introduce all that I say on the
subject in my Burney Prize.' I have not, however, introduced any
quotation into the text because (1) I think Romanes makes his meaning
plain in the text as it stands; (2) I cannot find in the essay in
question any exactly appropriate passage of reasonable length to quote.
The greater part of the essay is, however, directed to meet the
scientific objection to the doctrine that prayer is answered in the
physical region, by showing that this objection consists in an argument
from the known to the unknown, i.e. from the known sphere of invariable
physical laws to the unknown sphere of God's relation to all such laws;
and is, therefore, weak in proportion as the unknown sphere is remote
from possible experience of a scientific kind, and admits of an
indefinite number of possibilities, more or less conceivable to our
imagination, which would or might prevent the scientific argument from
having legitimate application to the question in hand.--ED.]

[44] _Fortnightly Review_, Feb. 1894.

[45] [Some such phrase is necessary to complete the sentence.--ED.]

[46] _First Principles_, Part I, ch. 1.

Sec. 3. CAUSALITY.

Only because we are so familiar with the great phenomenon of causality
do we take it for granted, and think that we reach an ultimate
explanation of anything when we have succeeded in finding the 'cause'
thereof: when, in point of fact, we have only succeeded in merging it in
the mystery of mysteries. I often wish we could have come into the
world, like the young of some other mammals, with all the powers of
intellect that we shall ever subsequently attain already developed, but
without any individual experience, and so without any of the blunting
effects of custom. Could we have done so, surely nothing in the world
would more acutely excite our intelligent astonishment than the one
universal fact of causation. That everything which happens should have a
cause, that this should invariably be proportioned to its effect, so
that, no matter how complex the interaction of causes, the same
interaction should always produce the same result; that this rigidly
exact system of energizing should be found to present all the
appearances of universality and of eternity, so that, e.g., the motion
of the solar system in space is being determined by some causes beyond
human ken, and that we are indebted to billions of cellular unions, each
involving billions of separate causes, for our he