Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/557

 KANT HAS XOT AXSWEEED HUME. 545 in the sun, or sodium in Sirius, consists, precisely similarly, in argument from facts. I cannot show the sulphur or the sodium ; I can only show the facts I argue from ; and just such facts I show in the preceding cases. These, then, are truths that may be intellectually seen, but never sensuously. As regards truths, again, that can be only sensuously seen or perceived, these are the most numerous of all. I see that the leopard has spots, the tiger stripes, the lion a mane, the elephant a trunk, the camel a hump, the ox horns, the horse hoofs, &c. ; or that milk is white, grass green, the blood red, the sky blue, gold yellow, a negro black, &c. ; or that wood is light, lead heavy, &c. ; or that glass is transparent, stone opaque, &c. But I do not see that the leopard must have spots, that grass must be green, that a stone must be opaque, &c. I only see that the one and the other object actually is so and so ; never that it must be so and so. I see what the fact is ; but I do not see any reason that necessitates it to be as it is. It would be 110 contradiction if, in each instance, I found the state of the case quite otherwise, glass not transparent, a stone not opaque, &c. Now, as the former kind of truths, the intellectual ones, were said to be, or to depend on, relations of ideas, the latter kind of truths, the sensuous or, as you may prefer to name them, sensible ones, are called matters of fact. If I say the Thames will flow under London Bridge to-morrow, every- body will admit that I only predict what will as good as certainly prove true. Still everyone will see that it is just possible the Thames may not continue in its usual channel and so flow under London Bridge to-morrow. What is spoken of is simply a matter of fact that is seen so and so to-day, but may be seen quite otherwise to-rnorrow : it does not depend so on a relation of ideas that to assert the con- trary would shock us as an evident contradiction. The possible not-flowing of the Thames in the situation named, is no contradiction of a necessary truth ; but that a straight line is not the shortest, or that parallel lines eventually will meet : these are contradictions which shock the mind in the mere contemplation of the relations of ideas lying intellec- tually before it. Say, the diamond scratches glass, and nothing else will, you only state what you see : you are aware of no necessity in the fact that explains how it is as it is, and could not be otherwise. There is a contingent fact to the senses, not an eternal intellectual truth to the intellect. Xow on what level is the law of causality? Why, evi-