100. OBJECTIVE VALIDITY OF THE TRADITIONAL CONCEPT OF EFFICIENT
CAUSALITY.—We have seen how modern sensists, phenomenists, and positivists
have doubted or denied the power of the human mind to attain to a
knowledge of any objective reality corresponding to the category of
substance (§§ 61 _sqq._). They treat in a similar way the traditional
concept of efficient causality. And in delivering their open or veiled
attacks on the real validity of this notion they have made a misleading
use of the proper and legitimate function of the inductive sciences. The
chief aim of the natural scientist is to seek out and bring to light the
_whole group of necessitating and indispensable_ (phenomenal)
_antecedents_ of any given kind of event, and to formulate the natural law
of their connexion with this kind of event. There is no particular
objection to his calling these antecedents the _invariable_, or even the
_necessary_ or _necessitating_, antecedents of the event; provided he does
not claim what he cannot prove—and what, as we shall see later (104), is
not true, _viz._—that the invariability or necessity of this connexion
between phenomenal antecedents and consequents is wholly inviolable,
fatal, absolute in character. He may rightly claim for any such
established connexion the hypothetical, conditional necessity which
characterizes all inductively established laws of physical nature. There
are such antecedents and consequents in the universe; there are connexions
between them which are more than mere _casual_ connexions of _time
sequence_, which are connexions of physical law, inasmuch as they are
connexions based on the _natures_ of agencies in an _orderly_ universe,
connexions of these agencies with their natural effects. All this is
undeniable. Moreover, so long as _the scientist_ confines himself to
inferences concerning such connexions between phenomena, to inferences and
generalizations based on the assumed uniformity of nature, he is working
in his proper sphere. Nay, even if he chooses to designate these groups of
invariable phenomenal antecedents by the title of “physical causes” we
know what he means; though we perceive some danger of confusion, inasmuch
as we see him arrogating to the notion of regularity or uniformity of
connexion _i.e._ to the notion of _physical law_, a term, _causality_,
which traditionally expressed something quite distinct from this, _viz._
the notion of _positive influence_ of one thing on the being or happening
of another. But when _phenomenist philosophers_ adopt this usage we cannot
feel reassured against the danger of confusion by such protestations as
those of Mill in the following passage:—(469)
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 by
experience. The Law of Causation, 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 considerations respecting the ultimate mode of production
of phenomena, and of every other question regarding the nature of
“Things in themselves”.
This passage—which expresses fairly well the phenomenist and positivist
attitude in regard to the reality, or at least the cognoscibility, of
_efficient_ causes—fairly bristles with inaccuracies, misconceptions, and
false insinuations.(470) But we are concerned here only with the denial
that any notion of an _efficient_ cause “can be gained from experience,”
and the doubt consequently cast on the objective validity of this notion.
The Sensism which regards our highest intellectual activities as mere
organic associations of sentient states of consciousness, has for its
logical issue the Positivism which contends that all valid knowledge is
confined to the existence and time and space relations of sense phenomena.
In thus denying to the mind all power of attaining to a valid knowledge of
anything suprasensible—such as substance, power, force, efficient cause,
etc.—Positivism passes over into Agnosticism.
In refutation of this philosophy, in so far as it denies that we have any
grounds in experience for believing in the real existence of efficient
causes, we may set down in the first place this universal belief itself of
the human race that there are in the universe efficient causes of the
events that happen in it. Men universally believe that they themselves as
agents contribute by a real and positive influence to the actual
occurrence of their own thoughts, reasonings, wishes, desires, sensations;
that their mental resolves to speak, walk, write, eat, or perform any
other external, bodily works do really, positively, and efficiently
produce or cause those works; that external phenomena have a real
influence on happenings in their own bodies, that fire burns them and food
nourishes them; that external phenomena also have a real and positive
influence on their sense organs, and through these on their minds by the
production there of conscious states such as sensations; finally that
external phenomena have a real and positive influence on one another; that
by action and interaction they really produce the changes that are
constantly taking place in the universe: that the sun does really heat and
light the earth, that the sowing of the seed in springtime has really a
positive influence on the existence of crops in the harvest, that the
taking of poison has undoubtedly a real influence on the death which
results from it. And if any man of ordinary intelligence and plain common
sense is told that such belief is an illusion, that in all such cases the
connexion between the things, facts or events which he designates as
“cause” and “effect,” is a mere connexion of invariable time sequence
between antecedents and consequents, that in no case is there evidence of
any _positive, productive influence_ of the one fact upon the other, he
will either smile incredulously and decline to take his objector
seriously, or he will simply ask the latter to _prove_ the universal
belief to be an illusion. His conviction of the real and objective
validity of his notion of efficient cause, as something which positively
influences the happening of things, is so profound and ineradicable that
it must necessarily be grounded in, and confirmed by, his constant
experience of the real world in which he lives and moves. Not that he
professes to be able to explain the _nature_ of this efficient influence
in which he believes. Even if he were a philosopher he might not be able
to satisfy himself or others on this point But being a plain man of
ordinary intelligence he has sense enough to distinguish between the
_existence_ of a fact and its _nature_, its explanation, its _quomodo_;
and to believe in the real existence of a _positive efficient, productive_
influence of cause on effect, however this influence is to be conceived or
explained.
A second argument for the objective validity of the concept of efficient
cause may be drawn from a consideration of the _Principle of Causality_.
The experience on which the plain man grounds his belief in the validity
of his notion of cause is not mere uninterpreted sense experience in its
raw and brute condition, so to speak; it is this sense experience
rationalized, assimilated into his intelligence—spontaneously and half
unconsciously, perhaps—by the light of the self-evident Principle of
Causality, that whatever happens has a cause. When the plain man believes
that all the various agencies in nature, like those enumerated above, are
not merely _temporal_ antecedents or concomitants of their effects, but
are _really productive_ of those effects, he is really applying the
universal and necessary truth—that an “event,” a “happening,” a “change,”
a “commencement” of any new actual mode of being demands the existence of
another actual being as cause—the truth embodied in the Principle of
Causality, to this, that, and the other event of his experience: he is
_locating_ the “causes” of these events in the various persons and things
which he regards as the agents or producers of these events. In making
such applications he may very possibly err in detail. But no actual
application of the principle at all is really required for establishing
the objective validity of the concept of cause. There are philosophers
who—erroneously, as we shall see—deny that the Principle of Causality
finds its application in the domain of _created_ things, who hold, in
other words, that no created beings can be efficient causes (102), and who
nevertheless recognize, and quite rightly, that the concept of efficient
cause is an objectively valid concept. And they do so because they see
that since events, beginnings, happenings, changes, are real, there must
be really and objectively existent an efficient cause of them—whatever and
wherever such efficient cause may be: whether it be one or manifold,
finite or infinite, etc.
We have already examined Hume’s attempt to deny the ontological
necessity of the Principle of Causality and to substitute therefor
a subjectively or psychologically necessary “feeling of
expectation” grounded on habitual association of ideas. Kant, on
the other hand, admits the self-evident, necessary character of
the Principle; but holds that, since this necessity is engendered
by the mind’s imposing a subjective form of thought on the data of
sense consciousness, the principle is validly applicable only to
connexions within the world of mental appearances, and not at all
to the world of real being. He thus transfers the discussion to
the domain of Epistemology, where in opposition to his theory of
knowledge the Principle of Causality can be shown to be applicable
to all contingent reality, and to be therefore legitimately
employed in Natural Theology for the purpose of establishing the
real existence of an Uncaused First Cause.
101. ORIGIN OF THE CONCEPT OF EFFICIENT CAUSE.—We have seen that universal
belief in the real existence of efficient causes is grounded in
experience. The formation of the concept, and its application or extension
to the world within and around us, are gradual.(471) Active power, force,
energy, efficiency, faculty, or by whatever other name we may call it, is
of course experienced only in its actual exercise, in action, motion,
production of change. Our first experience of its exercise is found in our
consciousness of our own personal activities, mental and bodily: in our
thinking, willing or choosing, in our deliberate control of our mental
processes, and in the deliberate exercise of our sense faculties and
bodily organs. In all this we are conscious of exerting power, force,
energy: we apprehend _ourselves_ as agents or efficient causes of our
mental processes and bodily movements. We apprehend these happenings as
due to the exercise of _our own power to produce them_. Seeing other human
beings behave like ourselves, we infer by analogy that they also possess
and exercise active powers like our own, that they, too, are efficient
causes. Finally, observing that effects like to those produced by
ourselves, whether in ourselves or in the material world around us, are
also consequent on certain other changes in external nature, whether
organic or inorganic, we infer by analogy that these corporeal things have
also powers, forces, energies, whereby they produce these effects. While
our senses testify only to time and space connexions between physical
happenings in external nature, our intellect apprehends action and
interaction, _i.e._ causal dependence of events on the active influence or
efficiency of physical things as agents or causes.(472) Thus, our
knowledge of the existence and nature of the forces, powers and energies
which constitute _material_ things efficient causes is posterior to, and
derived by analogy from, our knowledge of the _mental_ and bodily powers
which reveal themselves to us in our conscious vital processes as
constituting our own personal efficient causality.
This conception of efficient causality even in the inanimate things of
external nature, _after the analogy of our own vital powers_ as revealed
in our conscious activities, is sometimes disparaged as naïve
anthropomorphism. It just depends on the manner and degree in which we
press the analogy. Observing that our earlier notion of cause is “the
notion of power combined with a purpose and an end” (thus including
_efficient_ and _final_ causality), Newman remarks(473) that “Accordingly,
wherever the world is young, the movements and changes of physical nature
have been and are spontaneously ascribed by its people to the presence and
will of hidden agents, who haunt every part of it, the woods, the
mountains and the streams, the air and the stars, for good or for
evil—just as children again, by beating the ground after falling, imply
that what has bruised them has intelligence”. This is anthropomorphism.
So, too, would be the conception of the forces or powers of inanimate
nature as powers of sub-conscious “_perception_” and “_appetition_”
(Leibniz), or, again, as rudimentary or diminished “will-power”
(Cousin).(474) “Physical phenomena, as such, are without sense,” as Newman
rightly observes; and consequently we may not attribute to them any sort
of conscious efficiency, whether perceptive or appetitive. But Newman
appears to err in the opposite direction when he adds that “experience
teaches us nothing about physical phenomena as causes”.(475) The truth
lies between these extremes. Taking experience in the wide sense in which
it includes rational interpretation of, and inference from, the data of
internal and external sense perception, experience certainly reveals to us
the _existence_ of physical phenomena as efficient causes, or in other
words that there is real and efficient causality not only in our own
persons but also in the external physical universe; and as to the _nature_
of this causality it also gives us at least some little reliable
information.
By pursuing this latter question a little we shall be led to examine
certain difficulties which lie at the root of _Occasionalism_: the error
of denying that creatures, or at least merely corporeal creatures, can be
in any true sense efficient causes. A detailed inquiry into the nature of
the active powers, forces or energies of the inorganic universe, _i.e._
into the nature of _corporeal_ efficient causality, belongs to Cosmology;
just as a similar inquiry into _vital_, _sentient_ and _spiritual_
efficient causality belongs to Psychology. Here we have only to ascertain
what is common and essential to all efficient causality as such, what in
general is involved in the exercise of efficient causality, in _actio_ and
_passio_, and what are the main implications revealed in a study of it.
102. ANALYSIS OF EFFICIENT CAUSALITY, OR _Actio_ AND _Passio_: (_a_) THE
FIRST CAUSE AND CREATED CAUSES.—We have already referred to the universal
dependence of all created causes on the First Cause; and we shall have
occasion to return to it in connexion with Occasionalism. God has created
all second causes; He has given them their powers of action; He conserves
their being and their powers in existence; He applies these powers or puts
them in act; He concurs with all their actions; He is therefore the
_principal_ cause of all their effects; and in relation to Him they are as
instrumental causes: “Deus est causa actionis cujuslibet inquantum _dat_
virtutem agendi, et inquantum _conservat_ eam, et inquantum _applicat_
actioni, et inquantum _ejus virtute_ omnis alia virtus agit.”(476)
In our analysis of change (10) we saw why no finite, created agent can be
the _adequate_ cause of the _new actualities_ or perfections involved in
change, and how we are therefore obliged, by a necessity of thought, to
infer the existence of a First Cause, an Unchanging, Infinite Source of
these new actualities.(477)
The principle upon which the argument was based is this: that the
actuality of the effect is something over and above the reality which it
had in the passive potentiality of its created material cause and in the
active powers of its created efficient cause antecedently to its
production: that therefore the production of this actuality, this _novum
esse_, implies the influence—by way of co-operation or _concursus_ with
the created efficient cause—of an Actual Being in whom the actuality of
all effects is contained in an eminently perfect way. Even with the Divine
_concursus_ a created cause cannot itself _create_, because even with this
_concursus_ its efficiency attains only to the modifying or changing of
pre-existing being: and in creation there is no pre-existing being, no
material cause, no real passive potentiality to be actuated. But _without_
this _concursus_ not only can it not create; it cannot even, as an
efficient cause, actuate a real pre-existing potentiality. And why?
Because its efficiency cannot attain to the _production of new actuality_.
It determines the mode of this actuality, and therein precisely lies the
efficiency of the created cause. But _the positive entity or perfection_
of this new actuality can be produced only by the Infinite, Changeless,
Inexhaustible Source of all actuality, co-operating with the created
cause(478) (103).
But, it might be objected, perhaps created efficient causes are themselves
the adequate and absolutely independent principles of the whole actuality
of their effects? They cannot be such; and that for the simple reason that
they are not always _in act_. Were they such they should be always and
necessarily in act: they should always and necessarily contain in
themselves, and that actually and in an eminently perfect manner, all the
perfections of all the effects which they gradually produce in the
universe. But experience shows us that created causes are not always
acting, that their active power, their causality _in actu primo_ is not to
be identified with their action, their causality _in actu secundo_; and
reason tells us that since this is so, since action is something more than
_active power_, since a cause acting has more actuality than the same
cause not acting, it must have been determined or reduced to action by
some actuality other than itself. This surplus of actuality or perfection
in an acting cause, as compared with the same cause prior to its acting,
is the Divine _concursus_. In other words, an active power which is really
distinct from its action requires to be moved or reduced to _its_ act
(which is _actio_) no less than a passive potentiality required to be
moved to _its_ act (which is _passio_), by some really distinct actual
being. A created efficient cause, therefore, by passing from the state of
rest, or mere power to act, into the state of action, is perfected by
having its active power actualized, _i.e._ by the Divine _concursus_: in
this sense action is a perfection of the agent. But it is not an
entitative perfection of the latter’s essence; it is not a permanent or
stable elevation or perfection of the latter’s powers; it is not the
completion of any passive potentiality of the latter; nor therefore is it
properly speaking a _change_ of the agent as such; it is, as we have said
already, rather an index of the latter’s perfection in the scale of real
being.(479) Action really perfects the _patiens_; and only when this is
identical in its concrete individuality with the _agens_ is the latter
permanently perfected by the action.
The action of created causes, therefore, depends on the action of the
First Cause. We derive our notion of action from the former and apply it
analogically to the latter. If we compare them we shall find that,
notwithstanding many differences, the notion of action in general involves
a “simple” or “unmixed” perfection which can, without anthropomorphism, be
applied analogically to the Divine Action. The Divine Action is identical
with the Divine Power and the Divine Essence. In creatures essence, power
and action are really distinct. The Divine Action, when creative, has not
for its term a _change_ in the strict sense (10, 11), for it produces
being _ex nihilo_, whereas the action of creatures cannot have for term
the production of new being _ex nihilo_, but only the change of
pre-existing being. The Divine Action, whether in creating or conserving
or concurring with creatures, implies in God no real transition from power
to act; whereas the action of creatures does imply such transition in
them. Such are the differences; but with them there is this point of
agreement: the Divine Action implies in God an efficiency which has for
its term _the origin of new being dependently on this efficiency_.(480)
So, too, does the _action of creatures_. _Positive efficient influence on
the one side, and the origin, production, or _“fieri”_ of new actual being
on the other, with a relation of real dependence on this efficiency_: such
is the essential note of all efficient causality, whether of God or of
creatures.(481)
103. (_b_) ACTIO IMMANENS AND ACTIO TRANSIENS.—Let us compare in the next
place the perfectly immanent spiritual causality of thought, the less
perfectly immanent organic causality of living things, and the transitive
physical causality of the agencies of inorganic nature. The term of an
immanent action remains either within the very faculty which elicits it,
affecting this faculty as a habit: thus acts of thought terminate in the
intellectual habits called _sciences_, acts of free choice in the habits
of will called _virtues_ or _vices_.(482) Or it remains at least within
the agent: as when in the vital process of nutrition the various parts and
members of the living organism so interact as procure the growth and
development of the living individual which is the cause of these
functions.(483) In those cases the agent itself is the _patiens_, whereas
every agency in the inorganic universe acts not upon itself, but only on
some other thing, _transitively_. But immanent action, no less than
transitive action, is productive of real change—not, of course, in the
physical sense in which this term is identified with “motion” and
understood of corporeal change, but in the metaphysical sense of an
_actuation of some passive potentiality_ (10, 11).(484)
What, then, do we find common to the immanent and the transitive causality
of created causes? _An active power or influence on the side of the agent,
an actuation of this active power_, either by the action of other causes
on this agent, or by the fulfilment of all conditions requisite for the
action of the agent, and in all cases by the concursus of the First Cause;
and, _on the side of the effect, the production of some new actuality, the
actuation of some passive potentiality, dependently on the cause_ now in
action.
Thus we see that in all cases _action_, or the exercise of efficient
causality, implies that _something which was not actual becomes actual_,
that _something which was not_, _now is_; and that this _becoming_, this
_actuation_, this _production_, is really and essentially dependent on the
influence, the efficiency, of some actual being or beings, which we
therefore call _efficient causes_.
104. ERRONEOUS THEORIES OF EFFICIENT CAUSALITY. IMAGINATION AND
THOUGHT.—Are we certain of anything more about the nature of this
connecting link between efficient cause and effect, which we call
_action_? Speculations and theories there are indeed in abundance.
Some of these can be shown to be false; and thus our knowledge of
the real nature of action may be at least negatively if not
positively perfected. Our concept of action is derived, like all
our concepts, from experience; and although we are conscious of
_spiritual_ action in the exercise of intellect and will, yet it
is inseparably allied with sentient action and this again with
organic and corporeal action. Nor can we conceive or describe
spiritual action without the aid of imagination images, or in
language other than that borrowed from the domain of corporeal
things, which are the proper object of the human intellect.(485)
Now in all this there is a danger: the danger of mistaking
imagination images for thoughts, and of giving a literal sense to
language in contexts where this language must be rightly
understood to apply only analogically.
In analysing the nature of efficient causality we might be tempted
to think that we understood it by imagining some sort of a _flow_
or _transference_ of some sort of actual reality from _agens_ to
_patiens_. It is quite true that in describing _action_, the
actual connecting link between _agens_ and _patiens_, we have to
use language suggestive of some such imagination image. We have no
option in the matter, for all human language is based upon sense
consciousness of physical phenomena. When we describe efficiency
as an “influence” of cause on effect, or the effect as “dependent”
on the cause, the former term suggests a “flowing,” just as the
latter suggests a “hanging”. So, too, when we speak of the effect
as “arising,” “originating,” “springing,” or “emanating,” from the
cause.(486) But we have got to ask ourselves what such language
_means_, _i.e._, what concepts it expresses, and not what
imagination images accompany the use of it.
Now when we reflect that the senses testify only to time and space
sequences and collocations of the phenomena which we regard as
causally connected, and when we feel convinced that there is
something more than this in the causal connexion,—which something
more we describe in the terms illustrated above,—we must inquire
whether we have any rational ground for thinking that this
something more is really anything in the nature of a spatial
transference of some actual reality from _agens_ to _patiens_.
There are indeed many philosophers and scientists who seem to
believe that there is such a local transference of some actuality
from cause to effect, that efficient causality is explained by it,
and cannot be intelligibly explained otherwise. As a matter of
fact there is no rational ground for believing in any such
transference, and even were there such transference, so far from
its being the only intelligible explanation of efficient
causality, it would leave the whole problem entirely
unexplained—and not merely the problem of spiritual, immanent
causality, to which it is manifestly inapplicable, but even the
problem of corporeal, transitive causality.(487)
We have already referred at some length (9-11) to the philosophy
which has endeavoured to reduce all change, or at least all
corporeal change, to mechanical change; all qualities, powers,
forces, energies of the universe, to ultimate particles or atoms
of matter in motion; and all efficient causality to a flow or
transference of spatial motion from particle to particle or from
body to body. A full analysis of all such theories belongs to
Cosmology. But we may recall a few of the more obvious
considerations already urged against them.
In the first place, the attempt to explain all _qualities_ in the
material universe—all the powers, forces, energies, of matter—by
maintaining that objectively and extramentally they are all purely
_quantitative_ realities, all spatial motions of matter—does not
explain the qualitative factors and distinctions in the world of
our sense experience at all, but simply transfers the problem of
explaining them from the philosophy of matter to the philosophy of
mind, by making them all subjective after the manner of Kant’s
analysis of experience (11).
In the second place, when we endeavour to conceive, to apprehend
intellectually, how _motion_, or indeed any other physical or real
entity, could actually pass or be transferred from _agens_ to
_patiens_, whether these be spatially in contact or not, we find
such a supposition positively unintelligible. Motion is not a
substance; and if it is an accident it cannot migrate from subject
to subject. The idea that corporeal efficient causality—even
mechanical causality—can be explained by such a transference of
actual accidental modes of being from _agens_ to _patiens_ is
based on a very crude and erroneous conception of what an
accidental mode of being really is (65).
The more we reflect on the nature of real change in the universe,
and of the efficient causality whereby it is realized, the more
convinced we must become that there can be no satisfactory
explanation of these facts which does not recognize and take
account of this great fundamental fact: that contingent real being
is _not all actual_, that it is partly potential and partly
actual; that therefore our concepts of “passive potentiality” and
“active power” are not mere subjective mental motions, with at
best a mere regulative or systematizing function (after the manner
of Kant’s philosophy), but that they are really and objectively
valid concepts—concepts which from the time of Aristotle have
given philosophers the only insight into the nature of efficient
causality which is at any rate satisfactory and intelligible as
far as it goes.
Of this great fact the advocates of the mechanical theory of
efficient causality have, in the third place, failed to take
account. And it is partly because with the revival of atomism at
the dawn of modern philosophy this traditional Aristotelian
conception of contingent being as potential and actual was lost
sight of (64), that such a crude and really unintelligible account
of efficient causality, as a “flow of motion,” has been able to
find such continued and widespread acceptance.
Another reason of the prevalence of this tendency to “explain” all
physical efficient causality as a propagation of spatial motions
of matter is to be found in the sensist view of the human mind
which confounds intellectual thought with mental imagery, which
countenances only _picturable_ factors in its “explanations,” and
denounces as “metaphysical,” “occult,” and “unverifiable” all
explanatory principles such as forces, powers, potentialities,
etc., which are not directly picturable in the imagination.(488)
And it is a curious fact that it is such philosophers themselves
who are really guilty of the charge which they lay at the door of
the traditional metaphysics: the charge of offering
explanations—of efficient causality, for instance—which are really
no explanations. For while they put forward their theory of the
“flow of motion” as a real explanation of the _quomodo_ of
efficient causality—and the ultimate and only explanation of it
within reach of the human mind, if we are to accept their view of
the matter—the exponent of the traditional metaphysics more
modestly confines himself to setting forth the inevitable
implications of the fact of efficient causality, and, without
purporting to offer any positive explanation of the real nature of
action or efficient influence, he is content to supplement his
analysis negatively by pointing out the unintelligible and
illusory character of their proffered “explanations”.
In the exact methods of the physical sciences, their quantitative
evaluation of all corporeal forces whether mechanical, physical,
or chemical, in terms of mechanical work, which is measured by the
motion of matter through space, and in the great physical
generalization known as the law of the equivalence of energies, or
of the equality of action and reaction,—we can detect yet further
apparent reasons for the conception of efficient causality as a
mere transference or interchange of actual physical and measurable
entities among bodies. It is an established fact not only that all
corporeal agents gradually lose their energy or power of action by
actually exercising this power, but that this loss of energy is in
direct proportion to the amount of energy gained by the recipients
of their action; and this fact would naturally suggest the mental
picture of a transference of some actual measurable entity from
cause to effect. But it does not necessarily imply such
transference—even if the latter were intelligible, which, as we
have seen, it is not. The fact is quite intelligibly explained by
the natural supposition that in proportion as the _agens_ exhausts
its active power by exercise the _patiens_ gains in some form of
actuality. Similarly, the fact that all forms of corporeal energy
can be measured in terms of mechanical energy does not at all
imply that they all _really are_ mechanical energy, but only that
natural agents can by the use of one form of energy produce
another form in equivalent quantity. And finally, the law of the
conservation of corporeal energy in the universe is explained by
the law of the equality of action and reaction, and without
recourse to the unintelligible supposition that this sum-total of
energy is one unchanging and unchangeable _actuality_.
There is just one other consideration which at first sight appears
to favour the “transference” theory of causality, but which on
analysis shows how illusory the proffered explanation is, and how
unintelligible the simplest phenomenon of change must be to those
who fail to grasp the profound significance of the principle that
all real being which is subject to change must of necessity be
_partly potential and partly actual_. We allude to the general
assumption of physical scientists that corporeal action of
whatsoever kind takes place _only on contact_, whether mediate or
immediate, between the bodies in question.(489) Now it is well to
bear in mind that this is not a self-evident truth or principle,
but only an hypothesis, a very legitimate hypothesis and one which
works admirably, but still only an hypothesis. It implies the
assumption that some sort of substance—called the universal
ether—actually exists and fills all space, serving as a medium for
the action of gravitation, light, radiant heat, electricity and
magnetism, between the earth and the other planets, the sun and
the stars. This whole supposition is the only thinkable
alternative to _actio in distans_. If those bodies really act on
one another—and the fact that they do is undeniable,—and if there
were no such medium between them, then the causal influence of one
body should be able to produce an effect in another body spatially
distant from, and not physically connected by any material medium
with, the former. Hence two questions: Is this alternative, _actio
in distans_, imaginable? _i.e._ can we form any _positive
imagination image_ of _how_ this would take place? And secondly:
Is it _thinkable_, _conceivable_, _intrinsically possible_? We
need not hesitate to answer the former question in the negative.
But as to the latter question all we can say is that we have never
met any cogent proof of the intrinsic impossibility of _actio in
distans_. The efficient action of a finite cause implies that it
has active power and is conserved in existence with this power by
the Creator or First Cause, that this power is reduced to act by
the Divine _concursus_, and that _dependently on this cause so
acting_ some change takes place, some potentiality is actualized
in some other finite being. Nothing more than this is involved in
the general concept of efficient causality. Of course real
influence on the one side, and real dependence on the other, imply
some _real_ connexion of cause with effect. But is _spatial_
connexion a necessary condition of real connexion? Is a
_physical_, _phenomenal_, _imaginable_, _efflux_ of some entity
out of the cause into the effect, either immediately or through
some medium as a channel, a necessary condition for real
influence? There is nothing of the kind in spiritual causality;
and to demand anything of the kind for causality in general would
be to make imagination, not thought, the test and measure of the
real. But perhaps _spatial_ connexion is essential to the real
connexion involved in _this particular kind_ of causality,
_corporeal_ causality? Perhaps. But it has never been proved. Too
little is known about the reality of space, about the ultimate
nature of material phenomena and their relation to our minds, to
justify anything like dogmatism on such an ultimate question. It
may well be that if we had a deeper insight into these things we
could pronounce _actio in distans_ to be absolutely incompatible
with the essences of the things which do as a matter of fact
constitute the actual corporeal universe. But in the absence of
such insight we cannot pronounce _actio in distans_ to be
intrinsically impossible. Physical scientists assume that as a
matter of fact bodies do not act _in distans_. Granted the
assumption to be correct, it still remains an open question
whether by a miracle they could act _in distans_, _i.e._ whether
or not such action would be incompatible with their nature as
finite corporeal causes.
Owing to a very natural tendency to rest in imagination images we
are inclined not only to pronounce as impossible any process the
mode of which is not positively imaginable, but also to think that
we rightly understand a process once we have provided ourselves
with an imagination image of it—when as a matter of fact this
image may cover an entirely groundless conception or theory of the
process. Hence the fairly prevalent idea that while _actio in
distans_ is impossible, _the interaction of bodies on contact_ is
perfectly intelligible and presents no difficulties. When a
billiard ball in motion strikes another at rest it communicates
some or all of its motion to the other, and that is all: nothing
simpler! And then all the physical, chemical, and substantial
changes in the material universe are reducible to this common
denominator! The atomic philosophy, with its two modest postulates
of matter and motion, is a delightfully simple philosophy; but
unfortunately for its philosophical prestige _it does not explain
causality or change_. Nor can these facts be explained by any
philosophy which ignores the most elementary implication of all
real change: the implication that changing reality involves real
passive potentialities and real active powers or forces in the
phenomena which constitute the changing reality of the universe.
105. THE SUBJECT OF EFFICIENT CAUSALITY. OCCASIONALISM.—We have
established the objective validity of the concept of efficient causality
and analysed its implications. There have been philosophers who, while
admitting the objective validity of the concept, have maintained that no
creature, or at least no corporeal creature, can be an efficient cause.
Efficient influence is, in their view, incompatible with the nature of a
corporeal substance: only spiritual substances can be efficient causes:
corporeal things, conditions, and happenings, are all only the _occasions_
on which spiritual substances act efficiently in and through all created
nature. Hence the name of the theory: _Occasionalism_. There are two forms
of it: the milder, which admits that created spirits or minds are
efficient causes; and the more extreme view, according to which no
creature can be an efficient cause, inasmuch as efficient causality is
essentially a Divine attribute, a prerogative of the Divinity.
This error was not unknown in the Middle Ages,(490) but it was in the
seventeenth century that certain disciples of Descartes,—Geulincx
(1625-1669) and Malebranche (1638-1715),—expressly inferred it from the
Cartesian antithesis of matter and spirit and the Cartesian doctrine that
matter is essentially inert, or inactive. According to the gratuitous and
unproven assertion laid down by Geulincx as a principle: _Quod nescis
quomodo fiat_, _id non facis_,—we do not cause our own sensations or
reasoning processes, nor our own bodily movements, inasmuch as we do not
know _how_ these take place; nor can bodies cause them, any more than our
own created spirits, inasmuch as bodies are essentially inactive.
According to Malebranche the mind can perceive no necessary _nexus_
between effects and any cause other than the Divine Will;(491) moreover
reflection convinces us that efficient causality is something essentially
Divine and incommunicable to creatures;(492) and finally neither bodies
can be causes, for they are essentially inert, nor our minds and wills,
for we do not know how a volition could move any organ or member of our
bodies.(493) Yet Malebranche, at the cost of inconsistency with his own
principles, safeguards free will in man by allowing an exclusively
_immanent_ efficiency to spiritual causes.(494)
Such is the teaching of Occasionalism. Our criticism of it will be
brief.(495)
(1) Against the doctrine that creatures generally are not, and cannot be,
efficient causes, we direct the first argument already outlined (100)
against Phenomenism and Positivism,—the argument from the universal belief
of mankind, based on the testimony of consciousness as rationally
interpreted by human intelligence. Consciousness testifies not merely that
processes of thought, imagination, sensation, volition, etc., _take place_
within our minds; not merely that our bodily movements, such as speaking,
walking, writing, _occur_; but that _we are the causes of them_.(496) It
is idle to say that we do not efficiently move our limbs because we may
not be able to understand or explain fully “_how_ an unextended volition
can move a material limb”.(497) Consciousness testifies to the fact that
the volition does move the limb; and that is enough.(498) The fact is one
thing, the _quomodo_ of the fact is quite another thing. Nor is there any
ground whatever for the assertion that a cause, in order to produce an
effect, must _understand how_ the exercise of its own efficiency brings
that effect about. Moreover, Malebranche’s concession of at least immanent
activity to the will is at all events an admission that there is in the
nature of the creature as such nothing incompatible with its being an
efficient cause.
(2) Although Malebranche bases his philosophy mainly on deductive, _a
priori_ reasonings from a consideration of the Divine attributes, his
system is really derogatory to the perfection of the First Cause, and
especially to the Divine Wisdom. To say, for instance, that God created an
organ so well adapted to discharge the function of seeing as the human
eye, and then to deny that the latter discharges this or any function, is
tantamount to accusing God of folly. There is no reason in this system why
any created thing or condition of things would be even the appropriate
_occasion_ of the First Cause producing any definite effect. Everything
would be an equally appropriate occasion, or rather nothing would be in
any intelligible sense an appropriate occasion, for any exercise of the
Divine causality. The admirable order of the universe—with its unity in
variety, its adaptation of means to ends, its gradation of created
perfections—is an intelligible manifestation of the Divine perfections on
the assumption that creatures efficiently co-operate with the First Cause
in realizing and maintaining this order. But if they were all inert,
inoperative, useless for this purpose, what could be the _raison d’être_
of their diversified endowments and perfections? So far from manifesting
the wisdom, power and goodness of God they would evidence an aimless and
senseless prodigality.
(3) Occasionalism imperils the distinction between creatures and a
personal God. Although Malebranche, fervent catholic that he was,
protested against the pantheism of “le misérable Spinoza,” his own system
contains the undeveloped germ of this pernicious error. For, if creatures
are not efficient causes not only are their variety and multiplicity
meaningless, as contributing nothing towards the order of the universe,
but their very existence _as distinct realities_ seems to have no _raison
d’être_. Malebranche emphasizes the truth that _God does nothing useless_:
_Dieu ne fait rien d’inutile_. Very well. If, then, a being _does
nothing_, what purpose is served by its existence? Of what use is it? What
is the measure of a creature’s reality, if not its action and its power of
action? So intimately in fact is this notion of causality bound up with
the notion of the very reality of things that the concept of an absolutely
inert, inactive reality is scarcely intelligible. It is almost an axiom in
scholastic philosophy that every nature has its correlative activity,
every being its operation: _Omne ens est propter suam operationem; Omnis
natura ordinatur ad propriam operationem_. Hence if what we call creatures
had really no proper activity distinct from that of the First Cause, on
what grounds could we suppose them to have a real and proper existence of
their own distinct from the reality of the Infinite Being? Or who could
question the lawfulness of the inference that they are not really
creatures, but only so many phases, aspects, manifestations of the one and
sole existing reality? Which is Pantheism.
(4) Occasionalism leads to Subjective Idealism by destroying all ground
for the objective validity of human science. How do we know the real
natures of things? By reasoning from their activities in virtue of the
principle, _Operari sequitur esse_.(499) But if things have no activities,
no operations, such reasoning is illusory. How, for instance, do we
justify by rational demonstration, in opposition to subjectivism, the
common-sense interpretation of the data of sense consciousness as
revealing to us the real and extramental existence of a material universe?
By arguing, in virtue of the principle of causality, from our
consciousness of our own passivity in external sense perception, to the
real existence of bodies outside our minds, as _excitants_ of our
cognitive activity and _partial causes_ of these conscious, perceptive
processes. But if occasionalism were true such inference would be
illusory, and we should infer, with Berkeley, that only God and minds
exist, but not any material universe. Malebranche admits the possible
validity of this inference to immaterialism from his principles, and
grounds his own belief in the existence of an external material universe
solely on faith in Divine Revelation.(500)
It only remains to answer certain difficulties urged by occasionalists
against the possibility of attributing real efficiency to creatures.
(1) They argue that efficient causality is something essentially Divine,
and therefore cannot be communicated to creatures.
We reply that while the absolutely independent causality of the First
Cause is essentially Divine, another kind or order of causality, dependent
on the former, but none the less real, can be and is communicated to
creatures. And just as the fact that creatures have real being, real
existence, distinct from, but dependent on, the existence of the Infinite
Being, does not derogate from the supremacy of the latter, so the fact
that creatures have real efficient causality, distinct from, but dependent
on, the causality of the First Cause, does not derogate from the latter’s
supremacy.
(2) They urge that efficient causality is creative, and therefore infinite
and incommunicable.
We reply that there is a plain distinction between creative activity and
the efficient activity we claim for creatures. Creation is the production
of new being from nothingness. God alone, the Infinite Being, can create;
and, furthermore, according to the common view of Theistic philosophers a
creature cannot even be an instrument of the First Cause in this
production of new being from nothingness. And the main reason for this
appears to be that the efficiency of the creature, acting, of course, with
the Divine _concursus_, necessarily presupposes some pre-existing being as
material on which to operate, and is confined to the _change_ or
_determination of new forms or modes_ of this pre-existing reality. Such
efficiency, subordinate to the Divine _concursus_ and limited to such an
order of effects, is plainly distinct from creative activity.
(3) But the creature, acting with the Divine _concursus_, either
contributes something real and positive to the effect or contributes
nothing. The former alternative is inadmissible, for God is the cause of
everything real and positive: _omne novum ens est a Deo_. And in the
latter alternative, which is the true one, the _concursus_ is superfluous;
God does all; and creatures are not really efficient causes.
We reply that the former alternative, not the latter, is the true one. But
the former alternative does not imply that the creature produces any new
reality _independently of the First Cause_; nor is it incompatible with
the truth that God is the author and cause of all positive reality: _omne
novum ens est a Deo_. No doubt, were we to conceive the co-operation of
God and the creature after the manner of the co-operation of two partial
causes of the same order, producing by their joint efficiency some one
total effect—like the co-operation of two horses drawing a cart,—it would
follow that the creature’s share of the joint effect would be independent
of the Divine _concursus_ and attributable to the creature alone, that the
creature would produce some reality independently of the First Cause. But
that is _not_ the way in which the First Cause concurs with created
causes. They are not partial causes of the same order. Each is a total
cause in its own order. They so co-operate that God, besides having
created and now conserving the second cause, and moving the latter’s power
to act, produces Himself the whole effect directly and immediately by the
efficiency of His _concursus_; while at the same time the second cause,
thus reduced to act, and acting with the _concursus_, also directly and
immediately produces the whole effect. There is one effect, one change _in
facto esse_, one change _in fieri_, and therefore one action as considered
in the subject changed, since the action takes place in this latter:
_actio fit in passo_. This change, this action considered thus passively,
or “_in passo_,” is the total term of each efficiency, the Divine and the
created, not partly of the one and partly of the other. It is one and
indivisible; it is wholly due to, and wholly attained by, each efficiency;
not, however, under the same formal aspect. We may distinguish in it two
formalities: it is a _novum ens_, a new actuality, something positive and
actual superadded to the existing order of real, contingent being; but it
is not “being in general” or “actuality in general,” it is some
specifically, nay individually, determinate mode of actuality or actual
being. We have seen that it is precisely because every real effect has the
former aspect that it demands for its adequate explanation, and as its
only intelligible source, the presence and influence of a purely actual,
unchanging, infinite, inexhaustible productive principle of all actual
contingent reality: hence the necessity and efficacy of the Divine
_concursus_. And similarly it is because the new actuality involved in
every change is an individually definite mode of actuality that we can
detect in it the need for, and the efficacy of, the created cause: the
nature of this latter, the character and scope and intensity of its active
power is what determines the individuality of the total result, to the
total production of which it has by the aid of the Divine _concursus_
attained.
(4) But God can Himself produce the total result _under both formalities_
without any efficiency of the creature. Therefore the difficulty remains
that the latter efficiency is superfluous and useless: and _entia non sunt
multiplicanda praeter necessitatem_.
We reply that as a matter of fact the effects produced in the ordinary
course of nature are produced by God under both formalities; but also by
the created cause under both formalities: inasmuch as the formalities are
but mentally distinct aspects of one real result which is, as regards its
extrinsic causes, individual and indivisible. The distinction of these
formal aspects only helps us to realize how _de facto_ such an effect is
due to the cooperation of the First Cause and created causes. That God
_could_ produce all such effects without any created causes—we must
distinguish. Some such effects He could not produce without created
causes, for such production would be self-contradictory. He could not
produce, for instance, a volition except as the act of a created will, or
a thought except as the act of a created intellect, or a vital change
except as the act of a living creature. But apart from such cases which
would involve an intrinsic impossibility, God could of course produce,
without created agents, the effects which He does produce through their
created efficiency. It is, however, not a question of what _could be_, but
of what _actually is_. And we think that the arguments already set forth
prove conclusively that creatures are not _de facto_ the inert, inactive,
aimless and unmeaning things they would be if Occasionalism were the true
interpretation of the universe of our actual experience; but that these
creatures are in a true sense efficient causes, and that just as by their
very co-existence with God, as contingent beings, they do not derogate
from His Infinite Actuality but rather show forth His Infinity, so by
their cooperation with Him as subordinate and dependent efficient causes
they do not derogate from His supremacy as First Cause, but rather show
forth the infinite and inexhaustible riches of His Wisdom and Omnipotence.