that tasting it will give us a sensa- 
 tion of tartness as effect. Our faculties of taste 
 and causality are so far analogous in their mode of 
 operation, that when they meet and unite with their 
 respective appropriate objects, we experience the 
 sensation in one case, and apprehend the fact and 
 idea of causation in the other. It is a property of 
 our reason to apprehend dynamic phenomena, and 
 so give us the idea of causation. In Hume's loose 
 language, however, " this inference is nothing but the 
 effect of custom on the imagination," as if inferences 
 were not mental facts as solid as any other. If, 
 indeed, we interpret " custom " as our observation 
 of the phenomenal union of potential objects, and 
 "imagination" as our faculty of causality which appre- 
 hends their dynamic act of union, the explanation 
 will be more complete. As said before, the error has 
 lain in regarding objects before their union as ante- 
 cedents of an effect, whereas until united they are 
 not a cause, and have no nexus whatever with the 
 effect. Hence this misnomer and false presentation of 
 the case has been the foundation of the erroneous 
 doctrine of antecedents and sequents in causation ; 
 
New Theory of Causation. 23 
 
 but we have seen there is no such separation between 
 cause and effect. " Ab actu ad potentiam valet con- 
 sequentia." 
 
 26. All existences, all phenomena, mental as well 
 as physical, are effects of causation. It has been 
 shown that a cause is necessarily compound, and 
 that no causation can proceed from unity, one re- 
 maining ever one, sterile of productivity. Also, that 
 a number of potential objects is necessary to con- 
 stitute a cause for the generation of effect, these 
 objects uniting together in one under a new form by 
 virtue of the affinities of their several potentialities. 
 Without this causative union, no event, phenomenon, 
 motion, consciousness, or knowledge is possible. It 
 was probably thus that numbers, as symbols and 
 representatives of things in combination, constituted 
 the principle of causation with Pythagoras, In che- 
 mistry, oxygen and hydrogen unite together in one 
 as a cause to produce water as an effect ; so do the 
 acid and the alkali unite together in one as a cause 
 to produce the resulting neutral salt as an effect. In 
 metaphysics, the percipient of the subject and the 
 noumena of the external world unite together in one 
 as a cause to produce perception as an effect ; and 
 again, our reason and instances of causation, by 
 uniting together, produce the idea of causation as an 
 effect. So do our ideas in the thinking subject unite 
 together in one as a cause to produce other ideas as 
 
24 New Theory of Causation. 
 
 an effect. The major and minor premisses of the 
 syllogism contain the ideas which uniting in one as 
 a cause produce the conclusion or judgment as an 
 effect. What are our judgments and determinations 
 but effects of the causative unions of our mental 
 potentialities? And, most wonderful of all, what 
 are our free wills but the components of our own 
 selves united in one as cause and effect by our own 
 free and voluntary mental action, which is itself 
 a product deriving from First Causation ? When- 
 ever ideas contain potentialities, and they combine 
 together, causation is sure to ensue. New ideas are 
 then brought into existence, because a cause is 
 formed, and an effect produced. When we study a 
 great picture, and it continually grows upon us the 
 more we see it, the object in that case surpasses the 
 subject. By degrees, however, the objective action 
 of the picture raises the subject, where possible, to its 
 own level. By continually uniting itself with the 
 relatively weaker power of the beholder, a series of 
 causations takes place, which end in the improve- 
 ment and elevation of the subject, as effect. The 
 potentialities of the picture and the subject are then 
 united into one. The same continuous causation 
 operates in education and instruction. 
 
 27. In chemical and mechanical science, cau.sa- 
 tion is simple and obvious ; but in medicine and 
 physiology, in politics, the social sciences, political 
 
New Theory of Causation. 25 
 
 economy, the philosophy of history and metaphysics, 
 cumulative successions of cause and effect, from con- 
 tinuous adjunction of new elements, intervene between 
 the first and last stages of the ultimate event This 
 is well illustrated in the series of changes which occur 
 before the food we eat becomes converted into or- 
 ganic material, and also in the number of cumulative 
 causations which take place in our cerebral me- 
 chanisms when sensations are transformed into per- 
 ceptions, perceptions into ideas, ideas into emotions, 
 and the whole mental system into one synthesis of will 
 and action. This cumulative and synthetic causation 
 is the nexus between famine and revolution ; between 
 food -restricting laws, starvation, arrested develop- 
 ment, and physical and social misery, as in Ireland. 
 It operates in the complex problems of prices and 
 exchanges, of demand and supply, of consumption 
 and production, and explains many characteristics 
 of national development from plurality of races. 
 
 28, Again, what are the typical forms, or models 
 of organic life as they exist potentially in the seed 
 or cell } They are aggregations of latent powers in 
 union with matter, held together as a whole by the 
 principle of causation, and developing themselves by 
 successive acts of union with the elements and forces 
 of the external world. So that a special factor must 
 be conjoined with the matter of the cell to have con- 
 stituted together the synthetic cause of being and 
 
2 6 New Theory of Causation. 
 
 development according as it is a plant, an animal, or 
 a man. The theory of Natural Selection, as the origin 
 of species, may find a place under an imperfect system 
 of Induction ; but it could not exist under the stricter 
 test of the laws of causation. There can be no series 
 of typical developments, or organic differentiations, 
 without pre-existing potentialities commensurate with 
 the effects ; and where during the ages was their locus 
 in quo except in the original germs } But there can 
 only exist a limited amount of special force or causa- 
 tive power in each particular type of seed, or cell ; 
 otherwise, by the hypothesis of continuous unlimited 
 evolution, the worm we tread upon might be possibly 
 a potential C^sar, or Shakespeare. Effects would 
 then be greater than their causes, something would be 
 created out of nothing, and miracles would supersede 
 the laws of causation. The fact is, all causation is 
 definite, and man too, and there is the Infinite beyond, 
 out of which we are compelled to educe the origin of 
 the Finite, thus bringing us back to the to ari^ipov 
 of Anaximander. All divine manifestations to be 
 apprehended by man must be in union with matter, 
 whereby they become finite and intelligible. The 
 new existence thus becomes separated from the un- 
 manifested Infinite, and receives an individuality of 
 its own. The act of union is First Causation, and 
 the union itself, as an object, remains in a state of 
 potentiality, until by combinations with other poten- 
 
New Theory of Causation. 27 
 
 tialities, new causes are produced, playing their part 
 in the economy of man and nature. 
 
 29. A cause being only the dynamic state of an 
 effect, and an effect the static state of a cause, a cause 
 consequently has no existence of its own in time and 
 space apart from the effect, and vice versa. It is 
 formed out of the potentialities of the Present alone. 
 There is, therefore, no such reality as the cause of a 
 cause, or a chain of causation, other than a cumulative 
 causation. The components of cause and effect being 
 the same, and their act of union alone being the cause, 
 it is clear that the cause is limited to this act of union, 
 the union itself being the effect. If we try and go 
 further in causation and inquire why and how the po- 
 tential components of a cause form a particular effect 
 when coming together, we are obliged to confess our 
 ignorance, and to refer the matter to the nature of 
 things, in other words, to First Causation. We find, 
 therefore, we are unable to inquire with effect into the 
 cause of the cause, and that we can only deal with 
 the components of the cause and effect, as separate 
 and distinct potential objects, and not with the cause 
 of the cause which has no existence for us in time 
 and space. 
 
 30. Thus the act of union of oxygen and hydrogen 
 and of their uniting media, intelligent or other, is the 
 cause of water ; the union itself being the effect, water, 
 under particular conditions of time and space, accord- 
 
2 8 New Theory of Causation. 
 
 ing to its relation with the uniting means. Their 
 united potentiaHties when in act, or dynamic, con- 
 stitute the cause ; when in equihbrium, or static, they 
 constitute the effect. If we go further, and inquire 
 into the causation of oxygen and hydrogen, and of 
 their uniting media, as the components of the cause 
 of water, we do not by so doing inquire into the cause 
 of the cause, but we are dealing with separate and 
 distinct potential objects, which have c-h of them 
 their own particular cause, and between which there 
 is no causal nexus whatever until the moment of union 
 and of causation occurs. There is consequently no 
 chain of causation, each group of cause and effect 
 arising out of the union of its own special and separate 
 potentialities, being immediately referable to First 
 Causation. In the case of oxygen or hydrogen, they 
 are simple bodies incapable of further analysis, so 
 that we can only say of them, they are ultimate facts, 
 or instances of First Causation, consisting of poten- 
 tiality in a subject of inherence, beyond which lies the 
 Potential Infinite, outside our intellectual sphere. In 
 this Potential Infinite we are compelled to place the 
 synthetic unity of all Existence, ourselves included, 
 and to this also to refer the nexus of causative power 
 which binds them together in one harmonious whole. 
 Philosophy thus afhrms under a form of its o\\'n the 
 idea which is generally entertained of Providence, or 
 the immanent presence of the Deity, as the source 
 
New Theory of Causation. 29 
 
 of power and causation, which in divinity will pro- 
 bably be the sole dogma of the universal Church of 
 the future. 
 
 31. Causations are, therefore, organic wholes con- 
 fined to actual phenomena in Present time. Hence 
 the idea of a chain of universal causation, other than 
 what is cumulative and synthetic, must be limited to 
 separate causes and effects arising out of universal 
 potentiality of causation, subservient to law, and the 
 principle of unity and uniformity above mentioned, 
 residing in the Potential Infinite outside our causality. 
 Hence also the idea of Foreknowledge has no corre- 
 lation with external fact. When we say it was in the 
 future, or it was foreknown, that an event should take 
 place which did take place, we get the idea by sepa- 
 rating the relation of time from that of fact. We 
 transpose the past into the present, and the present 
 into the future, which is only an alternative way of 
 saying, the event took place. In relation to past 
 time it was in the future, but in relation to the fact 
 of causation, it is in Present time alone. The fallacy 
 of the idea of foreknowledge arises from intermixing 
 two orders of knowledge, viz., that of time, being the 
 result of ideation, and that of fact, being the result 
 of perception. In a few words, an event which has 
 not taken place, is not susceptible of being known. 
 There is, therefore, no such reality as foreknowledge. 
 It is a contradiction in terms. And we only conceive 
 
30 New Theory of Causation. 
 
 the idea of it by making the past as if the present, 
 and the present as if the future, relatively to the 
 event, which is a delusive sport of the imagination, 
 and not a true premiss to reason from. 
 
 32. Also, in the question of reconciling our Free- 
 will with Causation, we, as conscious potential ob- 
 jects, are free to employ all the separate potentialities 
 within ourselves and around us in the formation of 
 causes, determinations, and wills, without the hin- 
 drance of an imaginary chain of causation, rigorously 
 subject, however, to the immutable laws of our 
 nature and those of the external world. 
 
 33. In trying to solve some of the more difficult 
 cosmical problems of existence, we are too apt to 
 forget that our powers are limited, and, therefore, 
 most likely to be inadequate to the task. There 
 exists no doubt an invisible world beyond our per- 
 ception, and much that is shaded from our eyes. 
 The invisible realities of nature are as certain as 
 those we see. Analyse the causation of a plant's de- 
 velopment, and we find there must be a cause com- 
 mensurate with such an effect. Besides the matter 
 of the plant, its chemistry, and its form, there is the 
 potentiality of becoming a plant residing in its matter. 
 This potentiality is invisible, but it is as truly present 
 as though seen by our eyes. It is seen by our reason 
 only, manifesting itself in development, which is an 
 effect of its presence in union Avith matter, and we 
 
New Theory of Causation. 31 
 
 know it is so, just as we know by reason there must 
 be a cause for the motion and direction of a cannon- 
 ball. If we attempt to investigate the nature and 
 form of this invisible potentiality apart from the 
 matter in which it inheres, we are baffled at the very 
 beginning. We find it eludes our perceptive power. 
 We have no faculties to seize or apprehend its ex- 
 istence except our reason, and reason can only see 
 it as the dynamic element of an operative cause in 
 union with matter. We are compelled, therefore, to 
 regard it as an invisible reality beyond the reach of 
 our senses, but seen by our causality as a manifesta- 
 tion of the causative power of God pen^'ading the 
 world " in whom we live^ and move, and have our 
 being" — a manifestation of the Word in flesh and 
 matter. 
 
 34. By applying this Theory of Causation as an 
 instrument of inquiry into the constitution of Con- 
 sciousness and Perception, it will have been seen that 
 sufficient knowledge has been obtained to bridge over 
 the chasm between man and the external world ; to 
 solve the scepticisms of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, 
 and Kant, and to reconcile and identify Idealism and 
 Realism in one common synthesis. By this means 
 our external and internal Experiences, represented 
 by our ideas and our perceptions of existence, are 
 kept distinct, and not confused with one another, and 
 yet are brought into one harmonious whole, so that 
 
32 New Theory of Causation. 
 
 a fruitful union favourable to the progress of Know- 
 ledge is effected between the Methods of Induction 
 and Verification, on the one hand, and that of Causa- 
 tion, on the other. The end and aim of this Method is 
 to determine by analysis find synthesis the causation 
 and constitution of objects, facts, events, phenomena, 
 processes, states, conditions, and relations, both in 
 ourselves, and the external world, and their various 
 combinations, so as to give to Knowledge that cer- 
 tainty, completeness, and logical precision now want- 
 ing in the analogies and co-ordinations of Induction 
 and Positivism, in which the discovery and complex 
 constitution of causes are left entirely to the genius of 
 each individual. 
 
 35. Both Bacon and the Positivists expressly re- 
 pudiate researches into causes, not being aware in 
 what they consist, and so by this omission they do 
 not comprise the highest judicial power of our intel- 
 lectual system in their Methods of Inquiry. Until 
 this want is supplied, as here proposed, we cannot 
 be said to possess a complete method, however well 
 based on Experiment and Verification, inasmuch as 
 the principle of Causation when rightly understood 
 underlies all knowledge, and is all knowledge, and, 
 as method, is the final instrument of inquiry and cri- 
 terion of truth and certitude. It is the law of change 
 and creation as well as that of unity, order, indivi- 
 duality, and existence. Above all, it is the real 
 
New Theory of Causation. T^-i^ 
 
 organon of Philosophy and Science, but philosophy 
 within the limits of the human intellect. These limits 
 extend from sense to First Causation, but not to the 
 infinities of God and Matter, which being incogitable 
 belong to Faith and Intuition alone. In this way 
 only can we place man and nature, as Subject and 
 Object, in the supreme Identity of the Potential 
 Infinite. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE DUAL CONSTITUTION OF FIRST CAUSATION. 
 
 36. Metaphysical writers never fail to ascribe the 
 origin of the world and the human race to a First 
 Cause, having no distinct idea what it means. By 
 people in general this generic idea is made a Personal 
 Unity of some kind which they speak of as Infinite. 
 But all personality being highly conditioned, must be 
 finite, and we have no experience of personality or 
 consciousness without the double TJialami, as we have 
 no experience of intelligence without the reflex action 
 of the Anterior Lobes, as we have seen. It has been 
 shown, too, in a preceding chapter, that a cause is 
 necessarily compound, and contained in its effect, so 
 the idea of its singleness cannot be a true one, as 
 there can be no such correlated object. The world, 
 however, as well as ourselves, is full of first causes, or 
 instances of First Causation, but there is no such 
 reality as One First Cause, in the usual sense of the 
 word, and consequently no true idea of the same. 
 
 37. We must remount further up in the scale of 
 thought and being to arrive at the source and consti- 
 tution of First Causation. From whatever point we 
 start in nature, or in ourselves, with our investigation 
 of laws and causes, we come always and everywhere 
 
Dual Constitution of First Causation. 35 
 
 at last to ultimate facts, and phenomena, and causes, 
 which we are unable to analyse further than that they 
 consist of some kind of force, property, or causative 
 power in union with matter as its subject of inherence. 
 Although we may thus analyse all synthetic bodies 
 into their simple elements, the causative power which 
 holds them together, and constitutes their individu- 
 ality, eludes our grasp. They are ultimate facts 
 deriving from First Causation. 
 
 38. As we ascend from inorganic forms through 
 organic to self-conscious and self-intelligent man, the 
 synthesis of every link of the series becomes more and 
 more conditioned by the adjunction of additional ele- 
 ments of causation, until we are exhausted by the very 
 contemplation of ourselves, and of our own capacities 
 at the summit of existence. We are lost in wonder 
 amongst these numberless instances of First Causation. 
 But although our perception stops at the confines of the 
 phenomenal world, our reason takes us a step further, 
 for through it we apprehend the dynamic element of 
 these first causations, launching us in the Infinite 
 beyond sense, but keeping itself within the boundaries 
 of the finite world which are likewise its own. We 
 then stand on holy ground in the presence of the 
 Deity. But our reason tells us in an absolute manner 
 that no causation can proceed from unity, and postu- 
 lates the dual constitution of every first causation 
 through the union in one of the potential with the 
 
 D 2 
 
36 Dual Constitution of First Causation. 
 
 material element. Both these elements are in the 
 cause, and both in the effect, the one visible to reason, 
 the other to sense. 
 
 39. But all the finite individualities of the universe 
 and of ourselves are identified through first causation 
 in a principle of Unity by reason of their dynamic 
 correlations. Hence we see the Potential Infinite, or 
 God, as the objective reality and source of causation. 
 All power comes from God. And our intuitions con- 
 firm the voice of reason. We apprehend God as the 
 Infinite, by Faith alone, which is the divine presence 
 in our consciousness operating through potentialities 
 connected with our organism. And we apprehend 
 the Spiritual and the Infinite by our psychical sense 
 with as good a warrant as we do the Phenomenal 
 by our outward senses — a truth embodied by the 
 ancients in their beautiful fable of Eros and Psyche. 
 
 40. In Philosophy, this inward sense of the In- 
 finite is the Ecstacy of Plotinus, and the Intellectual 
 Intuition of Schelling ; in Religion, it is exemplified 
 in the Nirvana of the Buddhists, and in the trances 
 of St. Paul, of St. Francis, and St. Theresa. From 
 these Infinities of Power and Matter, whose external 
 objectivity is established both by faith and by the 
 laws of causation, our reason deduces the unity, finity, 
 and multiplicity of existence, and finds their corre- 
 lations and counterparts reflected in ourselves, the 
 union of the two orders of being in knowledge, as 
 
Dual Constitution of First Causation. 37 
 
 Subject and Object, as Ideal and Real, being the ulti- 
 mate exhaustive synthesis of human capacity. Our 
 own finity is the measure of the world we know. 
 Beyond, lies the Unknown Infinite, whatever that 
 may be, and First Causation, the furthest reach of 
 our reason, links us to it. Man and the Universe 
 are the most highly conditioned unities of existence. 
 They are two mighty aggregations of forces embraced 
 by the idea of First Causation, and First Causation 
 is God in act of union with Matter {iiatura natiirans) 
 the union itself being the sensible and intelligible 
 world {natura natiiratd). 
 
 41. We have here an insight into the constitution 
 of the Trinity — an idea which lay deep in the mental 
 system of the Oriental races, and which, handed down 
 to us by tradition, still constitutes in a modified form 
 the mystery of our Christian Godhead. Why is it a 
 mystery } Because we interpret the highest meta- 
 physical problem of our reason by a lower grade of 
 faculties. We impersonate potential realities which 
 are beyond sense in order to bring them down to 
 sense, and so make the problem an absurdity, or a 
 mystery. The impersonated symbol being only a 
 temporary makeshift for rude understandings, should 
 be cast away as soon as we have gained mental power 
 to see the Truth under its own proper form. First 
 causes are composed of potential and material ele- 
 ments which become one in the act of Becoming. If we 
 
38 Dual Constitution of First Causation. 
 
 impersonate these elements, as Infinities, we have the 
 Father and Mother {mater dea — matter), who begot 
 a Son, who made the world. Here we get the Three 
 fundamental ideas or principles which were used to 
 create man, and the world. They are here presented 
 under their scientific as well as their mythic form, 
 but they are the real equivalents of the ancient idea 
 of the creation of existence by personal causation. 
 
 42. It is not difficult to understand how the Word, 
 who made the world, or, in other words, the idea of a 
 First Cause, became attached to the personality of 
 Christ by the metaphysical subtlety of the early 
 Fathers of the Church. Whilst we find St. Paul 
 saying intelligibly " that Christ was declared to be 
 the Son of God through the spirit of holiness," on the 
 other hand, St. John says that the Word is the Son 
 of God. Hence Christ and the Word must be the 
 same from the axiom, "Quae sunt idem uni tertio, sunt 
 idem inter se." But as the Word represents First 
 Causation, if we make a person of this idea, as they 
 did of old, we make it the Son of God. Hence Christ 
 is the Word and Son of God who made the world, 
 which explains his divinity and demiurgic Godhead, 
 as contained in the first chapter of St. John's Gospel. 
 
 43. It was thus in the antique world, when man's 
 intellectual powers were undeveloped and untrained, 
 they made ideas persons who spoke and acted, and 
 the remains of this custom still largely pervade our 
 
Dual Constitution of First Causation. 39 
 
 modes of modern religious thought. It was the most 
 characteristic feature of all primitive ages, Pagan as 
 well as Christian, to confound together ideas of one 
 order with perceptions of another. These impersonated 
 ideas were mixed up with the thoughts and actuali- 
 ties of daily life, and regarded as external realities, 
 which they never were, nor are now. The inner life 
 of man teems with abstract ideals which we are com- 
 pelled by a law of our nature to realise as external 
 objects. They are cerebral excitements which must 
 be expended under an outward form through the 
 Sensory and Motor apparatus. In this way the crude 
 metaphysical and mystic ideas of the early Christian 
 thinkers were externally correlated with the persons 
 of the Trinity, and their moral instincts with the 
 events, ways, and teachings of Christ's momentous 
 life. It was from the same mental necessity the 
 Athenians were better pleased with Pallas Athene 
 than with the yovs of Anaxagoras, or the Providence 
 of Socrates. Men are always more satisfied with 
 external representation than with abstract ideas. 
 
 44. We are scarcely aware, however, when we make 
 God a person, that we are guilty of the first degree of 
 anthropomorphism. We are substituting in our igno- 
 rance a finite image of our own consciousness for the 
 Infinite Being. Whether the image be made by our 
 imagination or by our hands it is equally idolatry, dif- 
 fering not in kind but in degree. A person being a self- 
 
40 Dual Constitution of First Causation. 
 
 conscious aggregation of parts, powers, and sympa- 
 thies, is necessarily conditioned in the highest degree. 
 But God is absolute and unconditioned, and therefore, 
 cannot be a person in any way known to us, except 
 through the weakness of our understandings. When 
 examined, divine personality is the sense and reflex 
 idea of our own selves taken from our consciousness 
 and transferred to the Potential Infinite, just as in 
 old times they made a person of the idea of First 
 Causation and attached it to Christ, as already men- 
 tioned. In the one case, we make God, Man ; in the 
 other, Ave make Man, God. Faith has now no longer 
 need of these lower intellectual forms. There is this 
 difference between the theologian and the philosopher 
 in the matter of revelation. Both start from God. 
 The first on the faith of tradition makes all tran- 
 scendental truths come personally to man by miracle 
 and intermittent communication. The other accounts 
 for the same religious knowledge through regular 
 organic development of the primitive type of race, 
 whose powers remain latent during the ages in a 
 potential state, until developed into actuality by 
 favourable circumstances in the fulness of time. INIan 
 never feels at rest under the tension of unaccom- 
 plished development. There is no doubt, therefore, 
 that the principle of certitude is better placed on 
 a scientific basis than on a supernatural one. 
 
 45. We want now, not the old Greco-Byzantine 
 modes of thought and expression belonging to the 
 
Dual Constitution of First Causation. 41 
 
 fourth century, but their equivalents in modern ideas, 
 as far as there is truth in them, for we are now 
 hving in the period of the Renascence of rehgious 
 thought. The Word thus interpreted by our better 
 lights would be the causative power which underlies 
 all existence and all knowledge. Inseparably united 
 to its subject of inherence which we call matter, it is 
 the Christ in us, full of grace and truth. It is the will 
 of man, thought, consciousness, and life. It speaks 
 as law, and is the force which moves the universe. 
 Ever immanent, invisible and everlasting, First Causa- 
 tion is the Beginning of Existence in space and time 
 from the unmanifested Infinite. It dwells in our 
 consciousness as an idea, and constitutes the unity 
 and objective synthesis of the universe commensurate 
 with ourselves. In the Bible, it is the impersonated 
 form of the Living God, the Lord of Life. In Com- 
 parative Philosophy, it is the Binary principle of 
 Pythagoras, the apyj] of the early Greek thinkers, the 
 Becoming of Heraclitus, the Finite Unity of Par- 
 menides {tov Kara Xoyov hbs), and the Xoyos of Plato. 
 It is the esoteric signification of the yvSxns of the first 
 Gnostics, that is, the mediate knowledge of God 
 through reason, as the Word, in contradistinction to 
 the immediate belief of God through faith of the 
 Apostles and Fathers — two sides of truth which the 
 education of the people will one day blend together. 
 Again, it underlies the Real and Ideal polarities of 
 Schelling ; man and the world, as subject and object, 
 
42 Dual Constitution of First Causation. 
 
 being identified in the unity of First Causation, of 
 which they are co-ordinate effects ; and also, Hegel's 
 law of the Identity of Contraries — of Being and Non- 
 Being — of God and Matter ; for what is their act of 
 union — the Becoming — but the formation of a cause ; 
 and their identity, but the effect of that cause ? and 
 again, what is his " Negation of an Idea " {an sich) 
 in process of development, but the analysis of its con- 
 stituent elements {anders-seyii), and his " Negation of 
 the Negation," but their synthesis back again into 
 the original idea {an-7md-fur-sicJi-seyii) subject to the 
 law of causation ? 
 
 46. Strive as we will, all our perceptions, ideas, 
 and intuitions are only compounds of our own selves 
 and our own external world. If we try and break 
 through these bounds, and bring, as we vainly sup- 
 pose, supernatural revelation to our aid, it will always 
 be found that we still only make God in our own 
 form and image, and make him tell us only the same 
 things and the same truths which already potentially 
 exist, and will alwa5^s so exist, in our own selves. 
 The subject cannot know more than the faculties 
 which are in him, and the limit of our knowledge is 
 First Causation. We have no intellectual faculties 
 to comprehend the Infinities of God and Matter. 
 They are beyond perception and reason. They are 
 apprehended by our psychical sense, or intuition, as the 
 Objective Infinite, devoid of form and individualit}-. 
 
OUR EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL OBJECTIVITY. 
 
 47. We have seen in a former paper that though 
 ideas and perceptions are analogous and concordant, 
 still they are not identical, from the fact of there being 
 more elements employed in the causation of per- 
 ceptions than of ideas, and this was owing to the 
 actual presence of external noumena in perception, 
 involving excitements in the sensory apparatus and the 
 Sensory Tracts of the Medulla Oblongata, which was 
 not the case in ideation ; this mental process being 
 confined to the reflex action of the Anterior Lobes of 
 the brain, of which the equivalent expression is 
 metaphysically known as that of Subject and Object. 
 
 48. There exist therefore in ourselves connected 
 with that part of our mental consciousness called the 
 Subject, two relati9ns of Objectivity, one internal, 
 expressive of our ideas, and the other external, ex- 
 pressive of our perceptions ; so that in analysing and 
 estimating knowledge, it is of the utmost moment 
 to distinguish whether it consists of ideas relating to 
 our internal experience, or of perceptions relating to our 
 external experience, or whether the two objectivities 
 are confused together in one result, and that result 
 attributed solely to one source without our being 
 
44 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 
 
 conscious of the intermixture ; in other words, 
 whether we do not confound the mere ideal product 
 with the external realities of perception, and so ac- 
 quire knowledge of a spurious kind. It is therefore 
 the first step in philosophical inquiry to distinguish 
 with precision between the internal and the external 
 sources of knowledge, which brings us to the con- 
 sideration of the two objectivities. 
 
 49. When we take an introspective view of our- 
 selves we are conscious of being doubly represented 
 as Subject and Object, as thinker and the thing 
 thought of, and besides this, we are conscious all the 
 time of our being one and the same. The anatomical 
 distribution of the brain corresponds exactly with this 
 double representation, each duplicate hemisphere 
 being carefully separated from the other by the Falx 
 cerebri in order to isolate and fulfil its functions, and 
 yet intercommunicating with the other through 
 central organs of unity which contain within them- 
 selves, as in a focus, representative afferent and 
 efferent filaments from the entire nervous system 
 {Corpus Callosum, Optic TJialavii). The external 
 world of sense is thus brought into communication 
 with ourselves, and ourselves with the external world. 
 And all the terminal loops composing the Convoluted 
 Sii^'face of the brain having also two sets of afferent 
 and efferent fibres connecting them with the Callosinn, 
 they are in this manner put into up-and-down com- 
 
Our External and Internal Objectivity. 45 
 
 munication with the rest of the cerebral system, by 
 which means they are enabled to furnish their re- 
 spective contingents according to the special cha- 
 racter of activity peculiar to each organ, whenever we 
 are forming our ideas, wishes, judgments, and wills. 
 In other words, the great use of a double brain is to 
 give objectivity to our ideas, one duplicate repre- 
 senting ourselves as subject, the other representing 
 the ideas present in our consciousness, both being 
 identified in the products resulting from the union of 
 the two in one, and both communicating with the seat 
 of our personal sense in the Thalami. 
 
 50. Thus, in recollecting and thinking, our mental 
 system divides itself into two parts, or terms, repre- 
 sentative of what are called " Subject and Object," 
 and these correspond to the two hemispheres of the 
 brain. And it is evident that the field of internal 
 objectivity must be co-extensive with the powers of 
 the subject, and vice versa. This fact, which we know 
 through consciousness, is conclusively affirmed by the 
 two hemispheres being identical in structure, and the 
 distribution of their parts. When we single out by 
 our will an object of memory or thought, if this be 
 of such a nature as to comprise the whole extent of 
 our knowledge, it would necessarily exhaust all our 
 objective capacity ; in other words, it would require 
 one hemisphere for its representation. But as we are 
 conscious at the same time of thinking powers equal 
 
46 Our External and Internal OsyECTivirv. 
 
 to the ideas and knowledge posited in the object, and 
 that we can apply them with all our Will to examine 
 the qualities and relations of what we are thinking 
 about, it follows, that we think and form ideas by 
 means of a duplicate mental system, which is exactly 
 what we find in the anatomical construction of the 
 brain. So that one hemisphere (the right one) sub- 
 serving the Subjective, and the other, the Objective 
 element of thought, the two together unite their ac- 
 tion for the production of new ideas. It is true, until 
 they unite dynamically as a cause for this purpose, 
 they remain simply in a potential state, but when, 
 urged by our will, they are roused into action, new 
 thoughts and new ideas result. And this takes place 
 collectively on a large scale on the scene of history 
 as well as in individual cases. 
 
 51. When we want to divine the character, and 
 penetrate into the motives, plans, and counsels, of an 
 opponent in war, diplomacy, or business, we. represent 
 all these objectively within our own selves, in order 
 to work out the solution we seek. We divide our- 
 selves into subject and object, and set up a process of 
 ideation, the result of which is, that w-e posit in our- 
 selves another individual and all his affairs as objects 
 to be examined and criticised by our own powers acting 
 as the subject. We could only do this by means of a 
 double brain rooted in one centre of consciousness, 
 meaning the OpHc Thalami. All thinkers and in- 
 
Our External and Internal Objectivity. 47 
 
 ventors work by the same means ; so does the artist, 
 the engineer, the mathematician, the orator, the poH- 
 tician, and the lawyer ; and so does the poet, the 
 mystic, the metaphysician, and the actor. We have 
 Subject and Object in consciousness, and their corre- 
 lates must of necessity be found in anatomy. 
 
 52. There is little doubt that in perception both 
 hemispheres are more or less employed, the objecti- 
 vity being supplied by external noumena, and the 
 thinking subject reduced to its minimum of partici- 
 pation, but in ideation and thought, the objectivity is 
 strictly internal, and caused by the presence of mental 
 objects ija vorjTo). Hence the origin of the whole 
 world of Universals, Reminiscences, Generic Ideas, 
 Necessary Truths, and Innate Ideas. These are cer- 
 tainly objects and realities, but they are internal ones 
 and purely mental. They have no correlated objects 
 in the external world, and have no external reality. 
 Plato's "ideas" are thus products of internal object- 
 ivity. They are mental existences only, abstracted 
 from perceptive ideas deriving their origin from the 
 union of the percipient with the external noumena ; 
 and the subjective abstracting powers being fixed in 
 the organism, as ultimate facts outside our causality, 
 was perhaps his warrant for regarding them as eternal. 
 Still, it cannot be denied that the results of ideation 
 and thought transcend those of mere outward ex- 
 perience, and that our ideas and our ideals when 
 
48 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 
 
 realised, play the greatest part in utilising nature, 
 forming causes and designs, promoting civilisation, 
 and enlarging the sphere of the finite intellectual 
 horizon, in whose centre we are placed. 
 
 53. But although universals, or generic ideas, are 
 truly derived in order of sequence from external per- 
 ceptions, yet owing to the stronger ideation of Plato, 
 and the weakness of his sensory powers, he laid more 
 stress upon internal objectivity, making ideas alone 
 what he called " pure existence," in which individuals 
 only shared in an imperfect manner by way of par- 
 ticipation. It is true, when ideas become expressed 
 in words or symbols, they assume an appearance of 
 externality, and in the earlier ages of the world men 
 believed this to be the case. They regarded ideas 
 as external things and persons, taking up modes of 
 behaving and acting in keeping with their several 
 characters. It was thus that Zeus, as the idea of 
 creative power, was the "Father of Gods and Men," 
 and that Christ, as the ideal of our atoning conscience 
 and our highest humanity, was singled out in later 
 times as " the head of man and captain of our salva- 
 tion." Comparative mythology is one vast field of 
 this kind of intermixed objectivity characteristic of a 
 certain lower phase of intellectual development. The 
 subjective hemisphere, for want of control and direc- 
 tion from an enlightened Will, transferred the Per- 
 sonal Sense into the objects of thought. The mental 
 
Our External and Internal Objectivity. 49 
 
 operations, instead of being confined to the normal 
 action of the Anterior Lobes, involved also excite- 
 ments of the Thalmni, which being represented in 
 the resulting product, engendered impersonations as 
 an inevitable consequence. 
 
 54. We cannot separate subject and object. They 
 are both identified in sensation, perception, and 
 thought. But the subject being a compound body, 
 although one in consciousness, if we employ an 
 impure percipient, the resulting knowledge will be 
 tainted with error or peculiarity, according to the 
 degree and quality of the impurity. We fail to 
 obtain " liLinen siccnniy On the contrary, we get our 
 perceptions clouded with the prejudices, ignorance, or 
 imagination of the subject. Thus the passions and 
 prepossessions of an age become reflected in its 
 modes of thought and action. The percipient of the 
 subject is charged with impurities of different kinds, 
 and errors of perception and judgment result. In the 
 first Christian ages the religious Supernatural pre- 
 vailed. An overpowering sense of Wonder fills all 
 the Gospel narratives. It bursts out in every page. 
 We live in an atmosphere of miracles. Hence the 
 contagion spread from man to man and age to age, 
 and hence the origin of inspirations and revelations 
 in the perceptions and convictions of the time. The 
 mystic element -overbore the percipient intellect, and 
 forced it to shape out forms and modes of action on 
 
 E 
 
50 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 
 
 which it could dwell with satisfaction. Truth thus 
 became mixed with the ruling sentiment of the Super- 
 natural residing in the subject. Faith leaving the 
 Infinite invaded the sphere of the objective Finite. 
 When the subjective thus predominates, the man 
 becomes the measure of things. So the Bible and 
 the Nicene Theology are exact pictures and tran- 
 scripts of the age which produced them. In short, 
 through our double brain we are enabled to view 
 transcendental ideas relating to causation and divine 
 agency as objects within ourselves. From being in- 
 ternal mental objects they become persons, existing 
 apart from the subject, and, receiving a name, escape 
 into the world as external objects. Hence the origin 
 of the ideas of inspiration and revelation. Our ideas 
 are first made objects, then invisible persons, and then 
 divine personalities inspire our thoughts and reveal 
 truths. A new world is created by degrees by this 
 internal process, and generations elapse before the 
 progress of thought unties the tangled skein of primi- 
 tive times. These Impersonations are modes of idea- 
 tion which spring from our vain efforts to interpret 
 psychical ideas (faith) through the medium of sense 
 and matter. 
 
 55. We can now understand why Descartes' axiom, 
 that "a true idea corresponds with its object," only 
 applies to perceptive and not to generic ideas, and 
 why the idealistic systems of Fichte and Hegel do not 
 
Our External and Internal Objectivity. 51 
 
 repose on a basis of complete reality, their reality 
 being only internal and mental, and not externally 
 objective. They ignored the world of external object- 
 ivity as an independent, self-subsisting fact, and there- 
 fore did not recognise that continuous practical union 
 of ourselves with external nature which alone is the 
 original source of all knowledge, even that of ideation 
 itself We may be said to posit the world in one hemi- 
 sphere of our brain, and to look at it with the other, 
 and to do so likewise with our own selves, thus showing 
 that Fichte's lesser identity of Subject and Object in our 
 Ego is not sufficient, as it embraces only our internal 
 objectivity, but that SchelHng's identity in the Infinite 
 is necessary to embrace all Existence ; and showing- 
 further that Faith, not Reason, as we have said else- 
 where, can alone apprehend the external objectivity 
 of the Potential and Material Infinites. 
 
 56. Universals thus belong to internal objectivity, 
 being nothing more than synthetic abstracts of our 
 perceptive ideas, these ideas being themselves derived 
 in the first instance from external perception. When 
 we remount to the primary conditions necessary for 
 these intellectual processes of abstract ideation, we 
 shall find their seat to be in the Anterior Lobes of the 
 brain. By their duplicate arrangement and free reflex 
 action by means of the transverse commissural bands 
 connecting together the anterior folds of the Corpus 
 Callosum, they are shown to be the factors of that 
 
 E 2 
 
52 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 
 
 correlated antagonism we are conscious of as subject 
 and object, the objectivity in these cases being of course 
 internal, and confined to those perceptive and generic 
 ideas which are the products of the various poten- 
 tialities residing in that portion of the brain. So 
 likewise mathematics, logic, synthetic judgments, and 
 our abstract ideals of sense, thought, and feeling, are 
 truths and mental objects resulting from our expe- 
 rience of internal objectivity, just as the facts of 
 science and outward life are the results of our outward 
 experience. 
 
 57. There is no difficulty in finding many abstract 
 or collective ideas figuring as entities or completed 
 individuals, but which spring from internal objectivity, 
 and are therefore without a correlated external reality. 
 This has been already shown with regard to our idea 
 of a First Cause. The same holds good with regard 
 to those parts of ourselves we call mind and soul, 
 which are not distinct individualities, but generic 
 ideas treated as such. They are, strictly speaking, 
 expressions of certain states of fact drawn from our 
 consciousness. As, however, consciousness is not 
 an ultimate fact, but a very compound product 
 arising from the dynamic union of our several po- 
 tentialities, the expressions can only signify certain 
 collective mental phenomena whose origin and causa- 
 tion we now know much better than in the times 
 of Hume, not from consciousness itself, but from 
 
Our External and Internal Objectivity. 53 
 
 anatomical facts and particulars with which it is cor- 
 related and conditioned. Mind and soul are thus not 
 separate entities but parts of our conscious selves, 
 and expressions of internal objectivity. This we have 
 already spoken of as being dependent on the reflex 
 action of the Anterior Lobes, but it is only by means 
 of the Thalaiui, and their mode of union with the 
 whole of our nei"vous apparatus, that we can demon- 
 strate the constant element of unity and identity in 
 our consciousness, with at the same time that other 
 mutable element of multiplicity, both combining to- 
 gether in one and the same Personal Sense, of which 
 mind and soul are the popular expressions, according 
 as they are applied to the intellectual or the psychical 
 parts of our higher consciousness. 
 
 58. Then we shall find that the rude mystic ideas 
 of early times always found an outward expression 
 under forms of external objectivity, producing spu- 
 rious and fantastic knowledge, as exemplified in the 
 impersonations and epic actions of the different 
 mythologies, now ranging over the beauty and 
 physical phenomena of external nature, and in later 
 times representing the ways, the strifes, and the 
 triumphs of the moral and intellectual forces within 
 us. These myths and historical legends are all pro- 
 ducts of intermixed objectivity, but significant of 
 deep-seated truths and commanding ideas. We have 
 them in the celestial charioteers, the winged horses, 
 
54 OuK External and Internal Objectivity. 
 
 and the Empyrean of Plato, and we have them with 
 still greater force in the grand Christian epic when 
 in primeval times there was war in heaven between 
 the angels of light and darkness — forth-shadowing 
 imagery we can philosophically accept as archaic 
 expressions of man's primitive field of consciousness, 
 where his nascent reason, moral sense, and abstract 
 ideals had to fight the battle of their supremacy over 
 the rebellious demands of his animal nature. It was 
 a long and arduous task for him to form his Will and 
 his beliefs in conformity with truth and law. True 
 knowledge can alone disentangle the underlying ideas 
 from their poetical investiture, and so enlarge the 
 sphere of our intellectual horizon. 
 
 59. In our own day we have another illustration 
 of the intermixture of the two objectivities in the 
 doctrine of the external presence of Christ on the 
 altar under the form of bread and wine. The 
 Ritualists no doubt strongly possess the idea that 
 Christ is so present, and believe it as a fact, just 
 as the ancients believed in the actual presence of 
 Nitmina in their shrines and statues, and just as the 
 Roman Catholics believe in the Real Presence of the 
 Host, when the bell is tinkling and the congregation 
 are on their knees. Christ in these cases is ob- 
 jectively present in the consciousness as an idea, but 
 the objectivity is purely mental and internal, which, 
 through ignorance and predominant subjective feeling 
 
Our External and Internal Objectivity. 55 
 
 they feel compelled by the law of expression to 
 conjoin with its analogous external object. Like 
 the rude people of old times, they intermix ideas 
 with perceptions, and so vitiate knowledge, breeding 
 superstition and undermining our faith in truth, 
 reality, and the laws which govern perception and 
 thought. 
 
 60. If in thought the cerebral excitement should 
 extend beyond the Anterior Lobes, a pure intellectual 
 result will fail to ensue. Those parts of the brain 
 which are in a dynamic state, and which then 
 virtually represent the subject, will show their in- 
 fluence in the new ideas. In other words, a strong 
 subjective bias, or prejudice, will be incorporated with 
 the resulting product. This was the case more par- 
 ticularly in early times when men reflected on the 
 power displayed in nature and in themselves. They 
 transported their own personal belief and will into 
 their ideas, and so impersonated the physical and 
 mental powers which they saw operating around them, 
 and which they felt in the depths of their conscious- 
 ness. Force and LaAV are generic ideas belonging to 
 modern thought ; but in the ancient order of things 
 whose traditions still prevail, they were represented 
 by personal divinities who were the external cor- 
 related expressions of their abstract ideals. Hence 
 the two objectivities were intermixed, and a veil was 
 put over the face of knowledge. The recent dogma 
 
56 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 
 
 of Papal Infallibility is the apotheosis of the ideas 
 of intermixed objectivity. 
 
 61. But we have now to see that the highest and 
 most complex mental processes of thought, judgment, 
 and will are effected through the duplicate consti- 
 tution of the brain in connection with its function 
 of internal objectivity. Subject to the laws of our 
 nature, in other words, to First Causation, we are 
 organised to act with perfect freedom in the forma- 
 tion of our judgments and our wills, and to take an 
 active and conscious part in these operations. We 
 can only do this by the division of ourselves into 
 Subject and Object, without which no thought is 
 possible. But as the cerebral hemispheres subserving 
 these divisions of ourselves are identical and co-equal, 
 and we are so constituted in consciousness as well, 
 our freedom of mental action is a necessary con- 
 sequence. It proceeds from the equality of Subject 
 and Object in their correlated antagonism. We are 
 ourselves the powers, the law, and the freedom, which 
 are convertible terms. And when Ave have to con- 
 sider and make up our mind, there is no doubt we 
 are organised to decide according to what is right 
 and truthful. This is the law of our nature, but it 
 depends on ourselves in the exercise of our freedom, 
 as more or less imperfect beings, to apply this law 
 to our own particular cases. It is we ourselves who 
 have to take the active part in accepting or rejecting 
 
Our External and Internal Objectivity. 57 
 
 the matter posited in the objective hemisphere, and 
 by so doing to incur the responsibiHty of deciding, or 
 not deciding, according to the laws of our mental 
 constitution. And we are made to do so freely by 
 this very equality of Subject and Object in ourselves, 
 which removes every obstacle to our freedom, and 
 to our not being conscious of it, whether, as one kind 
 of person, we decide right ; or, as another kind of 
 person, we decide wrong. In all cases, we do so 
 freely and spontaneously, as philosopher, as the 
 average man, as the savage, or as the criminal. 
 
 62. But whether this freedom will result in a right 
 judgment, or in a right course of action, is quite 
 another question. Our determinations, which are 
 antecedent and integral elements of our wills in act, 
 can only be composed of the materials of which we 
 are ourselves composed ; and when these happen to 
 be more or less defective, it follows, that the resulting 
 compounds must participate in these defects. And this 
 brings us to the law of reparative reaction that is sure 
 to ensue, whenever we depart in our determinations 
 and wills from what is right and truthful, and from 
 the appointed order of our mental and moral sys- 
 tems. This means suffering, and natural and socia4 
 punishments, as consequences, warnings, and reme- 
 dies of our being in the wrong. These sanctions 
 prove the law. Hence moral responsibility, although 
 absolute as an idea of internal objectivity, is not so 
 
58 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 
 
 as an external fact, but is apportioned to the more or 
 less perfect or imperfect state of each individual, 
 which, being measured by an average standard, is 
 practically determined and expressed in our laws and 
 public opinion. This is exemplified in the classical 
 lines: "Video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor;" 
 and in St. Paul's two laws of his mind and of his 
 members : " The good that I would, I do not ; but 
 the evil which I would not, that I do " — antagonisms 
 between precept and practice in the formation of our 
 wills and actions which are generally compromised in 
 practical life, and often rightfully and truthfully, by 
 an equation of the abstract ideal with the claims of 
 the real. Man must live in all the integrity of his 
 nature, and the whole brain be represented in mea- 
 sure and season within the spheres of his internal and 
 external objectivity. 
 
 63. Education and training develop the propor- 
 tions of this moral responsibility, so that it becomes 
 the duty of every individual, and collectively of society, 
 to call this power and this freedom of ours into action, 
 as practically there is no limit to the right formation 
 of our judgments, determinations, wills, and actions, 
 and therefore to our contingent responsibilities in all 
 the affairs of personal and social life. With the rare 
 exceptions of disease, or malformation of the brain, 
 every one is free, and every one proportionately re- 
 sponsible. And this is only in accordance with com- 
 
Our External and Internal Objectivity. 59 
 
 mon sense, and with our internal and external expe- 
 rience. 
 
 64. When we have "made up our minds" as to 
 what we shall think and shall do, we have formed 
 that mental state which precedes the act of volition. 
 This state is the result of an active internal process 
 of causation conducted by ourselves as the conscious 
 subject of one hemisphere operating freely on the 
 object posited in the other. The potentialities of the 
 two hemispheres unite together to produce the new 
 ideas, new judgments, and new determinations, ready 
 at once, or at a more convenient opportunity, to be 
 realised externally in act by an ultimate union with 
 our Will, and the executive apparatus of our senses 
 and muscles, by means of the directing and co-ordi- 
 nating functions of the Anterior Lobes, the Corpora 
 Striata, the Anterior Pyramids, and their connections 
 with the motor system. 
 
 65. It Avill be seen from the views exhibited in 
 these papers that to revive our interest in metaphysical 
 and psychological studies, they must be grounded on 
 the facts and discoveries of anatomy and physiology. 
 The phenomena of consciousness must be considered 
 as correlated with the structures and organisms of the 
 brain. When consciousness, as a secondary fact, is 
 unequal to inform us of what we want to know, we 
 can then supply its insufficiency, or correct its false 
 conclusions, by external evidence ; and on the other 
 
6o Our External and Internal Objectivity. 
 
 hand, when we are ignorant of the uses and endow- 
 ments of our cerebral structure and its complex me- 
 chanisms in the productions of mental phenomena, we 
 can then have recourse to the facts of our conscious- 
 ness to help us in their interpretation. One source of 
 knowledge is thus the verification of the other. In 
 this way the unity and multiplicity of " the mind and 
 soul" are admirably explained by the relations of the 
 peripheral and internal component organs of the 
 brain with the centre of our personal consciousness in 
 the Thalamic whilst the anatomical duality of the 
 brain reflects itself in the duplicated partition of our 
 consciousness into subject and object in the processes 
 of ideation, thought, and judgment. Again, the ter- 
 minal loops of the grey matter of the convolutions 
 with their interior concentric transverse bands, are 
 nothing less than a congeries of magnets and elec- 
 trodes connected by converging cones of efferent and 
 afferent fibres with the Corpus Callosuvi, whose sub- 
 stance indeed is but an aggregation of their apices. 
 And these not only intercommunicate freely with 
 each other on the side of their own hemisphere by 
 the longitudinal bands of the raphe, and so make it 
 in function a complete whole in itself, but also 
 touch and prolong themselves into the corresponding 
 apices belonging to the organs of the opposite hemi- 
 sphere. They thus supply the anatomical mechanism 
 necessary for the dual conditions of Subject and 
 
Our External and Internal Objectivity. 6i 
 
 Object in consciousness, and in conjunction with the 
 Thalami, for the unity in multipHcity, and multipHcity 
 in unity, of the Personal Sense, hitherto considered 
 an attribute of the soul. Again, the mechanism by 
 which our determinations are made volitions is seen 
 to be provided by the efferent fibres which connect 
 the cerebral vertex where our Will proper resides, or 
 is supposed to reside, with the posterior folds of the 
 Callosuju, and all it represents, and thence by its 
 raphe with the Anterior Lobes, the organs of Sense, 
 and the motor centres of the Striata. As soon as we 
 have formed our determinations, the antagonism of 
 subject and object, existing between the two hemi- 
 spheres, ceases, so that when we proceed to execute 
 them by our will, we do so with the brain as a whole, 
 and acting as a single organ. 
 
 66. It is thus we can seek for an explanation of 
 the phenomena of consciousness in the anatomical 
 structure and distribution of the brain. Up to the 
 present time our knowledge of its localised and 
 special functions has been by no means complete. 
 There still exists the great hiatus between the dis- 
 coveries of Gall and Sptirzheim and the results esta- 
 blished by our scientific physiologists relating to the 
 functions of the Spinal Cord, the Medulla Oblongata, 
 and the great ganglia of the Sensory and Motor 
 systems. This unknown intermediate region is the 
 base of the brain, and that complex system of ganglia 
 
62 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 
 
 and commissural apparatus occupying the space 
 beneath the hemispheres. The present attempt to 
 assign functions to this unappropriated ground has 
 been made by comparing together the facts of con- 
 sciousness with those of anatomy, and referring both 
 to one common causation, carefully tracing step by 
 step the chain of connection from simple and special 
 sensation to the final results of judgment and will 
 through the different parts and mechanisms devoted 
 to these purposes. By analysing effects into their 
 component parts, and then synthetically putting them 
 together again, we cannot fail to discover by this 
 method the causes which produce the effects. 
 
 6^. Suppose we are seeking to discover the means 
 by which the varying states of expression and charac- 
 ter are given to the eyes. We know beforehand the 
 cause must be in the effect, and that the anatomical 
 provision for this purpose must be found in con- 
 nection with the optic nerves and the several cerebral 
 masses subserving our mental and emotional systems. 
 On a careful study of a section of the brain below 
 the Callositm in reference to this point, what do we 
 see t A general convergence of lines and bands of 
 communication towards the commissure of the optic 
 nerves. We see in the first place the pillars of the 
 Fornix curving downwards to this very spot, and 
 blending with the Corpora Albicantia, and the Fornix 
 itself sending branches into the cornua of the lateral 
 
Our External and Internal Objectivity. 63 
 
 ventricles (the Corpus Fimbviatitm, the Pedes Hip- 
 pocampi, Sec), thus putting the eyes into direct com- 
 munication with the Posterior and Middle Lobes. We 
 find also the Tcenia scniicircidaris of Haller extending 
 itself to and from the same localities. The same 
 must be said of the prolongations of the Septicm 
 Liiciditin, and the anterior folds of the Callosinn 
 which are reflected downwards, adhering to the optic 
 commissure and becoming continuous with the Tuber 
 Cineremn which is embedded within the commissure 
 itself The Albicantia and the Tuber are thus ganglia 
 of expression and intermediate organs of communi- 
 cation between the interior of the brain and the 
 retina. 
 
 6^. On these grounds, therefore, it is assumed, 
 that the parts just mentioned are the appointed 
 means by which expressions of every sort are con- 
 veyed to the eyes and features of the face, according 
 to the cerebral excitements prevailing in our con- 
 sciousness, the anterior folds of the Callosum con- 
 veying those of an intelligent and intellectual kind 
 from the Anterior Lobes ; the Septiun Lueidwn the 
 higher emotional from the Superior Parietal Convolu- 
 tions; and the Fornix and TcEnia of Haller the pas- 
 sionate and personal from the Posterior and Middle 
 Lobes ; Avhilst the sexual are conveyed from their seat 
 in the Corpus Dentatum by the valve of Vieussens, 
 through the ganglia of the Testes, to the origin of the 
 
64 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 
 
 optic nerves in the anterior ganglia of the Quadri- 
 geinina. 
 
 69. If we hke to test still further the method of 
 analysis and synthesis with reference to the causation 
 of an effect and the collation of the two objectivities, let 
 us take the case of the Corpus Deiitatiim as being 
 the seat of the amative feeling, and the Cerebellar 
 Lobes as being the motor apparatus in connection 
 with that feeling. What is more positive than the 
 results obtained, and the fulfilment of all the con- 
 ditions necessary for those functions ? The ganglia 
 of the sexual feeling must spring from the Sensory 
 Tract, and in such a way as to be in communica- 
 tion with the reproductive organs, and with the 
 reflex action of their nerves. The Corpits Dentatum 
 does so, as it is derived from the Restiforni bodies. 
 They must further be in close connection with the 
 special sensory ganglia, and especially with those 
 of sight, touch, and hearing, as inlets and feeders of 
 the amative propensity. The Corptis Dentahtm is so 
 in the strictest manner. They must have motor me- 
 chanisms in connection with the motor tract for the 
 display and performance of the various acts prompted 
 by love and sexual desire. This is exactly the case 
 from the connection of the Cerebellar Lobes with the 
 Pons Varolii and the A7iterior Pyramids. They 
 must be so placed in relation to other parts as to 
 have excito-motory, and ideo-motory functions, and yet 
 
Our External and Internal Objectivity. 65 
 
 be subject to the Will and the voluntary motor system. 
 The Corpus Dcntatitm fulfils all these conditions by 
 the spinal connection of the Cerebellar Lobes with the 
 Pons and the Anterior Pyramids, and on the other 
 hand by its cerebral connection with the Qnadri- 
 gemina, the Thalami, the Anterior Lobes,' dir\6. the 
 Striata, and still further, through the Anterior Lobes 
 and the Callosum with the whole Emotional system 
 and the Will. 
 
 70. Gall and SpUrzheim considered the functions 
 of the Cerebelbun as thoroughly established by the 
 immense number of facts observed by them ; but by 
 their not apportioning what parts of it belonged to 
 the propensity itself, and what to the motor actions 
 connected with it, some doubts about these points 
 have been entertained by scientific men, which, how- 
 ever, will probably be dissipated by future observa- 
 tions. Nor is it a very bold prediction to make, that 
 in this region (say the Central Lobes), in union with its 
 spinal and cerebral connections, will be found located 
 the ganglionic provisions for that curious mixture of 
 excito-motory, ideo-motory, and voluntary action 
 which distinguishes the functions of the rectum, the 
 bladder, and the uterus in relation to their own specific 
 sensations, and the excitements acting upon them, 
 from the brain, and vice versa. Who does not know 
 Voltaire's witty story of the would-be suicidist and 
 his lavement .■* 
 
 F 
 
66 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 
 
 71. To conclude with these views of the two 
 Objectivities. Before sensations and perceptions come 
 out as thought and action, they go through a series 
 of cumulative causations and transform.ations by 
 uniting with the various potentialities of our mental 
 system. As external impressions traverse the ana- 
 tomical mechanisms, so do new parts become en- 
 gaged, and their functional specialities conjoined 
 with the correlated qualities of the original excite- 
 ments, which thus getting more and more additional 
 unions, become enhanced thereby step by step from 
 perception to ideation and thought, and from thought 
 conjoined with emotion and feeling to our determi- 
 nations, wills, and actions, constituting those internal 
 circuits of dynamic force and motion within the brain, 
 which make up the phenomena of cerebral life, and 
 which, when duplicated in special organisms mag- 
 netically inducted, are the causative conditions of all 
 consciousness, personality, and knowledge. 
 
 72. As we proceed from the Known to the Un- 
 known, our mental mechanism works according to its 
 own laws, and follows a certain order of procedure. 
 It is well known that voluntary muscular movements 
 cannot be properly performed without first being 
 stimulated by a guiding sensation. So in like manner 
 it would appear that our intellectual powers in pur- 
 suit of knowledge fail to act with sufficient energy 
 and continuity unless they are stimulated by a strong 
 
Our External and Internal Objectivity. 67 
 
 mental emotion as well as by the noumena of the 
 external world. This incentive emotion we feel as 
 Wonder in its highest degree, and as Curiosity in its 
 lowest. It acts as the mainspring of our intellectual 
 system, and is ever urging us to bring the unknown 
 within the sphere of the known, its ultimate function 
 being to enable us to apprehend the Infinite as 
 the external reality beyond the Finite. 
 
 J'^. What we thus know through our conscious- 
 ness is confirmed by anatomical facts, as the seat of 
 this emotion resides in the coronal region of the 
 Anterior Lobes, just over and adjoining the Middle 
 Frontal Convolntions which subserve the highest fa- 
 culties of our reason. We remain under the tension 
 of Wonder until the objects of inquiry are under- 
 stood, and assimilated to our previous knowledge, 
 when it loosens its hold to be replaced by another 
 emotion which is that of Truth. In this way we ac- 
 quire constant accessions of truth and knowledge, 
 and truth consists of two elements, the intellectual 
 and the emotional, the demonstration and the belief 
 which follows it. One without the other is defective 
 and incomplete. We then rest in truth. The ten- 
 sion of Wonder is so continuous and absorbing, until 
 our intellect is satisfied, that if the objects of thought 
 transcend our powers, we have recourse to secondary 
 and provisional solutions of the difficulty to appease 
 its insistence. To be " thaumatised " and dumb- 
 
 F 2 
 
68 Our External and Internal Objectivity. 
 
 founded in our ignorance is found to be a pressure 
 beyond human endurance. But such is the tenacity 
 of Wonder, and so strong the law of our mental 
 system, that it pursues mankind from generation to 
 generation until our causality is satisfied by the dis- 
 covery of the true ideas and the true causation. 
 Wonder thus becomes the parent of progress, science, 
 and knowledge. It is a means to an end, which is 
 truth, and truth is the conscious union of ourselves 
 with ourselves, by ourselves, and in ourselves ; it is 
 the union of ourselves with the world with which we 
 are correlated ; it is the un-ion of ourselves with 
 God. 
 
 74. We never tire of having to study and admire 
 the structure and design of the eye, the ear, the heart, 
 and the hand, as intelligible means to intelligible 
 ends, but all these evidences of synthetic causation sink 
 into insignificance when we come to study the me- 
 chanisms, adjustments, and dispositions which com- 
 pose the human brain, where we see displayed before 
 our eyes representations in matter of what we feel in 
 consciousness, so that, given the functions and en- 
 dowments of the parts, we can build up the mental 
 edifice of our unity and multiplicity, see the means 
 provided for knowing and internalising the external 
 world, ponder on the details and provisions made for 
 thought, expression, sympathy, and action, and feel 
 how fearfully and wonderfully we are made, when 
 
Our External and Internal Objectivity. 69 
 
 we can even show the structural distribution of the 
 parts through which our highest attributes of free- 
 will and responsibility are made compatible with 
 universal causation, and we oursejves thus made 
 fellow-workers with God. 
 
VI. 
 
 NEW METHOD OF INQUIRY BY CAUSATION. 
 
 75. As the principle of Causality underlies all 
 scientific knowledge and certitude, it ought without 
 doubt to be comprised in the true Method of Inquiry 
 which mankind have not yet discovered, and are still 
 expecting. But up to the present time metaphysi- 
 cians and men of science not having clear ideas of 
 what a cause consists, their methods of inquiry have 
 proved inadequate to the systematic acquirement of 
 knowledge. What is the Inductive Method but a 
 system of inquiry based on the analogies and differ- 
 ences of things, leaving altogether aside the precise 
 relations of cause and effect ? And what is Verification 
 but a repetition of inductive experiment, and so no 
 method at all.-' By Induction, what else do we do, 
 but proceed from the Particular to the General, from 
 analysis to synthesis, and so abstract our generalisa- 
 tions, laws, and generic ideas from a number of indi- 
 vidual instances, these abstractions being internal 
 objectivities, and the equivalents of the ideas of Plato 
 and the Idee of Hegel ? Again, what is the De- 
 ductive Method but the application of the General 
 to the Particular, where from admitted truths and 
 axioms we deduce new ideas and new results as 
 
New Method of Inquiry by Causation: 71 
 
 necessary consequences? Having arrived at a know- 
 ledge of general laws and principles, we then put 
 them into practice. We pass from synthesis to 
 analysis. We do not now, like the ancients, build 
 aqueducts, but knowing the general law that water 
 finds its own level, we conduct it, by a particular ap- 
 plication of the law, through pipes to every part of 
 our towns. We apply mathematical truths to practi- 
 cal astronomy, and we obtain useful rules and con- 
 clusions from logical propositions. We act upon our 
 ideas, and ideas are pregnant with momentous results. 
 ^6. But the whole of our mental system is not 
 comprised within either the Inductive or the De- 
 ductive Methods. They exhibit a marked absence 
 of Causality. So that these methods are found to be 
 defective instruments in the investigation of pheno- 
 mena and their causation. All things are caused and 
 are effects, and so are the mental objects of our con- 
 sciousness. As it is only by analysis and synthesis 
 we can arrive at the constitution and causation of 
 things, events, and ideas, so Induction and Deduction, 
 which are the expressions of these partial mental pro- 
 cesses, are themselves subservient to the higher law of 
 causality, which embraces them both in one compre- 
 hensive Whole, whether we regard them as applied to 
 the logical world of ideas, or to the phenomenal world 
 of events. Causality as the principle of all change 
 and creation rules supreme, and in last resort is the 
 
72 New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 
 
 arbiter and criterion of human knowledge. It must 
 therefore form the basis of the true Method of In- 
 quiry. 
 
 JJ. When we analyse the mental process by which 
 we acquire knowledge, we are conscious of passing 
 through different phases. These correspond to corre- 
 lated anatomical mechanisms seated in the Anterior 
 Lobes, which are put into motion by our wills and by 
 external objects, just as those of our cerebro-spinal 
 motor system act upon a special group of muscles 
 (without our knowing the reason why) when we wish 
 to do a particular purpose. No doubt the wants and 
 necessities of common life . stimulate habitually the 
 lower range of our intellectual faculties, but in the 
 higher problems of theology, metaphysics, and na- 
 tural philosophy, wonder and curiosity precede the 
 active exercise of our Causality, or pure reason. We 
 are impelled by the influence of this all-powerful 
 sentiment to inquire into the causation of everything 
 around us, and to be ever trying to solve recondite 
 questions lying deep in the potentialities of our 
 mental and psychical systems. To find out the causes 
 of things we employ our positive faculties to observe 
 and examine the qualities and relations of pheno- 
 menal objects, analyse them into their component 
 parts, and re-combine these parts again into the 
 original Whole. We pursue the same course in the 
 development of our ideas. They are mental objects. 
 
New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 73 
 
 and as such possess potentialities like those of the 
 physical world. They have their affinities, incon- 
 gruities, unions, and causations, and logic is nothing- 
 more than the presence of causality in ideation. 
 When the process of analysis and synthesis is carried 
 out in a complete manner, we obtain a knowledge 
 of causes and effects, and when reduced to logical 
 order, it constitutes the Method of Inquiry by 
 Causation. 
 
 78. It has been already shown in a former chapter, 
 that by the law of causation we really and truly per- 
 ceive the external world as it is, and that perception 
 is not merely a subjective operation, but is the union 
 in one of the external noumenon and the percipient. 
 It was shown that we have no perceptive conscious- 
 ness without the external noumenon, and that our 
 consciousness was a blank and our percipient a mere 
 potentiality without it, which cannot but be a suffi- 
 cient answer to the scepticism of Hume and Kant on 
 the one hand, and to the idealism of Berkeley, Fichte, 
 and Hegel on the other. But now in making Causality 
 the basis of a new method, claiming to be the true 
 one, it will be well to recapitulate the axioms and 
 propositions which have been more or less established, 
 and which are necessary to be kept in view when in 
 our inquiries after knowledge we employ analysis and 
 synthesis as instruments of this method which claims 
 the merit of ascertaining the constitution and causa- 
 
74 New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 
 
 tion of our ideas, and of the phenomenal effects of the 
 external world. 
 
 Axioms and Propositions of Causality. 
 
 1. No causation can proceed from unity. 
 
 2. A cause is the act of union in one of potential 
 
 objects, more or less in number, for the pro- 
 duction of an effect ; the act of union being 
 the cause ; the union itself, the effect. 
 
 3. Causes are dynamic ; effects are static. 
 
 4. Cause and effect are synchronous, co-equal, 
 
 and co-terminous ; therefore, do not stand in 
 relation to each other as antecedent and 
 sequent. 
 
 5. Causes are in their effects ; and effects, in their 
 
 causes. 
 
 6. There is no causal nexus between the potential 
 
 components of a cause prior to their act of 
 union in one constituting the cause. 
 
 7. The act of causation begins and ends in present 
 
 time. 
 
 8. The dynamic act of union, called the cause, 
 
 terminates in the static product, called the 
 effect, which then becomes a potential object. 
 
 9. The uniting means, intelligent or other, be- 
 
 come an integral part of the cause ; and con- 
 dition the cause and effect in mode, space, 
 and time. 
 
New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 75 
 
 10. Although every cause is separate and distinct, 
 
 all are connected together in a principle of 
 unity and order deriving from First Causa- 
 tion. 
 
 11. There is no such reality as the cause of a 
 
 cause ; or a chain of causation. 
 
 12. Cumulative causations consist in the succes- 
 
 sive adjunctions of new potential objects to 
 the original elements until the ultimate effect 
 is produced. 
 
 13. Universal causation proceeds from universal 
 potentiality of causation. 
 
 14. The universe consists of potential objects in 
 
 a state of unstable equilibrium which are 
 continually uniting into causes and effects, 
 these effects becoming again potential ob- 
 jects, and so on for ever, in cumulative and 
 synthetic causation as means to an end. 
 
 15. Man, as a synthesis of Subject and Object, 
 
 has power to form causes and effects out of 
 his own potentialities, and those of the ex- 
 ternal world ; in other words, his determina- 
 tions and wills are both caused and free. 
 
 16. Existences, or potential objects, having no 
 
 power to originate themselves, are effects of 
 First Causation. 
 
 17. First Causation is God in act of union with 
 
 Matter (the One in the Many) ; the union 
 
76 New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 
 
 itself being ° the sensible and intelligible 
 world (the Many in the One). 
 1 8. God and unconditioned Matter (Being and 
 Non-Being), as the potential and passive 
 elements of First Causation, are infinities 
 beyond reason and beyond nature ; therefore, 
 incogitable. They are apprehended by faith 
 or intuition alone. 
 
 79. When we examine the rudimental ideas of 
 young nations as reflected in their myths, cos- 
 mogonies, fables, and sagas, we find the first traces 
 of the Method of Inquiry by causation. The early 
 thinkers, ignorant and full of wonder, necessarily 
 became theological idealists. It was the reflection 
 of their unfurnished consciousness. Their ideas of 
 the causative power in nature received a form from 
 the personal sense and the personal Will which they 
 found in themselves. A vitiating subjective element 
 thus became intermixed with the results of their 
 intellectual 'operations. Hence the age of the gods, 
 and the belief of the personality of the Deity, which 
 still pervades generally the modes of thought of the 
 present day. With the progress of ideas men then 
 became also metaphysical idealists in their en- 
 deavours to find out the causes of things, as in the 
 Schoolmen, and the natural philosophers of the 
 Middle Ages, who, supposing causation proceeded 
 
New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 77 
 
 from unity, embodied the causative power in essences 
 and individual beings. They did not know, as we 
 know now, that causes were dynamic compounds 
 Hmited to present time. Seeking to solve the 
 questions of causation by their own stock of ideas, 
 and not by observation of external facts conducted 
 by a logical method, both the ancients and moderns 
 necessarily revolved in an ideal circle of spurious 
 knovdedge, without making progress, or adding to 
 the sum of truth. 
 
 80. It is to the genius of Vico that we owe the 
 investigation of the ideas of primitive man. He 
 found them projected externally under sensuous 
 forms, but by tracing them up to the fundamental 
 principles of our mental system, and stripping them 
 of the dress in which they were provisionally clothed, 
 he penetrated beneath their false appearance of ex- 
 ternal reality, and thus first laid the foundation of that 
 philosophic criticism, which is now the proud dis- 
 tinction of Germany. So that we may regard these 
 theological and metaphysical phases of thought as the 
 characteristic doctrines of the great Neapolitan. They 
 have since been adopted by the Positive school in 
 their theory of human evolution. But the Positivists, 
 instead of recognising Wonder and Causality as 
 legitimate and constant elements, have discarded all 
 inquiry into causation, and confined themselves to 
 the co-ordination of phenomena and their gene- 
 
78 New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 
 
 ralisations. They repeat the error of Bacon by stig- 
 matising researches after causes as mischievous and 
 unprofitable. What is their hierarchical co-ordination 
 of the sciences, however, but homage unconsciously 
 paid to the law of cumulative causation, which, 
 beginning with the simplest and most general laws 
 and truths, ends with the most complex and most 
 conditioned, until our subjective and objective syn- 
 theses have been completed, and their correlation 
 established in one identity ? It is truly the principle 
 of causality alone which connects together the logical 
 sequences of the co-ordinated sciences. 
 
 8 1. It will now be seen that the theological and 
 metaphysical elements which were discovered by Vico, 
 and discarded by Comte, are necessary to establish 
 a complete Method of Inquiry, the end and aim of 
 which are to ascertain causes by knowing their 
 effects, and effects by knowing their causes. In the 
 mechanism of our mental system, the main provisions 
 have been made, first, to stimulate causality by our 
 wonder, and then to satisfy it by positive knowledge. 
 To this effect the whole of our intellectual powers act 
 in subservience to our causality, which may be called 
 the court of final appeal in the determination of truth. 
 Facts, phenomena, qualities, conditions, modes, analo- 
 gies, and differences receive their place, value, and 
 vocation from the judgment of this supreme arbiter, 
 inasmuch as cause and effect being co-equal, their 
 
Nfav Method of Inquiry by Causation. 79 
 
 true analysis and synthesis are absolute truth. A 
 false issue cannot fail to be detected when tested by 
 this unerring criterion. What is deficient is soon 
 discovered, and what is too much, irrelevant, or 
 incongruous is seen and rejected. So that by judging 
 measures, opinions, and courses of action by the 
 axioms of causality, we cannot fail to come practically 
 right. Recollecting that effects consist of a multi- 
 plicity of elements, and that the same elements when 
 in a dynamic state, constitute the correlated causes, 
 when we want to counteract a bad effect, or legislate 
 for social, economic, or political evils, our course is to 
 analyse the matter in question into its several com- 
 ponents, truly and completely, and we shall exhibit 
 the cause. Our remedy will then lie straight before 
 us, and we strike with certainty and effect. 
 
 82. Had this been followed in the case of Ireland, 
 for example, we should have seen that the destitu- 
 tion of the people was the effect of agricultural and 
 commercial restrictions on their labour and industry, 
 and that nothing but the abolition of these restric- 
 tions could remove the cause of the evil. In a poor 
 country, starvation and heavy taxes on agricultural 
 commodities are inseparably united by the direct re- 
 lation of cause and effect, so that the Irish question 
 and justice to Ireland have still to be done. We have 
 been taught so long not to consider a cause other 
 than a single member, that our statesmen in making 
 
8o New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 
 
 laws as remedies for evils never take the trouble, or 
 indeed entertain the idea, of analysing the object im- 
 peached into its component elements in order to 
 arrive at its correlated cause. Should we else be so 
 culpably tolerant of the growing evils of Drunkenness 
 and Pauperism ? Should we else encourage drink- 
 ing and dissolute life at public-houses, and at the 
 same time exclude millions of the honest hard- 
 working population from the enjoyment of our na- 
 tional beverage at their own homes ? Would Parlia- 
 ment else in its wisdom and justice keep heavy re- 
 strictions on our home agriculture, and at the same 
 time send us to seek food for the people in the re- 
 motest corners of the earth ? Good laws and true 
 remedies have unfortunately no party votes in Par- 
 liament, so nothing is done, and financial blunders 
 and laches are quietly ignored by the two great parties 
 in the State. So difficult it is to make your practical 
 statesmen with their strong sensuous perceptions 
 carry out the enlarged policy of true ideas. 
 
 83. These are instances on a great scale where a 
 true Method of Inquiry would inaugurate immense 
 and immediate practical results in politics and social 
 life. But equal results in the world of ideas would 
 also follow a correct appreciation of the fundamental 
 laws of causation and the practical differences of 
 knowledge existing between the objectivity which is 
 external, and that which is internal. We should not 
 
New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 8i 
 
 then intermix what are called subjective states with 
 external facts, but keep each order confined within 
 its own sphere. The national force of thought and 
 feeling would not be directed into distant regions, and 
 be more or less wasted in disproportionate results, but 
 the vast pecuniary means annually flowing out of the 
 kingdom would be turned into enterprises fitted to 
 redeem and extinguish the miseries of our own 
 working classes, and to administer to the enjoyment 
 of their better nature. When we have no light to 
 lighten the way, we do nothing. It is easy to yield 
 to feelings of piety, charity, and benevolence, and to 
 satisfy their importunity in a way congenial to our 
 ignorance. But to do real and accumulative good, 
 evils should be dissected and analysed into all the 
 parts and bearings of which they are always com- 
 posed in order to discover their correlated causes. 
 We can then act with scientific certainty. The 
 collective mental action of a number of men trained 
 by a true Method, renders their decisions and 
 measures most fruitful in results. If this be the case 
 in difficult and complex social problems, a fortiori 
 the same Method would act with more completeness 
 and precision in all departments of scientific know- 
 ledge. The never-ending discoveries of causes, and 
 the power of forming them himself as the instruments 
 of his Will, would then soon make man master of the 
 moving powers of the world, and of his own destiny, 
 
 G 
 
82 New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 
 
 and give him leisure to enjoy the totality of his very 
 compound nature. It would bring out the maximum 
 of his responsibility and free-will, as he must, under 
 First Causation, and within the scope of his nature, 
 always be the most important party in forming the 
 secondary causes which produce actions leading to 
 happiness. Truth and knowledge would make him, 
 not free, as he is that already under all normal cir- 
 cumstances, but they would make him as one with 
 the facts and laws which dwell in his intelligence, and 
 which operate for good or evil according as he obeys 
 or disregards them. Thus Religion, Metaphysics, and 
 Science are parts or platforms of one Whole, that 
 whole being the identity and reciprocal correlation of 
 ourselves and the external world in the potential 
 infinity of God. The very stones we kick in our 
 walks take us through the evolutionary stages of 
 wonder, causality, and perception ; or, if we prefer 
 taking them the inverse way, through perception, 
 causation, and wonder. In our ultimate analysis, we 
 shall find all things consist of potentiality and the 
 matter in which it inheres. Wonder, as the sense 
 of the infinite Unknown, is thus the beginning and 
 end of all knowledge. We play only within our 
 intellectual sphere, beyond which lies the unknown, 
 and that sphere is limited by the range of our 
 causality. 
 
 84. In summing up the preceding argument, it 
 
New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 83 
 
 is submitted that the Founder of Positivism has 
 wrongly interpreted the phenomena he designates 
 as the Law of Evolution. The theological, the meta- 
 physical, and the positive stages constitute the nor- 
 mal mental process necessary at all times for the 
 acquirement of knowledge, for bringing the unknown 
 within the sphere of the known. The theological 
 and metaphysical must not, therefore, be discarded 
 for the exclusive predominance of the positive ele- 
 ment, which, to be in its proper place, ought to work 
 in subordinate concurrence with the metaphysical, or 
 the science of causation. Facts are only valuable as 
 they are interpreted by reason, and thus made avail- 
 able for future purposes. But reason alone is an 
 insufficient instrument in the acquisition of know- 
 ledge. It sees only the relations of things, and not 
 their phenomenal qualities. It must have data to 
 reason from, and reason up to. If it draws upon 
 itself as it did in the early and middle ages, it ever 
 turns in a vicious circle, and deals with mental pro- 
 ducts which have no correlated reality in the external 
 world. Its conclusions, therefore, under these con- 
 ditions are often false, or of little value. Error 
 necessarily abounds, because the internal and ex- 
 ternal objectivities have been intermixed incon- 
 gruously together. 
 
 85. We cannot, therefore, too often repeat, that 
 the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive 
 
84 New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 
 
 stages of Comte are integral parts of the mental 
 mechanism which we employ in acquiring know- 
 ledge. We wonder at everything we do not know. 
 We then seek to know the cause, and thus bring it 
 within our knowledge. To this effect we have to 
 analyse phenomena into their constituent parts by 
 employing our powers of perception and observation, 
 and keeping in mind that the sum of the effect re- 
 presents the sum of the cause. When we know the 
 effect in its component parts, we know the cause like- 
 wise. We now put together again by synthesis all 
 the parts we have obtained by analysis, and we then 
 arrive at the true causation of the phenomena, the 
 only differentia between cause and effect being, that 
 in causes the forces are dynamic ; in effects, static, 
 or in equilibrium. We thus acquire knowledge by 
 first wondering, and then satisfying our causality by 
 observing and examining effectively the phenomena 
 which have excited our wonder and causality. We 
 go through the three stages at every acquisition of 
 knowledge, the theological, the metaphysical, and 
 the positive. Reduced to order, these constitute 
 the true Method of Inquiry which embraces all 
 science and knowledge. Our highest and most per- 
 fect knowledge is essentially a knowledge of causes. 
 
 d>6. If we now take a general review of Causation 
 as it arises out of the potentialities of man and of 
 nature, we shall find it pervading the infinitely small 
 
New Method of Inquiry by Causation. 85 
 
 and the infinitely great. There is the microscopic 
 nucleated cell uniting with the physical agencies which 
 surround it, and there are the unions of the antago- 
 nistic forces of the celestial mechanisms to be seen 
 in the planetary orbits. There is the union of the 
 external noumenon with the ganglionic provisions for 
 common and special sensation, and there is the series 
 of cumulative causations which culminates in the com- 
 plex results of design, expression, judgment, and free 
 will. The causations of numbers, gravitation, and those 
 of chemical and mechanical force, are plain enough ; 
 but look at the larger fields of cumulative causation 
 displayed in the geological constitution of the earth. 
 What are all the changes, processes, states, and combi- 
 nations in art, construction, manufacture, trade, agricul- 
 ture, navigation, politics, jurisprudence, medicine, and 
 war, but innumerable instances of cumulative causation ; 
 that is, the continuous and successive addition of fresh 
 potential elements, and consequently of fresh causes 
 and effects, in the production of the ultimate ends or 
 results .'' In the same way we form, first, our determi- 
 nations out of our own mental constituents, and then 
 joining them by fresh unions with our powers of will 
 and execution, we determine actions which are the 
 effects of the cumulative causation. In this way, too, 
 ideas and opinions become enlarged and developed 
 in the lapse of time by successive unions with others 
 of greater or less potentiality. So it is by cumulative 
 
86 New Method of Inquiry by Causatiox. 
 
 causation that the growth of plants and animals takes 
 place according to the synthetic composition of their 
 several types. What is the progress and development 
 of nations but the successive unions of the potentiali- 
 ties of the races which compose them with those of 
 the external surrounding circumstances ? And what 
 is the history of man himself but the integral sum of 
 cumulative causations and effects in the human brain, 
 which will at last give him the power of a god to 
 subdue the earth and fashion it to his ideas and pur- 
 poses ; to be the enlightened master of himself ; to 
 know the causes of good and evil ; and thus to fulfil 
 his destiny by realising in their appointed time and 
 order all the latent capacities of his nature, and those 
 of his correlated world ? The intellectual instrument 
 by means of which he will do this, is the Method of 
 Inquiry by causation. As the master-principle, it 
 will swallow up and incorporate with itself the subor- 
 dinate truths and axioms of all other Methods. 
 
 CASSELl, PETTBK, AND GALPIN, BELLE SA.UVAGE W0EK3, LONDON, E.C. 
 
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