The merits of the Humian solution of the problem will come before us for consideration at a later stage; the impossibility of assuming it without inquiry as a principle, may perhaps be brought home to the mind of the reader by a simple illustration. Take the case of any æsthetic whole, such as, for instance, the play of _Hamlet_. The play of _Hamlet_ consists, for the student who reads it in his closet, of a succession of printed words. These words form the whole material of the play; it is composed of them all and of nothing else. Again, the words which are the material of the play are connected by the grammatical and euphonic laws which regulate the construction of English sentences, and the metrical laws of English dramatic versification. Thus it would be a true description of the play, as far as it goes, to say that it is a series of words put together in accordance with grammatical and metrical laws. It would, however, be positively false to say that _Hamlet_ is nothing more than such a succession of words; its character as a work of art depends entirely on the fact that it possesses, as a whole, a further unity of structure and aim, that the words and sentences which are its material embody an internally coherent representation of human character and purpose. Apart from this inner unity of meaning, mere uniformity of grammatical and metrical construction would not of themselves constitute a work of art. It will be one object of our later discussions to show that what is thus obviously true of an æsthetic whole is universally true of every genuine system or totality.