Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/559

 KANT HAS NOT ANSWERED HTME. 547 assisted him in this ; but we undoubtedly can say for certain that the course of his reflections on causality exhibits a striking resemblance to that of those of Locke on the parallel notion of substance. Here, however, we only recall this. For one thing, the reflections of both the one and the other terminated identically in custom, habit. This, then, is the rationale of Hume. He grants causality to be a natural, legitimate, and most powerful principle of reasoning; he admits the element of necessity to be a most special, proper, and peculiar characteristic of it ; but, totally excluded, as he unmisdoubtingly believes, from every reference to relations of ideas, he can only explain that necessity as the result of habit in consequence of repetitions in experience. Or, to put it all in sum : Matters of fact are incompetent to necessity. But causality is a matter of fact. Why then do we assume, as we undoubtedly do, the existence in it of a necessary connexion ? That is the question. And the answer is this. The necessity assumed is not, and in a matter of fact cannot possibly be, a necessity of reason (what is intuitively or demonstratively seen) ; it is only a necessity of feeling, and it is due to custom. And this, it is hoped, is a reduction of the argumentation to its ultimate nerve. We shall not discuss now that apparent inconsistency on the part of Hume in mixing up with his suggestions in regard to habit others which would seem to place the origin of the causal rigour in an instinct implanted in us by nature herself. There are strong statements to this effect no less than three times in the course of the Enquiry ; and, reading them alone, the temptation is to assert of Hume that he attributed the causal virtue as certainly to an instinct im- planted by nature, as ever Reid or any of his followers did to an instinct vouchsafed to us by the Author of our being. Certainly it is sufficiently strange that they failed to ac- knowledge this, but preferred to clamour always about the enormity of a denial of the principle at all a denial that Hume, as so often said (despite Schelling or whoever else), never made nor dreamed of making. Still there was no reason in anything he perceived or in anything he admitted why Hume, if he were so minded, should not drive his sceptical wedge, and he had no hesitation there. He was always, however, at least, good humoured, well-intentioned on the whole, yielding only to a little mischief at times, in view of that monstrum horrendum, infandum, impu.rurn, Super- stition ! But of this, or other such matter, no further now : we pass to Kant. (To be concluded.)