CHAPTER V.

OF THE LAW OF UNIVERSAL CAUSATION.

§ 1. The phenomena of nature exist in two distinct relations to one

another; that of simultaneity, and that of succession. Every phenomenon

is related, in an uniform manner, to some phenomena that coexist with

it, and to some that have preceded and will follow it.

Of the uniformities which exist among synchronous phenomena, the most

important, on every account, are the laws of number; and next to them

those of space, or, in other words, of extension and figure. The laws of

number are common to synchronous and successive phenomena. That two and

two make four, is equally true whether the second two follow the first

two or accompany them. It is as true of days and years as of feet and

inches. The laws of extension and figure (in other words, the theorems

of geometry, from its lowest to its highest branches) are, on the

contrary, laws of simultaneous phenomena only. The various parts of

space, and of the objects which are said to fill space, coexist; and the

unvarying laws which are the subject of the science of geometry, are an

expression of the mode of their coexistence.

This is a class of laws, or in other words, of uniformities, for the

comprehension and proof of which it is not necessary to suppose any

lapse of time, any variety of facts or events succeeding one another. If

all the objects in the universe were unchangeably fixed, and had

remained in that condition from eternity, the propositions of geometry

would still be true of those objects. All things which possess

extension, or, in other words, which fill space, are subject to

geometrical laws. Possessing extension, they possess figure; possessing

figure, they must possess some figure in particular, and have all the

properties which geometry assigns to that figure. If one body be a

sphere and another a cylinder, of equal height and diameter, the one

will be exactly two-thirds of the other, let the nature and quality of

the material be what it will. Again, each body, and each point of a

body, must occupy some place or position among other bodies; and the

position of two bodies relatively to each other, of whatever nature the

bodies be, may be unerringly inferred from the position of each of them

relatively to any third body.

In the laws of number, then, and in those of space, we recognise in the

most unqualified manner, the rigorous universality of which we are in

quest. Those laws have been in all ages the type of certainty, the

standard of comparison for all inferior degrees of evidence. Their

invariability is so perfect, that it renders us unable even to conceive

any exception to them; and philosophers have been led, though (as I have

endeavoured to show) erroneously, to consider their evidence as lying

not in experience, but in the original constitution of the intellect. If

therefore, from the laws of space and number, we were able to deduce

uniformities of any other description, this would be conclusive evidence

to us that those other uniformities possessed the same rigorous

certainty. But this we cannot do. From laws of space and number alone,

nothing can be deduced but laws of space and number.

Of all truths relating to phenomena, the most valuable to us are those

which relate to the order of their succession. On a knowledge of these

is founded every reasonable anticipation of future facts, and whatever

power we possess of influencing those facts to our advantage. Even the

laws of geometry are chiefly of practical importance to us as being a

portion of the premises from which the order of the succession of

phenomena may be inferred. Inasmuch as the motion of bodies, the action

of forces, and the propagation of influences of all sorts, take place in

certain lines and over definite spaces, the properties of those lines

and spaces are an important part of the laws to which those phenomena

are themselves subject. Again, motions, forces or other influences, and

times, are numerable quantities; and the properties of number are

applicable to them as to all other things. But though the laws of number

and space are important elements in the ascertainment of uniformities

of succession, they can do nothing towards it when taken by themselves.

They can only be made instrumental to that purpose when we combine with

them additional premises, expressive of uniformities of succession

already known. By taking, for instance, as premises these propositions,

that bodies acted upon by an instantaneous force move with uniform

velocity in straight lines; that bodies acted upon by a continuous force

move with accelerated velocity in straight lines; and that bodies acted

upon by two forces in different directions move in the diagonal of a

parallelogram, whose sides represent the direction and quantity of those

forces; we may by combining these truths with propositions relating to

the properties of straight lines and of parallelograms, (as that a

triangle is half a parallelogram of the same base and altitude,) deduce

another important uniformity of succession, viz., that a body moving

round a centre of force describes areas proportional to the times. But

unless there had been laws of succession in our premises, there could

have been no truths of succession in our conclusions. A similar remark

might be extended to every other class of phenomena really peculiar;

and, had it been attended to, would have prevented many chimerical

attempts at demonstrations of the indemonstrable, and explanations which

do not explain.

It is not, therefore, enough for us that the laws of space, which are

only laws of simultaneous phenomena, and the laws of number, which

though true of successive phenomena do not relate to their succession,

possess the rigorous certainty and universality of which we are in

search. We must endeavour to find some law of succession which has those

same attributes, and is therefore fit to be made the foundation of

processes for discovering, and of a test for verifying, all other

uniformities of succession. This fundamental law must resemble the

truths of geometry in their most remarkable peculiarity, that of never

being, in any instance whatever, defeated or suspended by any change of

circumstances.

Now among all those uniformities in the succession of phenomena, which

common observation is sufficient to bring to light, there are very few

which have any, even apparent, pretension to this rigorous

indefeasibility: and of those few, one only has been found capable of

completely sustaining it. In that one, however, we recognise a law which

is universal also in another sense; it is coextensive with the entire

field of successive phenomena, all instances whatever of succession

being examples of it. This law is the Law of Causation. The truth that

every fact which has a beginning has a cause, is coextensive with human

experience.

This generalization may appear to some minds not to amount to much,

since after all it asserts only this: "it is a law; that every event

depends on some law:" "it is a law, that there is a law for everything."

We must not, however, conclude that the generality of the principle is

merely verbal; it will be found on inspection to be no vague or

unmeaning assertion, but a most important and really fundamental truth.

§ 2. The notion of Cause being the root of the whole theory of

Induction, it is indispensable that this idea should, at the very outset

of our inquiry, be, with the utmost practicable degree of precision,

fixed and determined. If, indeed, it were necessary for the purpose of

inductive logic that the strife should be quelled, which has so long

raged among the different schools of metaphysicians, respecting the

origin and analysis of our idea of causation; the promulgation, or at

least the general reception, of a true theory of induction, might be

considered desperate for a long time to come. But the science of the

Investigation of Truth by means of Evidence, is happily independent of

many of the controversies which perplex the science of the ultimate

constitution of the human mind, and is under no necessity of pushing the

analysis of mental phenomena to that extreme limit which alone ought to

satisfy a metaphysician.

I premise, then, that when in the course of this inquiry I speak of the

cause of any phenomenon, I do not mean a cause which is not itself a

phenomenon; I make no research into the ultimate or ontological cause of

anything. To adopt a distinction familiar in the writings of the Scotch

metaphysicians, and especially of Reid, the causes with which I concern

myself are not _efficient_, but _physical_ causes. They are causes in

that sense alone, in which one physical fact is said to be the cause of

another. Of the efficient causes of phenomena, or whether any such

causes exist at all, I am not called upon to give an opinion. The notion

of causation is deemed, by the schools of metaphysics most in vogue at

the present moment, to imply a mysterious and most powerful tie, such as

cannot, or at least does not, exist between any physical fact and that

other physical fact on which it is invariably consequent, and which is

popularly termed its cause: and thence is deduced the supposed necessity

of ascending higher, into the essences and inherent constitution of

things, to find the true cause, the cause which is not only followed by,

but actually produces, the effect. No such necessity exists for the

purposes of the present inquiry, nor will any such doctrine be found in

the following pages. The only notion of a cause, which the theory of

induction requires, is such a notion as can be gained from experience.

The Law of Causation, the recognition of which is the main pillar of

inductive science, is but the familiar truth, that invariability of

succession is found by observation to obtain between every fact in

nature and some other fact which has preceded it; independently of all

consideration respecting the ultimate mode of production of phenomena,

and of every other question regarding the nature of "Things in

themselves."

Between the phenomena, then, which exist at any instant, and the

phenomena which exist at the succeeding instant, there is an invariable

order of succession; and, as we said in speaking of the general

uniformity of the course of nature, this web is composed of separate

fibres; this collective order is made up of particular sequences,

obtaining invariably among the separate parts. To certain facts, certain

facts always do, and, as we believe, will continue to, succeed. The

invariable antecedent is termed the cause; the invariable consequent,

the effect. And the universality of the law of causation consists in

this, that every consequent is connected in this manner with some

particular antecedent, or set of antecedents. Let the fact be what it

may, if it has begun to exist, it was preceded by some fact or facts,

with which it is invariably connected. For every event there exists some

combination of objects or events, some given concurrence of

circumstances, positive and negative, the occurrence of which is always

followed by that phenomenon. We may not have found out what this

concurrence of circumstances may be; but we never doubt that there is

such a one, and that it never occurs without having the phenomenon in

question as its effect or consequence. On the universality of this truth

depends the possibility of reducing the inductive process to rules. The

undoubted assurance we have that there is a law to be found if we only

knew how to find it, will be seen presently to be the source from which

the canons of the Inductive Logic derive their validity.

§ 3. It is seldom, if ever, between a consequent and a single

antecedent, that this invariable sequence subsists. It is usually

between a consequent and the sum of several antecedents; the concurrence

of all of them being requisite to produce, that is, to be certain of

being followed by, the consequent. In such cases it is very common to

single out one only of the antecedents under the denomination of Cause,

calling the others merely Conditions. Thus, if a person eats of a

particular dish, and dies in consequence, that is, would not have died

if he had not eaten of it, people would be apt to say that eating of

that dish was the cause of his death. There needs not, however, be any

invariable connexion between eating of the dish and death; but there

certainly is, among the circumstances which took place, some combination

or other on which death is invariably consequent: as, for instance, the

act of eating of the dish, combined with a particular bodily

constitution, a particular state of present health, and perhaps even a

certain state of the atmosphere; the whole of which circumstances

perhaps constituted in this particular case the _conditions_ of the

phenomenon, or, in other words, the set of antecedents which determined

it, and but for which it would not have happened. The real Cause, is the

whole of these antecedents; and we have, philosophically speaking, no

right to give the name of cause to one of them, exclusively of the

others. What, in the case we have supposed, disguises the incorrectness

of the expression, is this: that the various conditions, except the

single one of eating the food, were not _events_ (that is, instantaneous

changes, or successions of instantaneous changes) but _states_,

possessing more or less of permanency; and might therefore have preceded

the effect by an indefinite length of duration, for want of the event

which was requisite to complete the required concurrence of conditions:

while as soon as that event, eating the food, occurs, no other cause is

waited for, but the effect begins immediately to take place: and hence

the appearance is presented of a more immediate and close connexion

between the effect and that one antecedent, than between the effect and

the remaining conditions. But though we may think proper to give the

name of cause to that one condition, the fulfilment of which completes

the tale, and brings about the effect without further delay; this

condition has really no closer relation to the effect than any of the

other conditions has. The production of the consequent required that

they should all _exist_ immediately previous, though not that they

should all _begin_ to exist immediately previous. The statement of the

cause is incomplete, unless in some shape or other we introduce all the

conditions. A man takes mercury, goes out of doors, and catches cold. We

say, perhaps, that the cause of his taking cold was exposure to the air.

It is clear, however, that his having taken mercury may have been a

necessary condition of catching cold; and though it might consist with

usage to say that the cause of his attack was exposure to the air, to be

accurate we ought to say that the cause was exposure to the air while

under the effect of mercury.

If we do not, when aiming at accuracy, enumerate all the conditions, it

is only because some of them will in most cases be understood without

being expressed, or because for the purpose in view they may without

detriment be overlooked. For example, when we say, the cause of a man's

death was that his foot slipped in climbing a ladder, we omit as a

thing unnecessary to be stated the circumstance of his weight, though

quite as indispensable a condition of the effect which took place. When

we say that the assent of the crown to a bill makes it law, we mean that

the assent, being never given until all the other conditions are

fulfilled, makes up the sum of the conditions, though no one now regards

it as the principal one. When the decision of a legislative assembly has

been determined by the casting vote of the chairman, we sometimes say

that this one person was the cause of all the effects which resulted

from the enactment. Yet we do not really suppose that his single vote

contributed more to the result than that of any other person who voted

in the affirmative; but, for the purpose we have in view, which is to

insist on his individual responsibility, the part which any other person

had in the transaction is not material.

In all these instances the fact which was dignified with the name of

cause, was the one condition which came last into existence. But it must

not be supposed that in the employment of the term this or any other

rule is always adhered to. Nothing can better show the absence of any

scientific ground for the distinction between the cause of a phenomenon

and its conditions, than the capricious manner in which we select from

among the conditions that which we choose to denominate the cause.

However numerous the conditions may be, there is hardly any of them

which may not, according to the purpose of our immediate discourse,

obtain that nominal pre-eminence. This will be seen by analysing the

conditions of some one familiar phenomenon. For example, a stone thrown

into water falls to the bottom. What are the conditions of this event?

In the first place there must be a stone, and water, and the stone must

be thrown into the water; but these suppositions forming part of the

enunciation of the phenomenon itself, to include them also among the

conditions would be a vicious tautology; and this class of conditions,

therefore, have never received the name of cause from any but the

Aristotelians, by whom they were called the _material_ cause, _causa

materialis_. The next condition is, there must be an earth: and

accordingly it is often said, that the fall of a stone is caused by the

earth; or by a power or property of the earth, or a force exerted by the

earth, all of which are merely roundabout ways of saying that it is

caused by the earth; or, lastly, the earth's attraction; which also is

only a technical mode of saying that the earth causes the motion, with

the additional particularity that the motion is towards the earth, which

is not a character of the cause, but of the effect. Let us now pass to

another condition. It is not enough that the earth should exist; the

body must be within that distance from it, in which the earth's

attraction preponderates over that of any other body. Accordingly we may

say, and the expression would be confessedly correct, that the cause of

the stone's falling is its being _within the sphere_ of the earth's

attraction. We proceed to a further condition. The stone is immersed in

water: it is therefore a condition of its reaching the ground, that its

specific gravity exceed that of the surrounding fluid, or in other words

that it surpass in weight an equal volume of water. Accordingly any one

would be acknowledged to speak correctly who said, that the cause of the

stone's going to the bottom is its exceeding in specific gravity the

fluid in which it is immersed.

Thus we see that each and every condition of the phenomenon may be taken

in its turn, and, with equal propriety in common parlance, but with

equal impropriety in scientific discourse, may be spoken of as if it

were the entire cause. And in practice, that particular condition is

usually styled the cause, whose share in the matter is superficially the

most conspicuous, or whose requisiteness to the production of the effect

we happen to be insisting on at the moment. So great is the force of

this last consideration, that it sometimes induces us to give the name

of cause even to one of the negative conditions. We say, for example,

The army was surprised because the sentinel was off his post. But since

the sentinel's absence was not what created the enemy, or put the

soldiers asleep, how did it cause them to be surprised? All that is

really meant is, that the event would not have happened if he had been

at his duty. His being off his post was no producing cause, but the mere

absence of a preventing cause: it was simply equivalent to his

non-existence. From nothing, from a mere negation, no consequences can

proceed. All effects are connected, by the law of causation, with some

set of _positive_ conditions; negative ones, it is true, being almost

always required in addition. In other words, every fact or phenomenon

which has a beginning, invariably arises when some certain combination

of positive facts exists, provided certain other positive facts do not

exist.

There is, no doubt, a tendency (which our first example, that of death

from taking a particular food, sufficiently illustrates) to associate

the idea of causation with the proximate antecedent _event_, rather than

with any of the antecedent _states_, or permanent facts, which may

happen also to be conditions of the phenomenon; the reason being that

the event not only exists, but begins to exist immediately previous;

while the other conditions may have pre-existed for an indefinite time.

And this tendency shows itself very visibly in the different logical

fictions which are resorted to, even by men of science, to avoid the

necessity of giving the name of cause to anything which had existed for

an indeterminate length of time before the effect. Thus, rather than say

that the earth causes the fall of bodies, they ascribe it to a _force_

exerted by the earth, or an _attraction_ by the earth, abstractions

which they can represent to themselves as exhausted by each effort, and

therefore constituting at each successive instant a fresh fact,

simultaneous with, or only immediately preceding, the effect. Inasmuch

as the coming of the circumstance which completes the assemblage of

conditions, is a change or event, it thence happens that an event is

always the antecedent in closest apparent proximity to the consequent:

and this may account for the illusion which disposes us to look upon the

proximate event as standing more peculiarly in the position of a cause

than any of the antecedent states. But even this peculiarity, of being

in closer proximity to the effect than any other of its conditions, is,

as we have already seen, far from being necessary to the common notion

of a cause; with which notion, on the contrary, any one of the

conditions, either positive or negative, is found, on occasion,

completely to accord.[14]

The cause, then, philosophically speaking, is the sum total of the

conditions, positive and negative taken together; the whole of the

contingencies of every description, which being realized, the consequent

invariably follows. The negative conditions, however, of any

phenomenon, a special enumeration of which would generally be very

prolix, may be all summed up under one head, namely, the absence of

preventing or counteracting causes. The convenience of this mode of

expression is mainly grounded on the fact, that the effects of any cause

in counteracting another cause may in most cases be, with strict

scientific exactness, regarded as a mere extension of its own proper and

separate effects. If gravity retards the upward motion of a projectile,

and deflects it into a parabolic trajectory, it produces, in so doing,

the very same kind of effect, and even (as mathematicians know) the

same quantity of effect, as it does in its ordinary operation of causing

the fall of bodies when simply deprived of their support. If an alkaline

solution mixed with an acid destroys its sourness, and prevents it from

reddening vegetable blues, it is because the specific effect of the

alkali is to combine with the acid, and form a compound with totally

different qualities. This property, which causes of all descriptions

possess, of preventing the effects of other causes by virtue (for the

most part) of the same laws according to which they produce their

own,[15] enables us, by establishing the general axiom that all causes

are liable to be counteracted in their effects by one another, to

dispense with the consideration of negative conditions entirely, and

limit the notion of cause to the assemblage of the positive conditions

of the phenomenon: one negative condition invariably understood, and the

same in all instances (namely, the absence of counteracting causes)

being sufficient, along with the sum of the positive conditions, to make

up the whole set of circumstances on which the phenomenon is dependent.

§ 4. Among the positive conditions, as we have seen that there are some

to which, in common parlance, the term cause is more readily and

frequently awarded, so there are others to which it is, in ordinary

circumstances, refused. In most cases of causation a distinction is

commonly drawn between something which acts, and some other thing which

is acted upon; between an _agent_ and a _patient_. Both of these, it

would be universally allowed, are conditions of the phenomenon; but it

would be thought absurd to call the latter the cause, that title being

reserved for the former. The distinction, however, vanishes on

examination, or rather is found to be only verbal; arising from an

incident of mere expression, namely, that the object said to be acted

upon, and which is considered as the scene in which the effect takes

place, is commonly included in the phrase by which the effect is spoken

of, so that if it were also reckoned as part of the cause, the seeming

incongruity would arise of its being supposed to cause itself. In the

instance which we have already had, of falling bodies, the question was

thus put: What is the cause which makes a stone fall? and if the answer

had been "the stone itself," the expression would have been in apparent

contradiction to the meaning of the word cause. The stone, therefore, is

conceived as the patient, and the earth (or, according to the common and

most unphilosophical practice, some occult quality of the earth) is

represented as the agent or cause. But that there is nothing fundamental

in the distinction may be seen from this, that it is quite possible to

conceive the stone as causing its own fall, provided the language

employed be such as to save the mere verbal incongruity. We might say

that the stone moves towards the earth by the properties of the matter

composing it; and according to this mode of presenting the phenomenon,

the stone itself might without impropriety be called the agent; though,

to save the established doctrine of the inactivity of matter, men

usually prefer here also to ascribe the effect to an occult quality, and

say that the cause is not the stone itself, but the _weight_ or

_gravitation_ of the stone.

Those who have contended for a radical distinction between agent and

patient, have generally conceived the agent as that which causes some

state of, or some change in the state of, another object which is called

the patient. But a little reflection will show that the licence we

assume of speaking of phenomena as _states_ of the various objects which

take part in them, (an artifice of which so much use has been made by

some philosophers, Brown in particular, for the apparent explanation of

phenomena,) is simply a sort of logical fiction, useful sometimes as one

among several modes of expression, but which should never be supposed to

be the enunciation of a scientific truth. Even those attributes of an

object which might seem with greatest propriety to be called states of

the object itself, its sensible qualities, its colour, hardness, shape,

and the like, are in reality (as no one has pointed out more clearly

than Brown himself) phenomena of causation, in which the substance is

distinctly the agent, or producing cause, the patient being our own

organs, and those of other sentient beings. What we call states of

objects, are always sequences into which the objects enter, generally as

antecedents or causes; and things are never more active than in the

production of those phenomena in which they are said to be acted upon.

Thus, in the example of a stone falling to the earth, according to the

theory of gravitation the stone is as much an agent as the earth, which

not only attracts, but is itself attracted by, the stone. In the case of

a sensation produced in our organs, the laws of our organization, and

even those of our minds, are as directly operative in determining the

effect produced, as the laws of the outward object. Though we call

prussic acid the agent of a person's death, the whole of the vital and

organic properties of the patient are as actively instrumental as the

poison, in the chain of effects which so rapidly terminates his sentient

existence. In the process of education, we may call the teacher the

agent, and the scholar only the material acted upon; yet in truth all

the facts which pre-existed in the scholar's mind exert either

co-operating or counteracting agencies in relation to the teacher's

efforts. It is not light alone which is the agent in vision, but light

coupled with the active properties of the eye and brain, and with those

of the visible object. The distinction between agent and patient is

merely verbal: patients are always agents; in a great proportion,

indeed, of all natural phenomena, they are so to such a degree as to

react forcibly on the causes which acted upon them: and even when this

is not the case, they contribute, in the same manner as any of the other

conditions, to the production of the effect of which they are vulgarly

treated as the mere theatre. All the positive conditions of a phenomenon

are alike agents, alike active; and in any expression of the cause which

professes to be complete, none of them can with reason be excluded,

except such as have already been implied in the words used for

describing the effect; nor by including even these would there be

incurred any but a merely verbal impropriety.

§ 5. It now remains to advert to a distinction which is of first-rate

importance both for clearing up the notion of cause, and for obviating a

very specious objection often made against the view which we have taken

of the subject.

When we define the cause of anything (in the only sense in which the

present inquiry has any concern with causes) to be "the antecedent which

it invariably follows," we do not use this phrase as exactly synonymous

with "the antecedent which it invariably _has_ followed in our past

experience." Such a mode of conceiving causation would be liable to the

objection very plausibly urged by Dr. Reid, namely, that according to

this doctrine night must be the cause of day, and day the cause of

night; since these phenomena have invariably succeeded one another from

the beginning of the world. But it is necessary to our using the word

cause, that we should believe not only that the antecedent always _has_

been followed by the consequent, but that, as long as the present

constitution of things[16] endures, it always _will_ be so. And this

would not be true of day and night. We do not believe that night will be

followed by day under all imaginable circumstances, but only that it

will be so _provided_ the sun rises above the horizon. If the sun ceased

to rise, which, for aught we know, may be perfectly compatible with the

general laws of matter, night would be, or might be, eternal. On the

other hand, if the sun is above the horizon, his light not extinct, and

no opaque body between us and him, we believe firmly that unless a

change takes place in the properties of matter, this combination of

antecedents will be followed by the consequent, day; that if the

combination of antecedents could be indefinitely prolonged, it would be

always day; and that if the same combination had always existed, it

would always have been day, quite independently of night as a previous

condition. Therefore is it that we do not call night the cause, nor even

a condition, of day. The existence of the sun (or some such luminous

body), and there being no opaque medium in a straight line[17] between

that body and the part of the earth where we are situated, are the sole

conditions; and the union of these, without the addition of any

superfluous circumstance, constitutes the cause. This is what writers

mean when they say that the notion of cause involves the idea of

necessity. If there be any meaning which confessedly belongs to the term

necessity, it is _unconditionalness_. That which is necessary, that

which _must_ be, means that which will be, whatever supposition we may

make in regard to all other things. The succession of day and night

evidently is not necessary in this sense. It is conditional on the

occurrence of other antecedents. That which will be followed by a given

consequent when, and only when, some third circumstance also exists, is

not the cause, even though no case should ever have occurred in which

the phenomenon took place without it.

Invariable sequence, therefore, is not synonymous with causation, unless

the sequence, besides being invariable, is unconditional. There are

sequences, as uniform in past experience as any others whatever, which

yet we do not regard as cases of causation, but as conjunctions in some

sort accidental. Such, to an accurate thinker, is that of day and night.

The one might have existed for any length of time, and the other not

have followed the sooner for its existence; it follows only if certain

other antecedents exist; and where those antecedents existed, it would

follow in any case. No one, probably, ever called night the cause of

day; mankind must so soon have arrived at the very obvious

generalization, that the state of general illumination which we call day

would follow from the presence of a sufficiently luminous body, whether

darkness had preceded or not.

We may define, therefore, the cause of a phenomenon, to be the

antecedent, or the concurrence of antecedents, on which it is invariably

and _unconditionally_ consequent. Or if we adopt the convenient

modification of the meaning of the word cause, which confines it to the

assemblage of positive conditions without the negative, then instead of

"unconditionally," we must say, "subject to no other than negative

conditions."

To some it may appear, that the sequence between night and day being

invariable in our experience, we have as much ground in this case as

experience can give in any case, for recognising the two phenomena as

cause and effect; and that to say that more is necessary--to require a

belief that the succession is unconditional, or in other words that it

would be invariable under all changes of circumstances, is to

acknowledge in causation an element of belief not derived from

experience. The answer to this is, that it is experience itself which

teaches us that one uniformity of sequence is conditional and another

unconditional. When we judge that the succession of night and day is a

derivative sequence, depending on something else, we proceed on grounds

of experience. It is the evidence of experience which convinces us that

day could equally exist without being followed by night, and that night

could equally exist without being followed by day. To say that these

beliefs are "not generated by our mere observation of sequence,"[18] is

to forget that twice in every twenty-four hours, when the sky is clear,

we have an _experimentum crucis_ that the cause of day is the sun. We

have an experimental knowledge of the sun which justifies us on

experimental grounds in concluding, that if the sun were always above

the horizon there would be day, though there had been no night, and that

if the sun were always below the horizon there would be night, though

there had been no day. We thus know from experience that the succession

of night and day is not unconditional. Let me add, that the antecedent

which is only conditionally invariable, is not the invariable

antecedent. Though a fact may, in experience, have always been followed

by another fact, yet if the remainder of our experience teaches us that

it might not always be so followed, or if the experience itself is such

as leaves room for a possibility that the known cases may not correctly

represent all possible cases, the hitherto invariable antecedent is not

accounted the cause; but why? Because we are not sure that it _is_ the

invariable antecedent.

Such cases of sequence as that of day and night not only do not

contradict the doctrine which resolves causation into invariable

sequence, but are necessarily implied in that doctrine. It is evident,

that from a limited number of unconditional sequences, there will

result a much greater number of conditional ones. Certain causes being

given, that is, certain antecedents which are unconditionally followed

by certain consequents; the mere coexistence of these causes will give

rise to an unlimited number of additional uniformities. If two causes

exist together, the effects of both will exist together; and if many

causes coexist, these causes (by what we shall term hereafter the

intermixture of their laws) will give rise to new effects, accompanying

or succeeding one another in some particular order, which order will be

invariable while the causes continue to coexist, but no longer. The

motion of the earth in a given orbit round the sun, is a series of

changes which follow one another as antecedents and consequents, and

will continue to do so while the sun's attraction, and the force with

which the earth tends to advance in a direct line through space,

continue to coexist in the same quantities as at present. But vary

either of these causes, and this particular succession of motions would

cease to take place. The series of the earth's motions, therefore,

though a case of sequence invariable within the limits of human

experience, is not a case of causation. It is not unconditional.

This distinction between the relations of succession which so far as we

know are unconditional, and those relations, whether of succession or of

coexistence, which, like the earth's motions, or the succession of day

and night, depend on the existence or on the coexistence of other

antecedent facts--corresponds to the great division which Dr. Whewell

and other writers have made of the field of science, into the

investigation of what they term the Laws of Phenomena, and the

investigation of causes; a phraseology, as I conceive, not

philosophically sustainable, inasmuch as the ascertainment of causes,

such causes as the human faculties can ascertain, namely, causes which

are themselves phenomena, is, therefore, merely the ascertainment of

other and more universal Laws of Phenomena. And let me here observe,

that Dr. Whewell, and in some degree even Sir John Herschel, seem to

have misunderstood the meaning of those writers who, like M. Comte,

limit the sphere of scientific investigation to Laws of Phenomena, and

speak of the inquiry into causes as vain and futile. The causes which M.

Comte designates as inaccessible, are efficient causes. The

investigation of physical, as opposed to efficient, causes (including

the study of all the active forces in Nature, considered as facts of

observation) is as important a part of M. Comte's conception of science

as of Dr. Whewell's. His objection to the _word_ cause is a mere matter

of nomenclature, in which, as a matter of nomenclature, I consider him

to be entirely wrong. "Those," it is justly remarked by Mr. Bailey,[19]

"who, like M. Comte, object to designate _events_ as causes, are

objecting without any real ground to a mere but extremely convenient

generalization, to a very useful common name, the employment of which

involves, or needs involve, no particular theory." To which it may be

added, that by rejecting this form of expression, M. Comte leaves

himself without any term for marking a distinction which, however

incorrectly expressed, is not only real, but is one of the fundamental

distinctions in science; indeed it is on this alone, as we shall

hereafter find, that the possibility rests of framing a rigorous Canon

of Induction. And as things left without a name are apt to be forgotten,

a Canon of that description is not one of the many benefits which the

philosophy of Induction has received from M. Comte's great powers.

§ 6. Does a cause always stand with its effect in the relation of

antecedent and consequent? Do we not often say of two simultaneous facts

that they are cause and effect--as when we say that fire is the cause of

warmth, the sun and moisture the cause of vegetation, and the like?

Since a cause does not necessarily perish because its effect has been

produced, the two things do very generally coexist; and there are some

appearances, and some common expressions, seeming to imply not only that

causes may, but that they must, be contemporaneous with their effects.

_Cessante causâ cessat et effectus_, has been a dogma of the schools:

the necessity for the continued existence of the cause in order to the

continuance of the effect, seems to have been once a generally received

doctrine. Kepler's numerous attempts to account for the motions of the

heavenly bodies on mechanical principles, were rendered abortive by his

always supposing that the agency which set those bodies in motion must

continue to operate in order to keep up the motion which it at first

produced. Yet there were at all times many familiar instances of the

continuance of effects, long after their causes had ceased. A _coup de

soleil_ gives a person a brain fever: will the fever go off as soon as

he is moved out of the sunshine? A sword is run through his body: must

the sword remain in his body in order that he may continue dead? A

ploughshare once made, remains a ploughshare, without any continuance of

heating and hammering, and even after the man who heated and hammered it

has been gathered to his fathers. On the other hand, the pressure which

forces up the mercury in an exhausted tube must be continued in order to

sustain it in the tube. This (it may be replied) is because another

force is acting without intermission, the force of gravity, which would

restore it to its level, unless counterpoised by a force equally

constant. But again; a tight bandage causes pain, which pain will

sometimes go off as soon as the bandage is removed. The illumination

which the sun diffuses over the earth ceases when the sun goes down.

There is, therefore, a distinction to be drawn. The conditions which are

necessary for the first production of a phenomenon, are occasionally

also necessary for its continuance; though more commonly its continuance

requires no condition except negative ones. Most things, once produced,

continue as they are, until something changes or destroys them; but some

require the permanent presence of the agencies which produced them at

first. These may, if we please, be considered as instantaneous

phenomena, requiring to be renewed at each instant by the cause by which

they were at first generated. Accordingly, the illumination of any given

point of space has always been looked upon as an instantaneous fact,

which perishes and is perpetually renewed as long as the necessary

conditions subsist. If we adopt this language we avoid the necessity of

admitting that the continuance of the cause is ever required to maintain

the effect. We may say, it is not required to maintain, but to

reproduce, the effect, or else to counteract some force tending to

destroy it. And this may be a convenient phraseology. But it is only a

phraseology. The fact remains, that in some cases (though these are a

minority) the continuance of the conditions which produced an effect is

necessary to the continuance of the effect.

As to the ulterior question, whether it is strictly necessary that the

cause, or assemblage of conditions, should precede, by ever so short an

instant, the production of the effect, (a question raised and argued

with much ingenuity by Sir John Herschel in an Essay already

quoted,[20]) the inquiry is of no consequence for our present purpose.

There certainly are cases in which the effect follows without any

interval perceptible by our faculties: and when there is an interval, we

cannot tell by how many intermediate links imperceptible to us that

interval may really be filled up. But even granting that an effect may

commence simultaneously with its cause, the view I have taken of

causation is in no way practically affected. Whether the cause and its

effect be necessarily successive or not, the beginning of a phenomenon

is what implies a cause, and causation is the law of the succession of

phenomena. If these axioms be granted, we can afford, though I see no

necessity for doing so, to drop the words antecedent and consequent as

applied to cause and effect. I have no objection to define a cause, the

assemblage of phenomena, which occurring, some other phenomenon

invariably commences, or has its origin. Whether the effect coincides in

point of time with, or immediately follows, the hindmost of its

conditions, is immaterial. At all events it does not precede it; and

when we are in doubt, between two coexistent phenomena, which is cause

and which effect, we rightly deem the question solved if we can

ascertain which of them preceded the other.

§ 7. It continually happens that several different phenomena, which are

not in the slightest degree dependent or conditional on one another, are

found all to depend, as the phrase is, on one and the same agent; in

other words, one and the same phenomenon is seen to be followed by

several sorts of effects quite heterogeneous, but which go on

simultaneously one with another; provided, of course, that all other

conditions requisite for each of them also exist. Thus, the sun produces

the celestial motions, it produces daylight, and it produces heat. The

earth causes the fall of heavy bodies, and it also, in its capacity of a

great magnet, causes the phenomena of the magnetic needle. A crystal of

galena causes the sensations of hardness, of weight, of cubical form, of

grey colour, and many others between which we can trace no

interdependence. The purpose to which the phraseology of Properties and

Powers is specially adapted, is the expression of this sort of cases.

When the same phenomenon is followed (either subject or not to the

presence of other conditions) by effects of different and dissimilar

orders, it is usual to say that each different sort of effect is

produced by a different property of the cause. Thus we distinguish the

attractive or gravitative property of the earth, and its magnetic

property: the gravitative, luminiferous, and calorific properties of the

sun: the colour, shape, weight, and hardness of a crystal. These are

mere phrases, which explain nothing, and add nothing to our knowledge of

the subject; but, considered as abstract names denoting the connexion

between the different effects produced and the object which produces

them, they are a very powerful instrument of abridgment, and of that

acceleration of the process of thought which abridgment accomplishes.

This class of considerations leads to a conception which we shall find

to be of great importance, that of a Permanent Cause, or original

natural agent. There exist in nature a number of permanent causes, which

have subsisted ever since the human race has been in existence, and for

an indefinite and probably an enormous length of time previous. The sun,

the earth, and planets, with their various constituents, air, water, and

other distinguishable substances, whether simple or compound, of which

nature is made up, are such Permanent Causes. These have existed, and

the effects or consequences which they were fitted to produce have taken

place (as often as the other conditions of the production met,) from the

very beginning of our experience. But we can give no account of the

origin of the Permanent Causes themselves. Why these particular natural

agents existed originally and no others, or why they are commingled in

such and such proportions, and distributed in such and such a manner

throughout space, is a question we cannot answer. More than this: we can

discover nothing regular in the distribution itself; we can reduce it to

no uniformity, to no law. There are no means by which, from the

distribution of these causes or agents in one part of space, we could

conjecture whether a similar distribution prevails in another. The

coexistence, therefore, of Primeval Causes, ranks, to us, among merely

casual concurrences: and all those sequences or coexistences among the

effects of several such causes, which, though invariable while those

causes coexist, would, if the coexistence terminated, terminate along

with it, we do not class as cases of causation, or laws of nature: we

can only calculate on finding these sequences or coexistences where we

know by direct evidence, that the natural agents on the properties of

which they ultimately depend, are distributed in the requisite manner.

These Permanent Causes are not always objects; they are sometimes

events, that is to say, periodical cycles of events, that being the only

mode in which events can possess the property of permanence. Not only,

for instance, is the earth itself a permanent cause, or primitive

natural agent, but the earth's rotation is so too: it is a cause which

has produced, from the earliest period, (by the aid of other necessary

conditions,) the succession of day and night, the ebb and flow of the

sea, and many other effects, while, as we can assign no cause (except

conjecturally) for the rotation itself, it is entitled to be ranked as a

primeval cause. It is, however, only the _origin_ of the rotation which

is mysterious to us: once begun, its continuance is accounted for by the

first law of motion (that of the permanence of rectilinear motion once

impressed) combined with the gravitation of the parts of the earth

towards one another.

All phenomena without exception which begin to exist, that is, all

except the primeval causes, are effects either immediate or remote of

those primitive facts, or of some combination of them. There is no Thing

produced, no event happening, in the known universe, which is not

connected by an uniformity, or invariable sequence, with some one or

more of the phenomena which preceded it; insomuch that it will happen

again as often as those phenomena occur again, and as no other

phenomenon having the character of a counteracting cause shall coexist.

These antecedent phenomena, again, were connected in a similar manner

with some that preceded them; and so on, until we reach, as the ultimate

step attainable by us, either the properties of some one primeval cause,

or the conjunction of several. The whole of the phenomena of nature were

therefore the necessary, or in other words, the unconditional,

consequences of some former collocation of the Permanent Causes.

The state of the whole universe at any instant, we believe to be the

consequence of its state at the previous instant; insomuch that one who

knew all the agents which exist at the present moment, their collocation

in space, and all their properties, in other words, the laws of their

agency, could predict the whole subsequent history of the universe, at

least unless some new volition of a power capable of controlling the

universe should supervene.[21] And if any particular state of the

entire universe could ever recur a second time, all subsequent states

would return too, and history would, like a circulating decimal of many

figures, periodically repeat itself:--

Jam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna....

Alter erit tum Tiphys, et altera quæ vehat Argo

Delectos heroas; erunt quoque altera bella,

Atque iterum ad Trojam magnus mittetur Achilles.

And though things do not really revolve in this eternal round, the whole

series of events in the history of the universe, past and future, is not

the less capable, in its own nature, of being constructed _à priori_ by

any one whom we can suppose acquainted with the original distribution of

all natural agents, and with the whole of their properties, that is, the

laws of succession existing between them and their effects: saving the

far more than human powers of combination and calculation which would be

required, even in one possessing the data, for the actual performance of

the task.

§ 8. Since everything which occurs is determined by laws of causation

and collocations of the original causes, it follows that the

coexistences which are observable among effects cannot be themselves the

subject of any similar set of laws, distinct from laws of causation.

Uniformities there are, as well of coexistence as of succession, among

effects; but these must in all cases be a mere result either of the

identity or of the coexistence of their causes: if the causes did not

coexist, neither could the effects. And these causes being also effects

of prior causes, and these of others, until we reach the primeval

causes, it follows that (except in the case of effects which can be

traced immediately or remotely to one and the same cause) the

coexistences of phenomena can in no case be universal, unless the

coexistences of the primeval causes to which the effects are ultimately

traceable, can be reduced to an universal law: but we have seen that

they cannot. There are, accordingly, no original and independent, in

other words no unconditional, uniformities of coexistence, between

effects of different causes; if they coexist, it is only because the

causes have casually coexisted. The only independent and unconditional

coexistences which are sufficiently invariable to have any claim to the

character of laws, are between different and mutually independent

effects of the same cause; in other words, between different properties

of the same natural agent. This portion of the Laws of Nature will be

treated of in the latter part of the present Book, under the name of the

Specific Properties of Kinds.

§ 9. It is proper in this place to advert to a rather ancient doctrine

respecting causation, which has been revived during the last few years

in many quarters, and at present gives more signs of life than any other

theory of causation at variance with that set forth in the preceding

pages.

According to the theory in question, Mind, or, to speak more precisely,

Will, is the only cause of phenomena. The type of Causation, as well as

the exclusive source from which we derive the idea, is our own voluntary

agency. Here, and here only (it is said) we have direct evidence of

causation. We know that we can move our bodies. Respecting the phenomena

of inanimate nature, we have no other direct knowledge than that of

antecedence and sequence. But in the case of our voluntary actions, it

is affirmed that we are conscious of power, before we have experience of

results. An act of volition, whether followed by an effect or not, is

accompanied by a consciousness of effort, "of force exerted, of power in

action, which is necessarily causal, or causative." This feeling of

energy or force, inherent in an act of will, is knowledge _à priori_;

assurance, prior to experience, that we have the power of causing

effects. Volition, therefore, it is asserted, is something more than an

unconditional antecedent; it is a cause, in a different sense from that

in which physical phenomena are said to cause one another: it is an

Efficient Cause. From this the transition is easy to the further

doctrine, that Volition is the _sole_ Efficient Cause of all phenomena.

"It is inconceivable that dead force could continue unsupported for a

moment beyond its creation. We cannot even conceive of change or

phenomena without the energy of a mind." "The word _action_" itself,

says another writer of the same school, "has no real significance except

when applied to the doings of an intelligent agent. Let any one

conceive, if he can, of any power, energy, or force, inherent in a lump

of matter." Phenomena may have the semblance of being produced by

physical causes, but they are in reality produced, say these writers, by

the immediate agency of mind. All things which do not proceed from a

human (or, I suppose, an animal) will, proceed, they say, directly from

divine will. The earth is not moved by the combination of a centripetal

and a projectile force; this is but a mode of speaking, which serves to

facilitate our conceptions. It is moved by the direct volition of an

omnipotent Being, in a path coinciding with that which we deduce from

the hypothesis of these two forces.

As I have so often observed, the general question of the existence of

Efficient Causes does not fall within the limits of our subject: but a

theory which represents them as capable of being subjects of human

knowledge, and which passes off as efficient causes what are only

physical or phenomenal causes, belongs as much to Logic as to

Metaphysics, and is a fit subject for discussion here.

To my apprehension, a volition is not an efficient, but simply a

physical, cause. Our will causes our bodily actions in the same sense,

and in no other, in which cold causes ice, or a spark causes an

explosion of gunpowder. The volition, a state of our mind, is the

antecedent; the motion of our limbs in conformity to the volition, is

the consequent. This sequence I conceive to be not a subject of direct

consciousness, in the sense intended by the theory. The antecedent,

indeed, and the consequent, are subjects of consciousness. But the

connexion between them is a subject of experience. I cannot admit that

our consciousness of the volition contains in itself any _à priori_

knowledge that the muscular motion will follow. If our nerves of motion

were paralysed, or our muscles stiff and inflexible, and had been so all

our lives, I do not see the slightest ground for supposing that we

should ever (unless by information from other people) have known

anything of volition as a physical power, or been conscious of any

tendency in feelings of our mind to produce motions of our body, or of

other bodies. I will not undertake to say whether we should in that case

have had the physical feeling which I suppose is meant when these

writers speak of "consciousness of effort:" I see no reason why we

should not; since that physical feeling is probably a state of nervous

sensation beginning and ending in the brain, without involving the

motory apparatus: but we certainly should not have designated it by any

term equivalent to effort, since effort implies consciously aiming at an

end, which we should not only in that case have had no reason to do, but

could not even have had the idea of doing. If conscious at all of this

peculiar sensation, we should have been conscious of it, I conceive,

only as a kind of uneasiness, accompanying our feelings of desire.

It is well argued by Sir William Hamilton against the theory in

question, that it "is refuted by the consideration, that between the

overt fact of corporeal movement of which we are cognisant, and the

internal act of mental determination of which we are also cognisant,

there intervenes a numerous series of intermediate agencies of which we

have no knowledge; and, consequently, that we can have no consciousness

of any causal connexion between the extreme links of this chain, the

volition to move and the limb moving, as this hypothesis asserts. No one

is immediately conscious, for example, of moving his arm through his

volition. Previously to this ultimate movement, muscles, nerves, a

multitude of solid and fluid parts, must be set in motion by the will,

but of this motion we know, from consciousness, absolutely nothing. A

person struck with paralysis is conscious of no inability in his limb to

fulfil the determinations of his will; and it is only after having

willed, and finding that his limbs do not obey his volition, that he

learns by this experience, that the external movement does not follow

the internal act. But as the paralytic learns after the volition that

his limbs do not obey his mind; so it is only after volition that the

man in health learns, that his limbs do obey the mandates of his

will."[22]

Those against whom I am contending have never produced, and do not

pretend to produce, any positive evidence[23] that the power of our will

to move our bodies would be known to us independently of experience.

What they have to say on the subject is, that the production of physical

events by a will seems to carry its own explanation with it, while the

action of matter upon matter seems to require something else to explain

it; and is even, according to them, "inconceivable" on any other

supposition than that some will intervenes between the apparent cause

and its apparent effect. They thus rest their case on an appeal to the

inherent laws of our conceptive faculty; mistaking, as I apprehend, for

the laws of that faculty its acquired habits, grounded on the

spontaneous tendencies of its uncultured state. The succession between

the will to move a limb and the actual motion, is one of the most direct

and instantaneous of all sequences which come under our observation, and

is familiar to every moment's experience from our earliest infancy; more

familiar than any succession of events exterior to our bodies, and

especially more so than any other case of the apparent origination (as

distinguished from the mere communication) of motion. Now, it is the

natural tendency of the mind to be always attempting to facilitate its

conception of unfamiliar facts by assimilating them to others which are

familiar. Accordingly, our voluntary acts, being the most familiar to us

of all cases of causation, are, in the infancy and early youth of the

human race, spontaneously taken as the type of causation in general, and

all phenomena are supposed to be directly produced by the will of some

sentient being. This original Fetichism I shall not characterize in the

words of Hume, or of any follower of Hume, but in those of a religious

metaphysician, Dr. Reid, in order more effectually to show the unanimity

which exists on the subject among all competent thinkers.

"When we turn our attention to external objects, and begin to exercise

our rational faculties about them, we find that there are some motions

and changes in them which we have power to produce, and that there are

many which must have some other cause. Either the objects must have life

and active power, as we have, or they must be moved or changed by

something that has life and active power, as external objects are moved

by us.

"Our first thoughts seem to be, that the objects in which we perceive

such motion have understanding and active power as we have. 'Savages,'

says the Abbé Raynal, 'wherever they see motion which they cannot

account for, there they suppose a soul.' All men may be considered as

savages in this respect, until they are capable of instruction, and of

using their faculties in a more perfect manner than savages do.

"The Abbé Raynal's observation is sufficiently confirmed, both from

fact, and from the structure of all languages.

"Rude nations do really believe sun, moon, and stars, earth, sea, and

air, fountains, and lakes, to have understanding and active power. To

pay homage to them, and implore their favour, is a kind of idolatry

natural to savages.

"All languages carry in their structure the marks of their being formed

when this belief prevailed. The distinction of verbs and participles

into active and passive, which is found in all languages, must have been

originally intended to distinguish what is really active from what is

merely passive; and in all languages, we find active verbs applied to

those objects, in which, according to the Abbé Raynal's observation,

savages suppose a soul.

"Thus we say the sun rises and sets, and comes to the meridian, the moon

changes, the sea ebbs and flows, the winds blow. Languages were formed

by men who believed these objects to have life and active power in

themselves. It was therefore proper and natural to express their motions

and changes by active verbs.

"There is no surer way of tracing the sentiments of nations before they

have records, than by the structure of their language, which,

notwithstanding the changes produced in it by time, will always retain

some signatures of the thoughts of those by whom it was invented. When

we find the same sentiments indicated in the structure of all languages,

those sentiments must have been common to the human species when

languages were invented.

"When a few, of superior intellectual abilities, find leisure for

speculation, they begin to philosophize, and soon discover, that many of

those objects which at first they believed to be intelligent and active

are really lifeless and passive. This is a very important discovery. It

elevates the mind, emancipates from many vulgar superstitions, and

invites to further discoveries of the same kind.

"As philosophy advances, life and activity in natural objects retires,

and leaves them dead and inactive. Instead of moving voluntarily, we

find them to be moved necessarily; instead of acting, we find them to be

acted upon; and Nature appears as one great machine, where one wheel is

turned by another, that by a third; and how far this necessary

succession may reach, the philosopher does not know."[24]

There is, then, a spontaneous tendency of the intellect to account to

itself for all cases of causation by assimilating them to the

intentional acts of voluntary agents like itself. This is the

instinctive philosophy of the human mind in its earliest stage, before

it has become familiar with any other invariable sequences than those

between its own volitions or those of other human beings and their

voluntary acts. As the notion of fixed laws of succession among external

phenomena gradually establishes itself, the propensity to refer all

phenomena to voluntary agency slowly gives way before it. The

suggestions, however, of daily life continuing to be more powerful than

those of scientific thought, the original instinctive philosophy

maintains its ground in the mind, underneath the growths obtained by

cultivation, and keeps up a constant resistance to their throwing their

roots deep into the soil. The theory against which I am contending

derives its nourishment from that substratum. Its strength does not lie

in argument, but in its affinity to an obstinate tendency of the infancy

of the human mind.

That this tendency, however, is not the result of an inherent mental

law, is proved by superabundant evidence. The history of science, from

its earliest dawn, shows that mankind have not been unanimous in

thinking either that the action of matter upon matter was not

conceivable, or that the action of mind upon matter was. To some

thinkers, and some schools of thinkers, both in ancient and in modern

times, this last has appeared much more inconceivable than the former.

Sequences entirely physical and material, as soon as they had become

sufficiently familiar to the human mind, came to be thought perfectly

natural, and were regarded not only as needing no explanation

themselves, but as being capable of affording it to others, and even of

serving as the ultimate explanation of things in general.

One of the ablest recent supporters of the Volitional theory has

furnished an explanation, at once historically true and philosophically

acute, of the failure of the Greek philosophers in physical inquiry, in

which, as I conceive, he unconsciously depicts his own state of mind.

"Their stumbling-block was one as to the nature of the evidence they had

to expect for their conviction.... They had not seized the idea that

they must not expect to understand the processes of outward causes, but

only their results: and consequently, the whole physical philosophy of

the Greeks was an attempt to identify mentally the effect with its

cause, to feel after some not only necessary but natural connexion,

where they meant by natural that which would _per se_ carry some

presumption to their own mind.... They wanted to see some _reason_ why

the physical antecedent should produce this particular consequent, and

their only attempts were in directions where they could find such

reasons."[25] In other words, they were not content merely to know that

one phenomenon was always followed by another; they thought that they

had not attained the true aim of science, unless they could perceive

something in the nature of the one phenomenon from which it might have

been known or presumed _previous to trial_ that it would be followed by

the other: just what the writer, who has so clearly pointed out their

error, thinks that he perceives in the nature of the phenomenon

Volition. And to complete the statement of the case, he should have

added that these early speculators not only made this their aim, but

were quite satisfied with their success in it; not only sought for

causes which should carry in their mere statement evidence of their

efficiency, but fully believed that they had found such causes. The

reviewer can see plainly that this was an error, because _he_ does not

believe that there exist any relations between material phenomena which

can account for their producing one another: but the very fact of the

persistency of the Greeks in this error, shows that their minds were in

a very different state: they were able to derive from the assimilation

of physical facts to other physical facts, the kind of mental

satisfaction which we connect with the word explanation, and which the

reviewer would have us think can only be found in referring phenomena to

a will. When Thales and Hippo held that moisture was the universal

cause, and external element, of which all other things were but the

infinitely various sensible manifestations; when Anaximenes predicated

the same thing of air, Pythagoras of numbers, and the like, they all

thought that they had found a real explanation; and were content to rest

in this explanation as ultimate. The ordinary sequences of the external

universe appeared to them, no less than to their critic, to be

inconceivable without the supposition of some universal agency to

connect the antecedents with the consequents; but they did not think

that Volition, exerted by minds, was the only agency which fulfilled

this requirement. Moisture, or air, or numbers, carried to their minds a

precisely similar impression of making intelligible what was otherwise

inconceivable, and gave the same full satisfaction to the demands of

their conceptive faculty.

It was not the Greeks alone, who "wanted to see some reason why the

physical antecedent should produce this particular consequent," some

connexion "which would _per se_ carry some presumption to their own

mind." Among modern philosophers, Leibnitz laid it down as a

self-evident principle that all physical causes without exception must

contain in their own nature something which makes it intelligible that

they should be able to produce the effects which they do produce. Far

from admitting Volition as the only kind of cause which carried internal

evidence of its own power, and as the real bond of connexion between

physical antecedents and their consequents, he demanded some naturally

and _per se_ efficient physical antecedent as the bond of connexion

between Volition itself and its effects. He distinctly refused to admit

the will of God as a sufficient explanation of anything except miracles;

and insisted upon finding something that would account _better_ for the

phenomena of nature than a mere reference to divine volition.[26]

Again, and conversely, the action of mind upon matter (which, we are now

told, not only needs no explanation itself, but is the explanation of

all other effects), has appeared to some thinkers to be itself the grand

inconceivability. It was to get over this very difficulty that the

Cartesians invented the system of Occasional Causes. They could not

conceive that thoughts in a mind could produce movements in a body, or

that bodily movements could produce thoughts. They could see no

necessary connexion, no relation _à priori_, between a motion and a

thought. And as the Cartesians, more than any other school of

philosophical speculation before or since, made their own minds the

measure of all things, and refused, on principle, to believe that Nature

had done what they were unable to see any reason why she must do, they

affirmed it to be impossible that a material and a mental fact could be

causes one of another. They regarded them as mere Occasions on which the

real agent, God, thought fit to exert his power as a Cause. When a man

wills to move his foot, it is not his will that moves it, but God (they

said) moves it on the occasion of his will. God, according to this

system, is the only efficient cause, not _quâ_ mind, or _quâ_ endowed

with volition, but _quâ_ omnipotent. This hypothesis was, as I said,

originally suggested by the supposed inconceivability of any real mutual

action between Mind and Matter: but it was afterwards extended to the

action of Matter upon Matter, for on a nicer examination they found this

inconceivable too, and therefore, according to their logic, impossible.

The _deus ex machinâ_ was ultimately called in to produce a spark on the

occasion of a flint and steel coming together, or to break an egg on the

occasion of its falling on the ground.

All this, undoubtedly, shows that it is the disposition of mankind in

general, not to be satisfied with knowing that one fact is invariably

antecedent and another consequent, but to look out for something which

may seem to explain their being so. But we also see that this demand may

be completely satisfied by an agency purely physical, provided it be

much more familiar than that which it is invoked to explain. To Thales

and Anaximenes, it appeared inconceivable that the antecedents which we

see in nature, should produce the consequents; but perfectly natural

that water, or air, should produce them. The writers whom I oppose

declare this inconceivable, but can conceive that mind, or volition, is

_per se_ an efficient cause: while the Cartesians could not conceive

even that, but peremptorily declared that no mode of production of any

fact whatever was conceivable, except the direct agency of an omnipotent

being. Thus giving additional proof of what finds new confirmation in

every stage of the history of science: that both what persons can, and

what they cannot, conceive, is very much an affair of accident, and

depends altogether on their experience, and their habits of thought;

that by cultivating the requisite associations of ideas, people may make

themselves unable to conceive any given thing; and may make themselves

able to conceive most things, however inconceivable these may at first

appear: and the same facts in each person's mental history which

determine what is or is not conceivable to him, determine also which

among the various sequences in nature will appear to him so natural and

plausible, as to need no other proof of their existence; to be evident

by their own light, independent equally of experience and of

explanation.

By what rule is any one to decide between one theory of this description

and another? The theorists do not direct us to any external evidence;

they appeal each to his own subjective feelings. One says, the

succession C, B, appears to me more natural, conceivable, and credible

_per se_, than the succession A, B; you are therefore mistaken in

thinking that B depends upon A; I am certain, though I can give no other

evidence of it, that C comes in between A and B, and is the real and

only cause of B. The other answers--the successions C, B, and A, B,

appear to me equally natural and conceivable, or the latter more so than

the former: A is quite capable of producing B without any other

intervention. A third agrees with the first in being unable to conceive

that A can produce B, but finds the sequence D, B, still more natural

than C, B, or of nearer kin to the subject matter, and prefers his D

theory to the C theory. It is plain that there is no universal law

operating here, except the law that each person's conceptions are

governed and limited by his individual experience and habits of thought.

We are warranted in saying of all three, what each of them already

believes of the other two, namely, that they exalt into an original law

of the human intellect and of outward nature, one particular sequence of

phenomena, which appears to them more natural and more conceivable than

other sequences, only because it is more familiar. And from this

judgment I am unable to except the theory, that Volition is an Efficient

Cause.

I am unwilling to leave the subject without adverting to the additional

fallacy contained in the corollary from this theory; in the inference

that because Volition is an efficient cause, therefore it is the only

cause, and the direct agent in producing even what is apparently

produced by something else. Volitions are not known to produce anything

directly except nervous action, for the will influences even the muscles

only through the nerves. Though it were granted, then, that every

phenomenon has an efficient, and not merely a phenomenal cause, and that

volition, in the case of the peculiar phenomena which are known to be

produced by it, is that efficient cause; are we therefore to say, with

these writers, that since we know of no other efficient cause, and ought

not to assume one without evidence, there _is_ no other, and volition is

the direct cause of all phenomena? A more outrageous stretch of

inference could hardly be made. Because among the infinite variety of

the phenomena of nature there is one, namely, a particular mode of

action of certain nerves, which has for its cause, and as we are now

supposing for its efficient cause, a state of our mind; and because this

is the only efficient cause of which we are conscious, being the only

one of which in the nature of the case we _can_ be conscious, since it

is the only one which exists within ourselves; does this justify us in

concluding that all other phenomena must have the same kind of efficient

cause with that one eminently special, narrow, and peculiarly human or

animal, phenomenon? The nearest parallel to this specimen of

generalization is suggested by the recently revived controversy on the

old subject of Plurality of Worlds, in which the contending parties have

been so conspicuously successful in overthrowing one another. Here also

we have experience only of a single case, that of the world in which we

live, but that this is inhabited we know absolutely, and without

possibility of doubt. Now if on this evidence any one were to infer that

every heavenly body without exception, sun, planet, satellite, comet,

fixed star or nebula, is inhabited, and must be so from the inherent

constitution of things, his inference would exactly resemble that of the

writers who conclude that because volition is the efficient cause of our

own bodily motions, it must be the efficient cause of everything else in

the universe. It is true there are cases in which, with acknowledged

propriety, we generalize from a single instance to a multitude of

instances. But they must be instances which resemble the one known

instance, and not such as have no circumstance in common with it except

that of being instances. I have, for example, no direct evidence that

any creature is alive except myself: yet I attribute, with full

assurance, life and sensation to other human beings and animals. But I

do not conclude that all other things are alive merely because I am. I

ascribe to certain other creatures a life like my own, because they

manifest it by the same sort of indications by which mine is manifested.

I find that their phenomena and mine conform to the same laws, and it is

for this reason that I believe both to arise from a similar cause.

Accordingly I do not extend the conclusion beyond the grounds for it.

Earth, fire, mountains, trees, are remarkable agencies, but their

phenomena do not conform to the same laws as my actions do, and I

therefore do not believe earth or fire, mountains or trees, to possess

animal life. But the supporters of the Volition Theory ask us to infer

that volition causes everything, for no reason except that it causes one

particular thing; although that one phenomenon, far from being a type of

all natural phenomena, is eminently peculiar; its laws bearing scarcely

any resemblance to those of any other phenomenon, whether of inorganic

or of organic nature.

NOTE SUPPLEMENTARY TO THE PRECEDING CHAPTER.

The author of the Second Burnett Prize Essay (Dr. Tulloch), who

has employed a considerable number of pages in controverting

the doctrines of the preceding chapter, has somewhat surprised

me by denying a fact, which I imagined too well known to

require proof--that there have been philosophers who found in

physical explanations of phenomena the same complete mental

satisfaction which we are told is only given by volitional

explanation, and others who denied the Volitional Theory on the

same ground of inconceivability on which it is defended. The

assertion of the Essayist is countersigned still more

positively by an able reviewer of the Essay:[27] "Two

illustrations," says the reviewer, "are advanced by Mr. Mill:

the case of Thales and Anaximenes, stated by him to have

maintained, the one Moisture and the other Air to be the origin

of all things; and that of Descartes and Leibnitz, whom he

asserts to have found the action of Mind upon Matter the grand

inconceivability. In counterstatement as to the first of these

cases the author shows--what we believe now hardly admits of

doubt--that the Greek philosophers distinctly recognised as

beyond and above their primal material source, the [Greek:

nous], or Divine Intelligence, as the efficient and originating

Source of all: and as to the second, by proof that it was the

_mode_, not the _fact_, of that action on matter, which was

represented as inconceivable."

A greater quantity of historical error has seldom been

comprised in a single sentence. With regard to Thales, the

assertion that he considered water as a mere material in the

hands of [Greek: nous] rests on a passage of Cicero _de Naturâ

Deorum_: and whoever will refer to any of the accurate

historians of philosophy, will find that they treat this as a

mere fancy of Cicero, resting on no authority, opposed to all

the evidence; and make surmises as to the manner in which

Cicero may have been led into the error. (See Ritter, vol. i.

p. 211, 2nd ed.; Brandis, vol. i. pp. 118-9, 1st ed.; Preller,

_Historia Philosophiæ Græco-Romanæ_, p. 10. "Schiefe Ansicht,

durchaus zu verwerfen;" "augenscheinlich folgernd statt zu

berichten;" "quibus vera sententia Thaletis plane detorquetur;"

are the expressions of these writers.) As for Anaximenes, he,

even according to Cicero, maintained, not that air was the

material out of which God made the world, but that the air was

a god: "Anaximenes aëra deum statuit:" or according to St.

Augustine, that it was the material out of which the gods were

made; "non tamen ab ipsis [Diis] aërem factum, sed ipsos ex

aëre ortos credidit." Those who are not familiar with the

metaphysical terminology of antiquity, must not be misled by

finding it stated that Anaximenes attributed [Greek: psychê]

(translated _soul_, or _life_) to his universal element, the

air. The Greek philosophers acknowledged several kinds of

[Greek: psychê], the nutritive, the sensitive, and the

intellective.[28] Even the moderns with admitted correctness

attribute life to plants. As far as we can make out the meaning

of Anaximenes, he made choice of Air as the universal agent, on

the ground that it is perpetually in motion, without any

apparent cause external to itself: so that he conceived it as

exercising spontaneous force, and as the principle of life and

activity in all things, men and gods inclusive. If this be not

representing it as the Efficient Cause, the dispute altogether

has no meaning.

If either Anaximenes, or Thales, or any of their cotemporaries,

had held the doctrine that [Greek: nous] was the Efficient

Cause, that doctrine could not have been reputed, as it was

throughout antiquity, to have originated with Anaxagoras. The

testimony of Aristotle, in the first book of his Metaphysics,

is perfectly decisive with respect to these early speculations.

After enumerating four kinds of causes, or rather four

different meanings of the word Cause, viz. the Essence of a

thing, the Matter of it, the Origin of Motion (Efficient

Cause), and the End or Final Cause, he proceeds to say, that

most of the early philosophers recognised only the second kind

of Cause, the Matter of a thing, [Greek: tas en hylês eidei

monas ôêthêsan archas einai pantôn]. As his first example he

specifies Thales, whom he describes as taking the lead in this

view of the subject, [Greek: ho tês toiautês archêgos

philosophias], and goes on to Hippon, Anaximenes, Diogenes (of

Apollonia), Hippasus of Metapontum, Heraclitus, and Empedocles.

Anaxagoras, however, (he proceeds to say,) taught a different

doctrine, as we know, and it is _alleged_ that Hermotimus of

Clazomenæ taught it before him. Anaxagoras represented, that

even if these various theories of the universal material were

true, there would be need of some other cause to account for

the transformations of the material, since the material cannot

originate its own changes: [Greek: ou gar dê to ge hypokeimenon

auto poiei metaballein heauto; legô d' oion oute to xylon oute

ho chalkos aitios tou metaballein hekateron autôn, oude poiei

to men xylon klinên ho de chalkos andrianta, all' heteron ti

tês metabolês aition], viz., the other kind of cause [Greek:

hothen hê archê tês kinêseôs]--an Efficient Cause. Aristotle

expresses great approbation of this doctrine (which he says

made its author appear the only sober man among persons raving,

[Greek: oion nêphôn ephanê par' eikê legontas tous proteron]);

but while describing the influence which it exercised over

subsequent speculation, he remarks that the philosophers

against whom this, as he thinks, insuperable difficulty was

urged, had not felt it to be any difficulty: [Greek: ouden

edyscheranan en heautois]. It is surely unnecessary to say more

in proof of the matter of fact which Dr. Tulloch and his

reviewer deny.

Having pointed out what he thinks the error of these early

speculators in not recognising the need of an efficient cause,

Aristotle goes on to mention two other efficient causes to

which they might have had recourse, instead of intelligence:

[Greek: tychê], chance, and [Greek: to automaton], spontaneity.

He indeed puts these aside as not sufficiently worthy causes

for the order in the universe, [Greek: oud' au tô automatô kai

tê tychê tosouton epitrepsai pragma kalôs eichen]: but he does

not reject them as incapable of producing any effect, but only

as incapable of producing _that_ effect. He himself recognises

[Greek: tychê] and [Greek: to automaton] as co-ordinate agents

with Mind in producing the phenomena of the universe; the

department allotted to them being composed of all the classes

of phenomena which are not supposed to follow any uniform law.

By thus including Chance among efficient causes, Aristotle fell

into an error which philosophy has now outgrown, but which is

by no means so alien to the spirit even of modern speculation

as it may at first sight appear. Up to quite a recent period

philosophers went on ascribing, and many of them have not yet

ceased to ascribe, a real existence to the results of

abstraction. Chance could make out as good a title to that

dignity as many other of the mind's abstract creations: it had

had a name given to it, and why should it not be a reality? As

for [Greek: to automaton], it is recognised even yet as one of

the modes of origination of phenomena, by all those thinkers

who maintain what is called the Freedom of the Will. The same

self-determining power which that doctrine attributes to

volitions, was supposed by the ancients to be possessed also by

some other natural phenomena: a circumstance which throws

considerable light on more than one of the supposed invincible

necessities of belief. I have introduced it here, because this

belief of Aristotle, or rather of the Greek philosophers

generally, is as fatal as the doctrines of Thales and the Ionic

school, to the theory that the human mind is compelled by its

constitution to conceive volition as the origin of all force,

and the efficient cause of all phenomena.[29]

With regard to the modern philosophers (Leibnitz and the

Cartesians) whom I had cited as having maintained that the

action of mind upon matter, so far from being the only

conceivable origin of material phenomena, is itself

inconceivable; the attempt to rebut this argument by asserting

that the mode, not the fact, of the action of mind on matter

was represented as inconceivable, is an abuse of the privilege

of writing confidently about authors without reading them: for

any knowledge whatever of Leibnitz would have taught those who

thus speak of him, that the inconceivability of the mode, and

the impossibility of the thing, were in his mind convertible

expressions. What was his famous Principle of the Sufficient

Reason, the very corner stone of his philosophy, from which the

Preestablished Harmony, the doctrine of Monads, and all the

opinions most characteristic of Leibnitz, were corollaries? It

was, that nothing exists, the existence of which is not capable

of being proved and explained _à priori_; the proof and

explanation in the case of contingent facts being derived from

the nature of their causes; which could not be the causes

unless there was something in their nature showing them to be

capable of producing those particular effects. And this

"something" which accounts for the production of physical

effects, he was able to find in many physical causes, but could

not find it in any finite minds, which therefore he

unhesitatingly asserted to be incapable of producing any

physical effects whatever. "On ne saurait concevoir," he says,

"une action réciproque de la matière et de l'intelligence l'une

sur l'autre," and there is therefore (he contends) no choice

but between the Occasional Causes of the Cartesians, and his

own Preestablished Harmony, according to which there is no more

connexion between our volitions and our muscular actions than

there is between two clocks which are wound up to strike at the

same instant. But he felt no similar difficulty as to physical

causes: and throughout his speculations, as in the passage I

have already cited respecting gravitation, he distinctly

refuses to consider as part of the order of nature any fact

which is not explicable from the nature of its physical cause.

With regard to the Cartesians (not Descartes; I did not make

that mistake, though the reviewer of Dr. Tulloch's Essay

attributes it to me) I take a passage almost at random from

Malebranche, who is the best known of the Cartesians, and,

though not the inventor of the system of Occasional Causes, is

its principal expositor. In Part 2, chap. 3, of his Sixth Book,

having first said that matter cannot have the power of moving

itself, he proceeds to argue that neither can mind have the

power of moving it. "Quand on examine l'idée que l'on a de tous

les esprits finis, on ne voit point de liaison nécessaire entre

leur volonté et le mouvement de quelque corps que ce soit, on

voit au contraire qu'il n'y en a point, et qu'il n'y en peut

avoir;" (there is nothing in the idea of finite mind which can

account for its causing the motion of a body;) "on doit aussi

conclure, si on veut raisonner selon ses lumières, qu'il n'y a

aucun esprit créé qui puisse remuer quelque corps que ce soit

comme cause véritable ou principale, de même que l'on a dit

qu'aucun corps ne se pouvait remuer soi-même:" thus the idea of

Mind is according to him as incompatible as the idea of Matter

with the exercise of active force. But when, he continues, we

consider not a created but a Divine Mind, the case is altered;

for the idea of a Divine Mind includes omnipotence; and the

idea of omnipotence does contain the idea of being able to move

bodies. Thus it is the nature of omnipotence which renders the

motion of bodies even by the divine mind credible or

conceivable, while, so far as depended on the mere nature of

mind, it would have been inconceivable and incredible. If

Malebranche had not believed in an omnipotent being, he would

have held all action of mind on body to be a demonstrated

impossibility.[30]

A doctrine more precisely the reverse of the Volitional theory

of causation cannot well be imagined. The volitional theory is,

that we know by intuition or by direct experience the action of

our own mental volitions on matter; that we may hence infer all

other action upon matter to be that of volition, and might thus

know, without any other evidence, that matter is under the

government of a divine mind. Leibnitz and the Cartesians, on

the contrary, maintain that our volitions do not and cannot act

upon matter, and that it is only the existence of an

all-governing Being, and that Being omnipotent, which can

account for the sequence between our volitions and our bodily

actions. When we consider that each of these two theories,

which, as theories of causation, stand at the opposite extremes

of possible divergence from one another, invokes not only as

its evidence, but as its sole evidence, the absolute

inconceivability of any theory but itself, we are enabled to

measure the worth of this kind of evidence; and when we find

the Volitional theory entirely built upon the assertion that by

our mental constitution we are compelled to recognise our

volitions as efficient causes, and then find other thinkers

maintaining that we know that they are not, and cannot be such

causes, and cannot conceive them to be so, I think we have a

right to say, that this supposed law of our mental constitution

does not exist.

Dr. Tulloch (pp. 45-7) thinks it a sufficient answer to this,

that Leibnitz and the Cartesians were Theists, and believed the

will of God to be an efficient cause. Doubtless they did, and

the Cartesians even believed, though Leibnitz did not, that it

is the only such cause. Dr. Tulloch mistakes the nature of the

question. I was not writing on Theism, as Dr. Tulloch is, but

against a particular theory of causation, which if it be

unfounded, can give no effective support to Theism or to

anything else. I found it asserted that volition is the only

efficient cause, on the ground that no other efficient cause is

conceivable. To this assertion I oppose the instances of

Leibnitz and of the Cartesians, who affirmed with equal

positiveness that volition as an efficient cause is itself not

conceivable, and that omnipotence, which renders all things

conceivable, can alone take away the impossibility. This I

thought, and think, a conclusive answer to the argument on

which this theory of causation avowedly depends. But I

certainly did not imagine that Theism was bound up with that

theory; nor expected to be charged with denying Leibnitz and

the Cartesians to be Theists because I denied that they held

the theory.