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-not only to see that we follow that which right enforces, but to see also that our right also operates on a true basis. This latter obligation man leaves unfulfilled long after he has learnt to accept, and earnestly try to fulfil, the former. For very, very long he is content to say, Right means this to me, and I will do it," before he will ask himself, "Is my soul truly right within, and if it were so, would right to me mean this?" And many and most disastrous evils he endures, never suspecting that his right can be in fault, before he is driven to ask, “Ought not right to me to be a different thing?" But God has so ordained his life that he cannot put the question away for ever, not even in the things he feels most sure of and counts most sacred.

For, indeed, the more intense his feeling of right in the things that right on an imperfect basis brings, the more holy, necessary, and utterly beyond profanation he feels them, so much the more potent on his soul is the demand God makes for him to let them go: the greater and deeper the change that must accompany the loosing of his grasp upon them.

How

men suffer, die perchance, But there was one thing

And what the power is by which this change is to be wrought we need not ask, for it is shown us. sacred must the Jews have thought resting on the Sabbath day, when they would let rather than it be broken? more sacred. The power that God sends against the rights that a false condition of the soul imposes is the needs of our fellow-men. By these He teaches us what the service is that He demands; how deep it goes into the desires; exacting from the soul nothing less than such a turning of its thought to others that its service has no need of rigid forms in which to clothe itself, but is free to follow wheresoever, by human want, His will is revealed. For,

in the moral life, the falsity in the starting-point is that others are not present from the first in our regard, so that our very goodness, our very worship, centre about ourselves. This makes our righteousness self-righteousness, our virtue a self-virtue; binds us to deeds for goodness' sake that are not one with service to our fellows.

It were an infinite joy if this law were true of our life. For there are two characters that belong of necessity to a correction of the starting-point. One is, that as soon as it is understood, the task is already done. The difficulty lies not in making the correction, but in the discovery that it is needed; the task and labour are in working out the false rights; the substitution for them of the more right beginning is, not labour, but deliverance. By its very nature, the truer right, the corrected premiss, is always the easier thing; it is at once more and easier, a better achievement and less toil. It is an entering into rest, the want that imposed the toil having been supplied. Other men labour, and those to whose eyes it is given to see that what they need is a truer beginning, reap the fruits.

And there is an infinite joy again in this, that though the working out of the correction of a premiss is a process of darkness, a very mystery of evil, compelling strife, and making peace impossible in spite of all desire; yet when once its meaning is understood all is changed: a new light breaks over the past, a new spirit descends into the present. The strife ceases; a meaning and end become visible in every part; an assured victory is made manifest in each defeat.

NOTE. I have said that, in the intellectual life of man, the correction of the premiss is the introduction into our thought of some element unperceived by sense.

We may give perhaps to this fact another form of

expression. It has now become customary to say that our perception is modified by "subjective" elements: that is, that something within us affects our perceiving, and causes that of which we are conscious to be different from that which truly exists. In so far as sense is concerned, we see that this "subjective element"—or that which is from ourselves-is, that there are things which we do not perceive; or that there is more in that which exists than our perception includes. That is, the "subjective element" is a non-perception; or, to speak more generally, the subjective element, so far as we have knowledge of its nature, is a negative. The advance from falsity to truth is by a casting out of a negation or of a non-perception: that is, by our coming to perceive more fully. Now there is at least strong probability that, in this instance, of the senses as compared with the reason, there is shown to us the nature of the difference of our perception from the truth in every case namely, that it differs by a negative-by that which answers to a non-perception. The correction of the premiss, then, we may define as the casting out of a non-perception: and it is effected either by the reason casting off bonds laid on it by the senses, through incomplete perception on their part, or by some process parallel to this.*

*I do not take into account the assumed introduction of light by the eye, or of sound by the ear, &c.; because these are by no means established to be subjective. The resolution of colour and sound, and other sensations of our own, into motion, is simply putting the impressions of one sense for those of another; and is done only because the latter furnishes convenient formulæ for universal application. Expressing all the phenomena of nature in terms of motion is like reducing incommensurable fractions to a common term; but it neither is, nor now professes to be, a truer apprehension. Whether our perceptions by ear, eye, taste, smell, &c., or those by touch, be the truer, remains an open question; and it is evident that those of touch, as involving exertion, whereby alone there comes to us the sensation of force, are presumably those which are most modified.

CHAPTER II.

OF PROOF.

OTHER results follow from the law that the advance of knowledge is by a correcting of the starting-point, but before considering them, it may be better to inquire what we mean when we say of any assertion that it is proved.

When we wish to bring another person to any opinion we adduce "arguments." These arguments are of two kinds either direct evidence of the thing affirmed, or thoughts which make it difficult for any other opinion to be held. Now, direct evidence alone cannot amount to proof unless it be also shown that no other explanation of the appearances is possible. Until tested in this way, any opinion is plausible or probable only, never proved. To hold it proved would be to place ourselves at the mercy of our own impressions, and debar ourselves from supplying what might be wanting in them. Proof depends upon the testing of our thought in every direction, and finding that, of all ways possible to be supposed, the one affirmed alone is possible to be held. When, then, in argument we seek to make another's opinion agree with our own, what do we do? We bring to his mind thoughts, ideas, facts, which oppose his former thought: we do the very same thing that we do when we seek to direct the motion of a moving body; we apply resistances to its motion in all directions but that which we desire. we apply "resistances" to thought; that is, we adduce opposing thoughts. We cannot think against another thought without having to overcome the resistance of

So

that thought; and amid conflicting thoughts, that one prevails to which there is least thought opposed. The reason we cannot think that two and two are five is, that we have a thought which opposes it—that two and two are four. The thought recoils from "two and two are five," as a ball recoils from a wall; there is an absolute resistance to it. In whatsoever direction thought is least resisted, in that direction it goes. It is no question of will or choice. We think that the whole is greater than the part; therefore we cannot think the part equal to the whole. Take the former thought away, and we no more are unable to think the part equal to the whole. Why should we not? So we are compelled to the conclusion of a syllogism, simply because the established general proposition resists a particular opposed to it. Thinking all men are mortal, I cannot think one man is not. That thought is resisted: the opposite one has nothing to resist it; and my thought takes the direction, of course, in which it is not resisted.

This, then, is what we mean by proof: the term simply expresses the fact that thought takes the direction of least opposing thought; that is, of least resistance. Thought takes the direction of least resistance; and to our consciousness of this fact in particular instances we gave the name of proof. The word expresses our feeling that our thought does go, will go, without possibility of forbidding on our part, in one direction, and not in any other; that is, in any other it is more resisted (by other thoughts). When a man is conscious of this fact, he says, if he be hasty in judging, "This is proved; if he be more considerate, he says, "So far as I can see, this is proved."

For it is clear that this perception of ours, that our thought is more resisted in every other direction than in