[ab] The paragraph, taken in its entireness, is pervaded with the vivid sense of a Moral Law which can neither change nor perish--a Law at once human and Divine. This strong protest is both in thought and expression a complete contrast to the ordinary tone of Mr. Mill's disquisitions, attempered as they generally are between benevolence and expediency. Instead of pondering the Utilities of a race which, comparatively speaking, began to exist yesterday, it appeals with decisive sternness, once and for ever, to the Immutable and the Absolute. It reminds one of a torch-bearing Prometheus pitted against the selfish despot of a new and morally enfeebled Olympus. See Additional Note G. [112] This sentence contains two propositions; the question of speculative perplexity has been treated in this Chapter--that of reasonable necessity is reserved for our next. [113] On Hamilton, p. 242. [114] Mill on Hamilton, p. 232, note. [115] Ibid. p. 233, note. [116] Ibid. p. 227. [117] British Association Report, 1870. lxxvii. lxxxiv. [118] The remark above made respecting a "_living laboratory_" will be readily understood by every one who remembers the great mistakes committed, some years ago, in treating the stomach as a mere chemical workshop;--forgetful of its all-important endowment,--vitality. That oversight has been alluded to here because it may yield a lesson to Psychologists; for may not a far higher kind of endowment in like manner be forgotten when men materialize the principles one and all on which is conditioned the transforming power of mental assimilation? [119] Lay Sermons, p. 160. [120] And of more than one as we shall see hereafter. Its point will be best understood upon a perusal of Additional Notes F and I. [121] All these quotations will be found between pp. 332 and 360 of the Treatise. Ed. 1817. [122] Compare Mr. Green's Introduction to Hume's _Treatise on Human Nature_, Vol. I., pp. 263, seq., where he discusses the bearing of this subject upon Hume's doctrine of Cause and Effect. [123] He sums up in the words of Goethe, thus given in the translation of his lectures from which we have quoted-- "Woe! woe! Thou hast destroyed The beautiful world With powerful fist; In ruin 'tis hurled, By the blow of a demigod shattered. The scattered Fragments into the void we carry, Deploring The beauty perished beyond restoring." [124] "All the different sorts of rays which I have mentioned produce one effect in common. They raise the temperature of the objects on which they fall, and accordingly are all felt by our skin as rays of heat." (p. 237.)