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to one of these conclusions as to the other, and can properly be satisfied with neither, what reason has it for preferring one to the other? The difficulty is met only when causation is made a positive notion, compelling us in the one direction. Accompany this acceptance with a denial of our right to direct the imagination in explanation to that which, according to our very notion of it, is sub-phenomenal, and we have at once the ability and the inability of the mind explained. We have a reason for its convictions, and also for their inconceivable character.

Again, this theory is a concealed theory of antecedence, and fails to cover the strict idea of causation. The efficient cause is present with the effect, immediately underlies it, and sustains it. Thus the substance, the force, which constitutes matter, each instant gives occasion to its qualities. The power which is in mind, is the groundwork and source of its thoughts, feelings and volitions. The stream of causation flows under the stream of events, and momentarily floats them, as the surface of the ocean is supported by its invisible depths. Simply to insist on an antecedent event to every event, is to throw up the phenomenal path along which the imagination travels, but is not a recognition of the true force and nature of causation. The imagination, exploring the past, does indeed require that distinct, tangible foot-stones should, in due order, link its steps; but that which impels the mind in thus sending it to search its way backward, is a sense of an unbroken series of causes, and that which the mind finds everywhere beneath the phenomenal supports of the imagination is the permanent power and flow of forces. This theory of the weakness of the human mind signally fails to account for so positive and pervasive a notion as this of cause and effect.

If we accept this notion in its full, universal application, leading us to those invisible energies which thread together