THE NEW WINE
221
wilderness
of doubt , he also
left
the great riddle un
answered , to leap voiceless
midst the desert wind , and
to
dance
songless
'mongst his bleached
and rattling
bones .
Further on we shall
see how Crowley , setting
out with both chart and compass , like a second Edipus
wrested
the secret from the age -worn lips of the Sphinx ;
for as he himself says :
Eternal mockery
is the real ;
Eternal falsehood , the ideal .'
However , Hume arrives at a negative
result of ex
traordinary worth .
He took Newton's second law of
motion ,' i.e., of Cause
and Effect , and wrote against
it a colossal
“ WHY ? ”
Berkeley, as we saw above , arrived at
the
conclu
sion , that it was impossible
to
solve
the question
of
relationship between
the things which are perceived ,
and
the things which are
not
perceived
; and
in the
“
Three Dialogues between Hylas and
Philonous ” he
further elaborates
this proposition . Hume by a slightly
different
road arrives
at an exactly similar conclusion
,
namely : how
is it possible
to judge the relationship
between
cause
and
effect , or in other words the per
ceived and not perceived ?
“ The first time a man
saw
the
communication
of
motion
by
impulse
.
.
.
(billiard
balls )
.
.
. what
alteration has
happened
to give rise to this new idea
of connexion . Nothing
but that he now feels these
events to be connected in his imagination
Hume thus arrives
at the conclusion
that cause and
effect can only
be inferred
from
each other , and never
> 3
1 Gargoyles, vol .
iii,
p
.
93
.
2
Every
change
of
motion
is
proportional
to
the
force
im
pressed
,
and
is
made
in
the direction
of
that force
.
3
An Enquiry'concerning Human
Understanding
,
p
.
78
.