In stating the difficulty, I referred to cases of moral as well as physical causation; as when prudence produces prosperity, or {203} when folly produces ruin. It may be asked, whether we are here to apply the same explanation;--whether we are to assume a normal condition of human existence, in which neither prudence nor folly are displayed, neither prosperity nor adversity produced;--whether we are to conceive the progress of such a state to measure the progress of time, and deviations from it to denote causes of the kind mentioned. It may be asked further, whether, if we do make this supposition, we can resolve the influence of such causes as prudence or imprudence into instantaneous acts, which produce their effects immediately: and which occupy time only by being separated by intervals of the inactive normal moral condition. To this I must here reply, that the discussion of such questions would carry me too far, and would involve speculations not included within the acknowledged domain of this Society, from which I therefore abstain. But I may say, before quitting the subject, that I do not think the suppositions above suggested are untenable; and that in order to include moral causation under the maxims of causation in general, we must necessarily make some such hypothesis. The peculiarity of that kind of causation which the will and the character exert, and which is exerted upon the will and the character, would make this case far more complex and difficult than those already considered; but, at the same time, would offer us the means of explaining what may seem harsh, in the above analogy. For instance, we should have to assume such a maxim as this: that in moral causation, time is not to be measured by the flow of mechanical or physiological events;--not by the clock, or by the pulse. Moral causation has its own clock, its own pulse, in the progress of man's moral being; and by this measure of time is the relation of moral cause and effect to be defined. That in estimating moral causation, the progress of time is necessarily estimated by moral changes, and not by machinery,--by the progress of events, and not by the going of the clock,--is a truth familiar as a practical maxim to all who give their thoughts to dramatic or narrative fictions. Who feels any thing incongruous or extravagantly hurried in the progress of events in that great exhibition of moral causation, the tragedy of Othello? If we were asked what time those vast and terrible {204} and complex changes of the being and feelings of the characters occupy, we should say, that, measured on its own scale, the event is of great extent;--that the transaction is of considerable magnitude in all ways. But if, with previous critics, we look into the progress of time by the day and the hour--what is the measure of this history? Forty-eight hours. {{205}} CHAPTER V. OF THE ORIGIN OF OUR CONCEPTIONS OF FORCE AND MATTER.