Proportionality of Cause and Effect

Abstract

MR. HAYWARD now affects the air of an injured man, and complains of being charged with “confusing issues” which he neither “raised nor accepted.” He may be convicted out of his own mouth. The following passage occurs in his last letter but one (NATURE, vol. x. p. 25):—“It should be noted that my principal ‘exemplification of unconsciously-formed preconceptions’ was of Mr. Spencer's own choosing, namely, Newton's ‘Second Law of Motion,’” In his last he says:—“The object of my remarks was simply to test the truth of a definite assertion of Mr. Spencer that ‘the Second Law of Motion is an immediate corollary of the preconception of the exact quantitative elation between cause and effect’”