THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN CAUSE AND EFFECT IS ONE OF THE MEANS OF
UNDERSTANDING
The processes of the human mind and their subjective composition cannot
be analyzed in a _pure_ state and without regard to their objective
effects any more than handiwork can be explained without the raw
material to be handled and the products derived therefrom, any more than
any work can be described in a _pure_ state without regard to the
product.
That is the sad defect of old time logic which is an obstacle to its
further advance: it literally tears things out of their connections and
forgets the necessity of interdependence over the need of special study.
The instrument which produces thought and knowledge in the human brain
is not an isolated thing, nor an isolated quality. It is connected not
only with the brain and the nervous system, but also with all qualities
of the soul. True, thinking is different from feeling, but it is
nevertheless a feeling the same as gladness and sorrow. Thought is
called incomprehensible and the heart unfathomable. It is the function
of science, of thinking and thought, to fathom and comprehend what as
yet is not fathomed and not comprehended.
Just as thinking and understanding are parts of the human soul, so the
latter is a part of physical and intellectual man. Together with the
physical development of man, of the species as well as of the
individual, the soul also develops and with it that part which is the
special object of the theory of understanding, viz., thought and
thinking. Not alone does physical development produce intellectual
development, but, vice versa, the understanding reacts on the physical
world. The one is not merely a cause, nor the other merely an effect.
This obsolete distinction does not suffice for the full understanding of
their interrelations. We pay a tribute to the "thoughts on
enlightenment" of Professor Lazarus quoted in the previous chapter by
acknowledging that they throw so much light on a certain point that
little more than the dot over the "i" is required in order to clear up a
bad misunderstanding about the relation of cause and effect.
Since the time of Aristotle this relation has been called a category. We
have already noted the statement which characterizes the age of
enlightenment as one in which the causal category, or let us say the
distinction between cause and effect, became the dominant issue. Other
periods live with their understanding, with their thoughts, in other
categories. Though the ancient Greeks knew the distinction between
cause and effect, yet it was far from being the dominant point of view
in their search after scientific understanding. Instead of regarding, as
we do today, everything as effects which were produced by preceding
causes, they saw in every process, in every phenomenon, a means which
had a purpose. The category of means and purpose dominated the Greeks.
Socrates admired the knowledge of nature displayed by Anaxagoras, the
stories he could tell of sun, moon, and stars. But as Anaxagoras had
omitted to disclose the _reasonable purpose_ of the processes of nature,
Socrates did not think much of such a natural science. At that period
the means and the purpose were the measure of reason, the handle of the
mind, the category of understanding; today causes and effects have taken
their places.
Between the golden age of Greece and the era of modern science, the
socalled night of the Middle Ages, the epoch of superstition, extends.
If then you started out on a voyage and first met an old woman, it meant
misfortune for you. Wallenstein cast the horoscope before he directed
his troops. "Understanding" was gathered from the flight of a bird, the
cry of an animal, the constellations of stars, the meeting with an old
woman. The category of that period was the _sign_ and its
_consequences_.
And according to Lazarus, these things were believed by brains which
were by no means dull. "I refer to a name which fills us all with
veneration: Kepler believed in astrology, in the _category of the sign
and its consequence_, together with the thinkers of the thousand years
before him and of his own century. Astrology was a science for many
centuries, promoted together with astronomy ... and by the same people."
The peculiar thing in this statement is the reference to the category
of sign and consequence as a _science_. This category has no longer a
place in modern science.
May not our modern viewpoint, the category in which our present day
science thinks, the category of cause and effect, be equally transitory?
The ancients have accomplished lasting scientific results in spite of
their "purposes." Mediaeval superstition with its "signs," its astrology
and alchemy, has likewise bequeathed to us a few valuable scientific
products. And, on the other hand, even the greatest partisans of modern
science do not deny that it is marred by various adventurous vagaries.
The categories of means and purposes, of signs and consequences, are
still in vogue today and will be preserved together with that of causes
and effects. The knowledge that this latter category is likewise but a
historical one and exerts but temporarily a dominating influence on
science belongs to the positive outcome of philosophy, and Professor
Lazarus, with all his advanced standpoint, has remained behind this
result by about a yard.
Kindly note that it is not the extinction of the relation between cause
and effect which we predict, but merely that of its dominance.
Whoever skips lightly over the current of life, will be greatly shocked
when reading that we place the fundamental pillar of all perception, the
category of cause and effect, in the same passing boat in which the
prophets and astrologers rode. One is very prone to belittle the faith
of others by the name of "superstition" and honor one's own superstition
by the title of "science."
Once we have grasped the fact that our intellect has no other purpose
than that of tracing a human picture of cosmic processes, and that its
penetration of the interior of nature, its understanding, explaining,
perceiving, knowing, etc., is nothing else, and cannot be anything else,
that moment it loses its mysterious, transcendental metaphysical
character. We also understand then, that the great spirit above the
clouds who is supposed to create the world out of nothing, could very
well serve the mind as a means of explaining things. And it is the same
with the category of cause and effect, which is a splendid means of
assisting explanation, but still will not suffice for the requirements
of all time to come.
The perception that the great spirit above the clouds is a free
invention of the small human mind has become so widely spread that we
may well pass on over it to other things.
Among the questions now on the order of business is the one whether the
"causes" with which modern science operates so widely are not in a way
creators in miniature which produce their effects in a sleight-of-hand
way. And this erroneous notion is, indeed, the current conception.
If a stone falls into the water, it is the cause of the undulations, but
not their creator. It is only a co-operator, for the liquid and elastic
qualities of the water also act as a cause. If the stone falls into
butter, it creates at best but one undulation, and if this stony creator
falls on the hard ground, it is all up with the creation of undulations.
This shows that causes are not creators, but rather effects which are
not effected, but effect themselves.
The category of cause and effect is a good help in explanation, so long
as it is accompanied by the philosophical consciousness that the whole
of nature is an infinite sea of transformations, which are not created
by one great or many small creators, but which create themselves.
A well-known philosophical author expresses himself in the following
manner: "During the first weeks of its existence, the child has no
perception either of the world without, or of its own body, or of its
soul. Hence its feeling is not accompanied by the consciousness of an
interaction between these three factors. It does not suspect its
causes." We see that soul, body, and outer world are called the three
factors of feeling. Now note how each one of these three causes or
factors is, so to say, the store house of innumerable factors or causes,
all of which cause the feeling of the child. The soul consists of many
soul parts, the body of many bodily parts, and the outer world consists
of so many parts that it would consist of ten times more parts, if there
were any more than innumerable.
There is no doubt that the child's feeling, or any other, does not exist
independently, but is dependent on the soul, the body, and the outer
world. This constitutes the indubitable interrelation of all things. In
the winding processes of the self-agitated universe, the category of
cause and effect serves as a means of enlightenment, by giving our mind
its help in the systematization of processes. If the drop of a stone
precedes, the undulations of the water follow; if soul, body, and outer
world are present, feeling follows.
The positive outcome of philosophy does not reject the services of the
category of cause and effect. It only rejects the mystical element in
that category in which many people, even among those with a "scientific
education," still believe. There is no witchcraft in this matter, but
simply a mechanical systematization and classification of natural
phenomena in the order of their appearance. So long as water remains
water and retains its liquid and elastic properties, and so long as a
stone is a stone, a ponderous fellow striking the water heavily, just
so long will the splash of the stone be surely and inevitably followed
by undulations of the water. So long as soul, body, and outer world
retain their known properties, they will with unfailing precision
produce feeling. It is no more surprising that we can affirm this on the
strength of our experience than that we have a category of cause and
effect. There exists nothing extraordinary but the condition of things,
and in this respect all things are alike, so that human understanding,
cause and effect, or any other category, are no more extraordinary than
any other condition. The only wonder is the universe, but this, being a
universal wonder, is at the same time trivial, for nothing is so
familiar as that which is common to all.
By the help of the viewpoint of cause and effect, man throws light on
the phenomena of nature. Cause and effect serve to enlighten us about
the world.
The way, the method, by which this enlightenment is produced, is the
special object of our study. We do not deny that cause and effect serve
us as a means, but only as one of many. We honor the category of cause
and effect far too much when we regard it as _the_ panacea. We have seen
that formerly other viewpoints served the same purpose and still others
exist today, some of which have a prospect of being valued more highly
in the future than cause and effect. This category serves very well for
the explanation of processes which follow one another. But there are
other phenomena which occur side by side, and these must also be
elucidated. For such a purpose, the category of genus and species is
quite as serviceable. Haeckel speaks somewhat slightingly of "museum
zoologists and herbarium botanists," because they merely classify
animals and plants according to genera and species. The modern
zoologists and botanists do not simply consider the multiplicity of
animals and plants which exist simultaneously, but also the
chronological order of the changes and transformations, and in this way
they have gained much more of a life-picture of the zoological and
botanical world, a picture not alone of its being, but also of its
growing, of arising and declining. Undoubtedly the knowledge of the
museum zoologists and herbarium botanists was meager, narrow,
mechanical, and modern science offers a far better portrait of truth and
life. Still this is no reason for overestimating the value of analysis
by cause and effect. This method supplements the category of genus and
species. It assists in enlightening, it helps in the process of thought,
but it does not render other forms of thought superfluous.
It is essential for the theory of understanding, to recognize the
special forms of thought of old and new times as peculiarities which
have a common nature. This common nature of the process of thought,
understanding, enlightenment, is a part of the universal world process,
and not greatly different from it.
The conception of a cause partly explains the phenomena of the universe;
but so does the conception of a purpose and of a species, in fact, so do
all conceptions.
In the universe all parts are causes, all of them caused, produced,
created, and yet there is no creator, no producer, no cause. The general
produces the special, and the latter in turn produces by reaction the
general.
The category of the general and the special, of the universe and its
parts, contains all other categories in the germ. In order to explain
the process of thought, we must explain it as a part of the universal
process. It has not caused the creation of the world, neither in a
theological nor in an idealist sense, nor is it a mere effect of the
brain substance, as the materialists of the eighteenth century
represented it. The process of thought and its understanding is a
peculiarity of the universal cosmos. The relation of the general to the
special is the clear and typical category underlying all other
categories.
One might also apply other names to this category, for instance, the one
and the many; the essence and the form; the substance and its
attributes; truth and its phenomena, etc. However, a name is but a
breath and a sound; understanding and comprehension are what we want in
the first place.