Page:The kernel and the husk (Abbott, 1886).djvu/43

Letter 3] consummate of philosophers, that he has a right to call himself "I," or that he is any other than a machine and a part of the universal machinery. How can I prove and vindicate my independence, my right to an "I"? By saying that I will do, or not do, and by then doing, or not doing, any conceivable thing at any conceivable time? Such an attempt is futile. The retort is unanswerable: "In the great machine which you call the universe, that small part which you call 'I' was so constructed and wound up that it could no more help saying and doing what it did and said, than a clock could help pointing and striking."

What then is the real proof that we are right in using the word "I" and in distinguishing ourselves from other objects which we call external? There is no proof at all except that, first, we are led to this way of looking at things by Nature and Imagination, and secondly, this way of looking at things works best. The "I-view" is better fitted than the "machine-view" to develop in us the faculties of judgment and self-control, to give us a sense of responsibility and a capability of amendment, and to make us ultimately more hopeful and more active. So too, the belief in "cause and effect" works better than a mere mental record of past antecedents and sequences, accompanied by a blank and strictly logical neutrality of mind as to what will happen in the future. Faith in "cause and effect" is the foundation of all stable life and all regular progress alike in the individual and in the state. The unfaithful unbeliever in causality is the Esau, both in the moral and in the intellectual world, the happy-go-lucky hunter who depends on stray venison and refuses to resort to system in order to make a sure provision for the needs of the future; the believer is the quiet plodding Jacob who has his goats in the fold where he knows he can find them when wanted. The unbeliever is the