some new fashion, will exult in the persuasion that they have at length mastered the mysteries of existence, and have come up from the abyss laden with precious ore.

IV.

METAPHYSICS:

MIXED ABSTRACTIONS.

78. Ir is important to keep in view a distinction, often lost sight of, between what may be unknown in fact to ourselves individually, and because we have had no means at present of gaining access to the knowledge of it, and what is unknown because it transcends the range and limits of the human mind. For example, the contents of a sealed letter which I hold in my hand, or of a casket of which I have not the key, are unknown, and so is the condition of the planets as inhabited or not: these are things which perhaps I shall never be informed of, but I might know them if I had access to the facts. But what may be the inner constitution of the material and immaterial worlds I do not know, and I may well suppose that this mystery will ever remain beyond the reach of human science. It is certain, also, that much which, on grounds of the surest reasoning, we hold to be true in theology, can be apprehended no otherwise than indistinctly by the human mind; thus the perfections of the Infinite Being are assumed as certain in our meditations, although we soon feel that here the powers of reason are baffled.

79. The class of abstractions of which now we have

to speak are called Mixed Abstractions, for this reason, that there is blended in them something of what the mind has a perfect control over, and therefore knowledge of (although individually we may not have come to know it), along with something in nature which is indeed inaccessible by any method which human science has at its command. From this intermingling of the known and the unknowable much confusion has arisen, and some controversies also, which appear to be inexhaustible, hence take their rise. There is a set of abstract terms the mere hearing of which excites the idea of interminable and fruitless debate: such are the words causation, liberty, necessity, free will, and some others, which usually accompany them.

80. In entering upon this much-debated ground, we shall secure for ourselves some ease of mind by the simple means of keeping an eye upon the distinction above referred to. The popular notion is, that metaphysical principles are abstruse and incomprehensible, while whatever relates to the actual nature of those things with which we are familiar must be easily comprehensible. A little attention will convince us that the very contrary of this is more near the truth.

81. Pure abstractions, such as those which we have now lately had to do with, may not hitherto have engaged our attention, and therefore it may happen that, when we hear the terms in which they are conveyed, we may fail to connect with them any clear ideas. In the same way we might open a treatise upon the Conic Sections, and understand nothing more of it than we should in looking into a Chinese tract; yet it is certain that, if we gave time and attention sufficient to

this mathematical treatise, we should come, in the fullest manner, to a knowledge of its meaning. A mathematical theorem is the product of the human mind— nothing more, and it must therefore be comprehensible by any human mind possessing ordinary intelligence. The same also may be affirmed of whatever is purely metaphysical, for this also is a product of thought— simply so, and therefore it can contain nothing that is incomprehensible by minds that are sufficiently disciplined in subjects of this class. The human mind may imagine mysteries among its own products, but it can

not make them.

82. And thus it is that the terms we have now to do with, so far as they are purely metaphysical or abstract, are wholly free from intrinsic difficulty; but then, as some of them—in truth, the leading terms in the set-touch upon the structure and the working of MIND as it is distinguished from the animal organization, they therefore involve more than is known, or than will ever (it is probable) be opened up by scientific investigation. What we have now to do is nothing more than this—to disengage the metaphysical from the physical on this ground. We are not about to expound the enigmas of the Universe, but only to adjust and to put in order our own thoughts, and to place our terms in their true relative position each toward the others.

83. Correlative terms are such as draw their meaning entirely from their reciprocity, or their bearing one upon the others. Correlative terms present themselves, therefore, in pairs or in sets. Such are the words whole and part, a half, a third part; and such

are those many words and phrases which express our social relationships. The abstract words and phrases which are now in view are all of them correlatives : singly taken, they represent nothing; when packed together, they symbolize some fact or some congeries of facts, which we are to look for as belonging to the physical structure of the world of mind.

84. This set of terms includes the words power, causation (or cause and effect), liberty, necessity, invariable sequence, freedom of the will, and others of nearly the same import. If we would do away with some two or three of these words, or would declare that no distinguishable meaning attaches to them, we ought, in consequence, to reject the others also, or those which are their correlatives: if, for instance, we say that the words power and cause have no proper meaning in a scientific sense, then the balancing word, necessity, has also lost its value. And yet when, in this way, we have neutralized or have abrogated the two phrases, in the next moment we become conscious. of our need of them. We have thrown away a part of our intellectual apparatus-our tools-and we must, by any means, recover the use of them. In such cases, what may be called the instincts of reason prevail over the specious sophistries of an hour, and we return with comfort to modes of thinking and speaking which suit us well, just because they are in harmony with the Mind itself, and because they have sprung out of itself spontaneously.

85. Let it now be supposed that we have been acquainting ourselves with the "mechanism of the heavens”—that is to say, the laws of the planetary

motions as they are taught by the modern astronomy -and that we have traced to their source, in the law of gravitation, all those perturbations which, at a first view, might seem to be lawless or fortuitous. In contemplating this vast and perfect scheme of balanced forces, amid the complications of which no real irregularity ever occurs-and while we are thinking of such a system, and are thinking of nothing beyond or beside it—we should not feel the need of any term whereby to affirm the unfailing constancy of the system, in contradiction to some imagined inconstancy or irregularity. There would be no room for the word necessity as applicable to these celestial motions, for wel know well that there neither is nor can be any play of chance or fortuity among them.

86. But instead of the heavens, let me suppose that I am looking down into an inclosed garden at the time of the fall of the leaf: a huffing wind, thrown into gusty eddies by the adjoining buildings and the avenues of the place, hurls the falling leaves, as they are torn from their sprays, hither and thither in endless varieties of course. The popular apprehension of such a scene of confusion would be that Chance, and not Law, is mistress in this inclosure. But science will revise any such supposition, and will show me that the flitting track of each leaf, from the point of its detachment to the spot where at length it reaches its rest, is as truly and as constantly determined by law as are the movements of planets and satellites in their orbits. The difference is this: that in the one case the influences are such as we can ascertain and predict; in the other case they are too many, and they