nd another, we imply that we have got the idea of
Causality in our minds; and that, however little we may have discovered a
genuine cause, we could not believe that anything could happen without a
cause.

For my own part, I find it quite possible to believe that a phenomenon
which has been followed by another phenomenon 9999 times should on the
10,000th time be followed by some other phenomenon. Give me the
requisite experience, and belief would follow; give me even any adequate
evidence that another person has had such an experience (though I should
be very particular about the evidence), and I should find no difficulty
in believing it. But to tell me that the exception to an observed law
might take place without any cause at all for the variation would seem to
be pure nonsense. Put the matter in another way. Let us suppose an
empty world, if one can speak of such a thing without contradiction--let
us suppose that at one time nothing whatever had existed, neither mind
nor matter nor any of that mysterious entity which some people find it
possible to believe in which is {37} neither mind nor matter. Let us
suppose literally nobody and nothing to have existed. Now could you
under these conditions rationally suppose that anything could have come
into existence? Could you for one moment admit the possibility that
after countless aeons of nothingness a flash of lightning should occur or
an animal be born? Surely, on reflection those who are most suspicious
of _a priori_ knowledge, who are most unwilling to carry their
speculations beyond the limits of actual experience, will be prepared to
say, 'No, the thing is utterly for ever impossible.' _Ex nihilo nihil
fit_: for every event there must be a cause. Those who profess to reject
all other _a priori_ or self-evident knowledge, show by their every
thought and every act that they never really doubt that much.

Now, it would be just possible to contend that we have got the bare
abstract concept or category of Causality in our minds, and yet that
there is nothing within our experience to give it any positive
content--so that we should have to say, 'Every event must have a cause,
but we never know or can know what that cause is. If we are to talk
about causes at all, we can only say "The Unknowable is the cause of all
things."' Such a position can be barely stated without a contradiction.
But surely it is a very difficult one. Nature does not generally supply
us wi