SEPARATION OF QUESTIONS IN PHILOSOPHY. 561 consequences would be supposing we could. But if we do specu- late, let us quite understand that the operation has only a dia- lectical value, and let us cease claiming for it the place of a healthy and sober exercise. We have the fundamental, again, in reference to Memory. The trustworthiness of this faculty (when duly limited) is a psycho- logical postulate ; and it is so, because we cannot help ourselves. Every attempt to prove it utterly and unconditionally untrust- worthy is glaringly suicidal ; for it can only proceed by assuming the veracity of that whose falsity it intends to establish. In the same category is to be placed the dependence of Thought on Language. That the two progress together, that the growth of the one means the growth of the other and
- , has been proved to demonstration. But to ask whether
the one could exist without the other is really to put a meaning- less interrogation. There are no data which, however adroitly manipulated, can authorise us in returning a dogmatic answer. It is nowise different with the celebrated Laws of Thought. These are nothing if they are not fundamental, and, in the last pinch, you can only say they have to be taken for granted. The Mind being what it is, Eeasoning can only progress upon certain assumptions : and if you refuse these assumptions, you simply exclude yourself from reasoning, and are made welcome to a substitute, if you can find one. This is altogether different, of course, from the question whether in any given instance these laws have been actually outraged. Not only may this second question be, asked, but argued too ; yet the final test is precisely those laws that for thought are fundamental. Similarly in Ethics. There is so much of ethical doctrine that we must be contented to start from as a basis. Of this nature are the two principles Self-love and Benevolence (Egoism and Altruism). Each of these is primordial in the human consti- tution ; and any attempt to prove the existence of either of them, or to resolve the one into the other, is foredoomed to failure. Hence the collapse of Butler's argument (as developed in the about what, since Price's time, has come to be known as the Object of Desire if that argument be taken as a demon- stration of the existence of disinterested regard. That it was so understood by Price, is clear and evident from the Review : but it may very much be doubted whether Butler himself actually intended it to be thus taken. Eather, his attitude (so it seems) was something different. Accepting the existence of both dis- interested and self-regarding motives as facts of our constitution, he set himself to show, by means of his doctrine of desire, that there was really no inconsistency or contrariety between the one fact and the other. Here (he said) is self-love (one fact of our nature) whose object is internal, viz., our own happiness. Here, again, is benevolence (another fact of our nature) whose object is external, viz., the happiness of our fellows. But besides benevo-
