to denote the effect produced by an intelligent principle of a still higher kind:

He informed

This ill-shaped body with a daring soul.

And finally even the soul itself, in its original condition, is looked upon as matter, when viewed with reference to education and knowledge, by which it is afterwards moulded; and hence these are, in our language, termed information. If we confine ourselves to the first of these three uses of the term, we may correct the erroneous opinion of which we have just been speaking, and retain the metaphor by which it is expressed, by saying, that ideas are not transformed, but informed sensations.

SECT. 9.-Man the Interpreter of Nature.

THERE is another image by which writers have represented the acts of thought through which knowledge is obtained from the observation of the external world. Nature is the Book, and Man is the Interpreter. The facts of the external world are marks, in which man discovers a meaning, and so reads them. Man is the Interpreter of Nature, and Science is the right Interpretation. And this image also is, in many respects, instructive. It exhibits to us the necessity of both elements;the marks which man has to look at, and the knowledge of the alphabet and language which he must possess and apply before he can find any meaning in what he sees. Moreover this image presents to us, as the ideal element, an activity of the mind of that very kind which we wish to point out. Indeed the illustration is rather an example than a comparison of the composition of our knowledge. The letters and symbols which are presented to the Interpreter are really objects of sensation : the notion of letters as signs of words, the notion of

connexions among words by which they have meaning, really are among our Ideas;-Signs and Meaning are Ideas, supplied by the mind, and added to all that sensation can disclose in any collection of visible marks. The Sciences are not figuratively, but really, Interpretations of Nature. But this image, whether taken as example or comparison, may serve to show both the opposite character of the two elements of knowledge, and their necessary combination, in order that there may be knowledge.

This illustration may also serve to explain another point in the conditions of human knowledge which we shall have to notice :-namely, the very different degrees in which, in different cases, we are conscious of the mental act by which our sensations are converted into knowledge. For the same difference occurs in reading an inscription. If the inscription were entire and plain, in a language with which we were familiar, we should be unconscious of any mental act in reading it. We should seem to collect its meaning by the sight alone. But if we had to decipher an ancient inscription, of which only imperfect marks remained, with a few entire letters among them, we should probably make several suppositions as to the mode of reading it, before we found any mode which was quite successful; and thus, our guesses, being separate from the observed facts, and at first not fully in agreement with them, we should be clearly aware that the conjectured meaning, on the one hand, and the observed marks on the other, were distinct things, though these two things would become united as elements of one act of knowledge when we had hit upon the right conjecture.

SECT. 10.-The Fundamental Antithesis inseparable. THE illustration just referred to, as well as other ways of considering the subject, may help us to get over

a difficulty which at first sight appears perplexing. We have spoken of the common opposition of Theory and Fact as important, and as involving what we have called the Fundamental Antithesis of Philosophy. But after all, it may be asked, Is this distinction of Theory and Fact really tenable? Is it not often difficult to say whether a special part of our knowledge is a Fact or a Theory? Is it a Fact or a Theory that the stars revolve round the pole? Is it a Fact or a Theory that the earth is a globe revolving on its axis? Is it a Fact or a Theory that the earth travels in an ellipse round the sun? Is it a Fact or a Theory that the sun attracts the earth? Is it a Fact or a Theory that the loadstone attracts the needle? In all these cases, probably some persons would answer one way, and some persons the other. There are many persons by whom the doctrine of the globular form of the earth, the doctrine of the earth's elliptical orbit, the doctrine of the sun's attraction on the earth, would be called theories, even if they allowed them to be true theories. But yet if each of these propositions be true, is it not a fact? And even with regard to the simpler facts, as the motion of the stars round the pole, although this may be a Fact to one who has watched and measured the motions of the stars, one who has not done this, and who has only carelessly looked at these stars from time to time, may naturally speak of the circles which the astronomer makes them describe as Theories. It would seem, then, that we cannot in such cases expect general assent, if we say, This is a Fact and not a Theory, or, This is a Theory and not a Fact. And the same is true in a vast range of cases. It would seem, therefore, that we cannot rest any reasoning upon this distinction of Theory and Fact; and we cannot avoid asking whether there is any real distinction in this antithesis, and if so, what it is.

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To this I reply: the distinction between Theory (that is, true Theory) and Fact, is this: that in Theory the Ideas are considered as distinct from the Facts: in Facts, though Ideas may be involved, they are not, in our apprehension, separated from the sensations. In a Fact, the Ideas are applied so readily and familiarly, and incorporated with the sensations so entirely, that we do not see them, we see through them. A person who carefully notes the motion of a star all night, sees the circle which it describes, as he sees the star, though the circle is, in fact, a result of his own Ideas. A person who has in his mind the measures of different lines and countries on the earth's surface, and who can put them together into one conception, finds that they can make no figure but a globular one: to him, the earth's globular form is a Fact, as much as the square form of his chamber. A person to whom the grounds of believing the earth to travel round the sun are as familiar as the grounds for believing the movements of the mail-coaches in this country, looks upon the former event as a Fact, just as he looks upon the latter events as Facts. And a person who, knowing the Fact of the earth's annual motion, refers it distinctly to its mechanical cause, conceives the sun's attraction as a Fact, just as he conceives as a Fact, the action of the wind which turns the sails of a mill. He cannot see the force in either case; he supplies it out of his own Ideas. And thus, a true Theory is a Fact; a Fact is a familiar Theory. That which is a Fact under one aspect, is a Theory under another. The most recondite Theories when firmly established are Facts: the simplest Facts involve something of the nature of Theory. Theory and Fact correspond, in a certain degree, with Ideas and Sensations, as to the nature of their opposition. But the Facts are Facts, so far as the Ideas have

been combined with the Sensations and absorbed in them: the Theories are Theories, so far as the Ideas are kept distinct from the Sensations, and so far as it is considered still a question whether those can be made to agree with these.

he sees.

he does so.

We may, as I have said, illustrate this matter by considering man as interpreting the phenomena which He often interprets without being aware that Thus when we see the needle move towards the magnet, we assert that the magnet exercises an attractive force on the needle. But it is only by an interpretative act of our own minds that we ascribe this motion to attraction. That, in this case, a force is exerted something of the nature of the pull which we could apply by our own volition-is our interpretation of the phenomena; although we may be conscious of the act of interpretation, and may then regard the attraction as a Fact.

Nor is it in such cases only that we interpret phenomena in our own way, without being conscious of what we do. We see a tree at a distance, and judge it to be a chestnut or a lime; yet this is only an inference from the colour or form of the mass according to preconceived classifications of our own. Our lives are full of such unconscious interpretations. The farmer recognizes a good or a bad soil; the artist a picture of a favourite master; the geologist a rock of a known locality, as we recognize the faces and voices of our friends; that is, by judgments formed on what we see and hear; but judgments in which we do not analyze the steps, or distinguish the inference from the appearance. And in these mixtures of observation and inference, we speak of the judgment thus formed, as a Fact directly observed.

Even in the case in which our perceptions appear to be most direct, and least to involve any interpretations