a zeal which would seem to imply that something momentous, or of
peculiar interest, was connected with it, can advocate it only as a
matter of abstract metaphysical science. He cannot participate in that
feeling of exaltation and mystery which has led many to expatiate upon
a necessary and absolute truth which the Divine Power itself cannot
alter, which is equally irresistible, equally binding and compulsory,
with God as with man. Of this spirit of philosophical enthusiasm Mr
Whewell cannot partake. Space and Time, with all their properties and
phenomena, are but recognized as the modes of thought of a human
intelligence.

We have marked a number of passages for annotation and extract--a far
greater number than we can possibly find place for alluding to. One
subject, however, which lies at the very basis of all our science, and
which has received a proportionate attention from Mr Mill, must not be
amongst those which are passed over. We mean the law of _Causation_.
What should be described as the complete and adequate notion of a
cause, we need not say is one of the moot points of philosophy.
According to one school of metaphysicians, there is in our notion of
cause an element not derived from experience, which, it is confessed
on all hands, can teach us only the _succession_ of events. Cause,
with them, is that invisible power, that mysterious bond, which this
succession does but signify: with other philosophers this succession
constitutes the whole of any intelligible notion we have of cause. The
latter opinion is that of Mr Mill; at the same time the question is
one which lies beyond or beside the scope of his volumes. He is
concerned only with phenomena, not with the knowledge (if such there
be) of "things in themselves;" that part, therefore, of our idea of
cause which, according to all systems of philosophy, is won from
experience, and concerns phenomena alone, is sufficient for his
purpose. That every event has a cause, that is, a previous and
uniformly previous event, and that whatever has happened will, in the
like circumstances, happen again--these are the assumptions necessary
to science, and these no one will dispute.

Mr Mill has made a happy addition to the usual definition of cause
given by that class of metaphysicians to which he himself belongs, and
which obviates a plausible objection urged against it by Dr Reid and
others. These have argued, that if cause be nothing more than
invariable antecedenc