There belongs, accordingly, to methodology a list of problems which we

can divide, to be sure only _in abstracto_, into three separate groups.

First, methodology has to analyze the methods which have been

technically developed in the different fields of knowledge into the

elementary forms of our thinking from which they have been built up.

Next to this work of _analyzing_, there comes a second task which may be

called a _normative_ one; for it follows that we must set forth and

deduce systematically from their sources the nature of these manifold

elements, their resulting connection, and their validity. To these two

offices must be added a third that we may call _a potiori_ a _synthetic_

one; for finally we must reconstruct out of the elements of our

thinking, as revealed by analysis, the methods belonging to the

different fields of knowledge and also determine their different scope

and validity.

The beginning of another conception of the office of methodology can be

found in those thoughts which have become significant, especially in

Leibnitz's fragments and drafts of a _calculus ratiocinator_ or a

_spécieuse générale_. The foregoing discussion has set aside all hope

that these beginnings and their recent development may give, of the

possibility of constructing the manifold possible methods _a priori_,

that is, before or independent of experience. However, it remains

entirely undecided, as it should in this our preliminary account of the

office of general methodology, whether or not all methods of our

scientific thought will prove to be ultimately but branches of one and

the same universal method, a thought contained in the undertakings just

referred to. Although modern empiricism, affiliated as it is with

natural science, tends to answer this question in the affirmative even

more definitely and dogmatically than any type of the older rationalism,

still the question is one that can be decided only in the course of

methodological research.

The conception of a methodology of scientific thought can be said to be

almost as old as scientific thought itself; for it is already contained

essentially, though undifferentiated, in the Socratic challenge of

knowledge. None the less, the history of methodology, as the history of

every other science, went through the course of which Kant has given a

classical description. "No one attempts to construct a science unless he

can base it on some idea; but in the elaboration of it the schema, nay,

even the definition which he gives in the beginning of his science,

corresponds very seldom to his idea, which, like a germ, lies hidden in

the reason, and all the parts of which are still enveloped and hardly

distinguishable even under microscopical observation."[5]

[Footnote 5: Kant, _Kr. d. r. V._, 2d ed., p. 862.]

We are indebted to the Greek, and especially to the

Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy for important contributions to the

understanding of the deductive method of mathematical thought. It was

precisely this trend of philosophic endeavor which, though furnishing

for the most part the foundation of methodological doctrine well on into

the seventeenth century, offered no means of differentiating the methods

that are authoritative for our knowledge of facts. What Socrates was

perhaps the first to call "induction," is essentially different, as

regards its source and aim, from the inductive methods that direct our

research in natural and mental science. For it is into these two fields

that we have to divide the totality of the sciences of facts, the

material sciences, let us call them, in opposition to the formal or

mathematical sciences,--that is, if we are to do justice to the

difference between sense and self perception, or "outer" and "inner"

perception.

Two closely connected forces especially led astray the methodological

opinions regarding the material sciences till the end of the eighteenth

century, and in part until the beginning of the nineteenth century. We

refer, in the first place, to that direction of thought which gives us

the right to characterize the Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy as a

"concept philosophy;" namely, the circumstance that Aristotelian logic

caused the "concept" to be set before the "judgment." In short, we refer

to that tendency in thought which directs the attention not to the

permanent in the world's occurrences, the uniform connections of events,

but rather to the seemingly permanent in the things, their essential

attributes or essences. Thus the concept philosophy, as a result of its

tendency to hypostasize, finds in the abstract general concepts of

things, the ideas, the eternal absolute reality that constitutes the

foundation of things and is contained in them beside the accidental and

changing properties.[6] Here we have at once the second force which

inspired the ancient methodology. These ideas, like the fundamentally

real, constitute that which ultimately alone acts in all the coming into

existence and the going out of existence of the manifold things. In the

Aristotelian theory of causation, this thought is made a principle; and

we formulate only what is contained in it, when we say that, according

to it, the efficient and at the same time final causes can be deduced

through mere analysis from the essential content of the effects; that,

in fact, the possible effects of every cause can be deduced from the

content of its definition. The conceptual determination of the causal

relation, and with it in principle the sum total of the methods in the

material sciences, becomes a logical, analytical, and deductive one.

These sciences remain entirely independent of the particular content of

experience as this broadens, and so do also the methods under

discussion.

[Footnote 6: According to Plato, it is true, the ideas are

separated from the sensible things; they must be thought in

a conceptual place, for the space of sense perception is to

be understood as non-being, matter. The things revealed to

sense, however, occupy a middle position between being and

non-being, so that they partake of the ideas. In this sense,

the statement made above holds also of the older view of the

concept philosophy.]

As a consequence, every essential difference between mathematical

thought and the science of causes is done away with in favor of a

rationalistic construction of the methods of material science.

Accordingly, throughout the seventeenth century, the ideal of all

scientific method becomes, not the inductive method that founded the new

epoch of the science of to-day, but the deductive mathematical method

applied to natural scientific research. The flourish of trumpets with

which Francis Bacon hailed the onslaught of the inductive methods in the

natural science of the time, helped in no way; for he failed to remodel

the traditional, Aristotelian-Scholastic conception of cause, and,

accordingly, failed to understand both the problem of induction and the

meaning of the inductive methods of the day.[7] Descartes, Hobbes,

Spinoza, and related thinkers develop their _mathesis universalis_ after

the pattern of geometrical thinking. Leibnitz tries to adapt his

_spécieuse générale_ to the thought of mathematical analysis. The old

methodological conviction gains its clear-cut expression in Spinoza's

doctrine: "_Aliquid efficitur ab aliqua re_" means "_aliquid sequitur ex

ejus definitione_."

[Footnote 7: Cf. the articles on Francis Bacon by Chr.

Sigwart in the _Preussische Jahrbücher_, xii, 1863, and

xiii, 1864.]

The logically straight path is seldom the one taken in the course of the

history of thought. The new formulation and solution of problems

influence us first through their evident significance and consequences,

not through the traditional presuppositions upon which they are founded.

Thus, in the middle of the seventeenth century, when insight into the

precise difference between mental and physical events gave rise to

pressing need for its definite formulation, no question arose concerning

the dogmatic presupposition of a purely logical (_analytisch_)

relationship between cause and effect; but, on the contrary, this

presupposition was then for the first time brought clearly before

consciousness. It was necessary to take the roundabout way through

occasionalism and the preëstablished harmony, including the latter's

retreat to the omnipotence of God, before it was possible to miss the

question of the validity of the presupposition that the connection

between cause and effect is analytic and rational.

Among the leading thinkers of the period this problem was recognized as

the cardinal problem of contemporaneous philosophy. It is further

evidence how thoroughly established this problem must have been among

the more deeply conceived problems of the time in the middle of the

eighteenth century, that Hume and Kant were forced to face it, led on,

seemingly independently of each other, and surely from quite different

presuppositions and along entirely different ways. The historical

evolution of that which from the beginning has seemed to philosophy the

solving of her true problem has come to pass in a way not essentially

different from that of the historical evolution in all other departments

of human knowledge. Thus, in the last third of the seventeenth century,

Newton and Leibnitz succeeded in setting forth the elements of the

infinitesimal calculus; and, in the fifth decade of the nineteenth

century, Robert Mayer, Helmholtz, and perhaps Joule, formulated the law

of the conservation of energy. In one essential respect Hume and Kant

are agreed in the solution of the new, and hence contemporaneously

misunderstood, problem. Both realized that the connection between the

various causes and effects is not a rational analytic, but an empirical

synthetic one. However, the difference in their presuppositions as well

as method caused this common result to make its appearance in very

different light and surroundings. In Hume's empiricism the connection

between cause and effect appears as the mere empirical result of

association; whereas in Kant's rationalism this general relation between

cause and effect becomes the fundamental condition of all possible

experience, and is, as a consequence, independent of all experience. It

rests, as a means of connecting our ideas, upon an inborn uniformity of

our thought.

Thus the way was opened for a fundamental separation of the inductive

material scientific from the deductive mathematical method. For Hume

mathematics becomes the science of the relations of ideas, as opposed to

the sciences of facts. For Kant philosophical knowledge is the knowledge

of the reason arising from concepts, whereas the mathematical is that

arising from the construction of concepts. The former, therefore,

studies the particular only in the universal; the latter, the universal

in the particular, nay, rather in the individual.

Both solutions of the new problem which in the eighteenth century

supplant the old and seemingly self-evident presupposition, appear

accordingly embedded in the opposition between the rationalistic and

empiristic interpretation of the origin and validity of our knowledge,

the same opposition that from antiquity runs through the historical

development of philosophy in ever new digressions.

Even to-day the question regarding the meaning and the validity of the

causal connection stands between these contrary directions of

epistemological research; and the ways leading to its answer separate

more sharply than ever before. It is therefore more pressing in our day

than it was in earlier times to find a basis upon which we may build

further epistemologically and therefore methodologically. The purpose of

the present paper is to seek such a basis for the different methods

employed in the sciences of facts.

* * * * *

As has already been said, the contents of our consciousness, which are

given us immediately in outer and inner perception, constitute the raw

material of the sciences of facts. From these various facts of

perception we derive the judgments through which we predict, guide, and

shape our future perception in the course of possible experience. These

judgments exist in the form of reproductive ideational processes, which,

if logically explicit, become _inductive inferences_ in the broader

sense. These inferences may be said to be of two sorts, though

fundamentally only two sides of one and the same process of thought;

they are in part analogical inferences and in part _inductive inferences

in the narrower sense_. The former infers from the particular in a

present perception, _which in previous perceptions was uniformly

connected with other particular contents of perception_, to a particular

that resembles _those other contents of perception_. In short, they are

inferences from a particular to a particular. After the manner of such

inferences we logically formulate, for example, the reproductive

processes, whose conclusions run: "This man whom I see before me, is

attentive, feels pain, will die;" "this meteor will prove to have a

chemical composition similar to known meteors, and also to have

corresponding changes on its surface as the result of its rapid passage

through our atmosphere." The inductive inferences in the narrower sense

argue, on the contrary, from the perceptions of a series of uniform

phenomena to a universal, which includes the given and likewise all

possible cases, in which a member of the particular content of the

earlier perceptions is presupposed as given. In short, they are

conclusions from a particular to a universal that is more extensive than

the sum of the given particulars. For example: "All men have minds, will

die;" "all meteoric stones will prove to have this chemical composition

and those changes of surface."

There is no controversy regarding the inner similarity of both these

types of inference or regarding their outward structure; or, again,

regarding their outward difference from the deductive inferences, which

proceed not from a particular to a particular or general, but from a

general to a particular.

There is, however, difference of opinion regarding their inner structure

and their inner relation to the deductive inferences. Both questions

depend upon the decision regarding the meaning and validity of the

causal relation. The contending parties are recruited essentially from

the positions of traditional empiricism and rationalism and from their

modern offshoots.

We maintain first of all:

1. The _presupposition_ of all inductive inferences, from now on to be

taken in their more general sense, is, that the contents of perception

are given to us _uniformly_ in repeated perceptions, that is, in uniform

components and uniform relations.

2. The _condition_ of the validity of the inductive inferences lies in

the thoughts that _the same causes will be present_ in the unobserved

realities as in the observed ones, and that _these same causes will

bring forth the same effects_.

3. The _conclusions_ of all inductive inferences have, logically

speaking, purely _problematic_ validity, that is, their contradictory

opposite remains equally thinkable. They are, accurately expressed,

merely _hypotheses_, whose validity needs verification through future

experience.

The first-mentioned _presupposition_ of inductive inference must not be

misunderstood. The paradox that nothing really repeats itself, that each

stage in nature's process comes but once, is just as much and just as

little justified as the assertion, everything has already existed. It

does not deny the fact that we can discriminate in the contents of our

perceptions the uniformities of their components and relations, in

short, that similar elements are present in these ever new complexes.

This fact makes it possible that our manifold perceptions combine to

make up one continuous experience. Even our paradox presupposes that the

different contents of our perceptions are comparable with one another,

and reveal accordingly some sort of common nature. All this is not only

a matter of course for empiricism, which founds the whole constitution

of our knowledge upon habits, but must also be granted by every

rationalistic interpretation of the structure of knowledge. Every one

that is well informed knows that what we ordinarily refer to as facts

already includes a theory regarding them. Kant judges in this matter

precisely as Hume did before him and Stuart Mill after him. "If cinnabar

were sometimes red and sometimes black, sometimes light and sometimes

heavy, if a man could be changed now into this, now into another animal

shape, if on the longest day the fields were sometimes covered with

fruit, sometimes with ice and snow, the faculty of my empirical

imagination would never be in a position, when representing red color,

to think of heavy cinnabar."[8]

[Footnote 8: Kant, _Kr. d. r. V._, 1st ed., pp. 100 f.]

The assumption that in recurring perceptions similar elements of

content, as well as of relation, are given, is a necessary condition of

the possibility of experience itself, and accordingly of all those

processes of thought which lead us, under the guidance of previous

perceptions, from the contents of one given perception to the contents

of possible perceptions.

A tradition from Hume down has accustomed us to associate the relation

of cause and effect not so much with the uniformity of coexistence as

with the uniformity of sequence. Let us for the present keep to this

tradition. Its first corollary is that the relation of cause and effect

is to be sought in the uninterrupted flow and connection of events and

changes. The cause becomes the uniformly preceding event, the constant

_antecedens_, the effect the uniformly following, the constant

_consequens_, in the course of the changes that are presented to

consciousness as a result of foregoing changes in our sensorium.

According to this tradition that we have taken as our point of

departure, the uniformity of the sequence of events is a necessary

presupposition of the relation between cause and effect. This uniformity

is given us as an element of our experience; for we actually find

uniform successions in the course of the changing contents of

perception. Further, as all our perceptions are in the first instance

sense perceptions, we may call them the sensory presupposition of the

possibility of the causal relation.

In this presupposition, however, there is much more involved than the

name just chosen would indicate. The uniformity of sequence lies, as we

saw, not in the contents of perception as such, which are immediately

given to us. It arises rather through the fact that, in the course of

repeated perceptions, we apprehend through abstraction the uniformities

of their temporal relation. Moreover, there lie in the repeated

perceptions not only uniformities of sequence, but also uniformities of

the qualitative content of the successive events themselves, and these

uniformities also must be apprehended through abstraction. Thus these

uniform contents of perception make up series of the following form:

_a_1 --> _b_1

_a_2 --> _b_2

" "

" "

" "

_a_n --> _b_n

The presupposition of the possibility of the causal relations includes,

therefore, more than mere perceptive elements. It involves the relation

of different, if you will, of peculiar contents of perception, by virtue

of which we recognize _a_2 --> _b_2 ... _a_n --> _b_n as events that

resemble one another and the event _a_1 --> _b_1 qualitatively as well

as in their sequence. There are accordingly involved in our

presupposition _reproductive_ elements which indicate the action of

memory. In order that I may in the act of perceiving _a_3 --> _b_3

apprehend the uniformity of this present content with that of _a_2 -->

_b_2 and _a_1 --> _b_1, these earlier perceptions must in some way,

perhaps through memory,[9] be revived with the present perception.

[Footnote 9: It is not our present concern to ascertain how

this actually happens. The psychological presuppositions of

the present paper are contained in the theory of

reproduction that I have worked out in connection with the

psychology of speech in the articles on "Die psychologischen

Grundlagen der Beziehungen zwischen Sprechen und Denken,"

_Archiv für systematische Philosophie_, II, III, und VII;

cf. note 1, page 151.]

In this reproduction there is still a further element, which can be

separated, to be sure only _in abstracto_, from the one just pointed

out. The present revived content, even if it is given in memory as an

independent mental state, is essentially different from the original

perception. It differs in all the modifications in which the memory of

lightning and thunder could differ from the perception of their

successive occurrence, or, again, the memory of a pain and the resulting

disturbance of attention could differ from the corresponding original

experience. However, as memory, the revived experience presents itself

as a picture of that which has been previously perceived. Especially is

this the case in memory properly so called, where the peculiar space and

time relations individualize the revived experience. If we give to this

identifying element in the associative process a logical expression, we

shall have to say that there is involved in revival, and especially in

memory, an awareness that the present ideas recall the same content that

was previously given us in perception. To be sure, the revival of the

content of previous perceptions does not have to produce ideas, let

alone memories. Rapid, transitory, or habitual revivals, stimulated by

associative processes, can remain unconscious, that is, they need not

appear as ideas or states of consciousness. Stimulation takes place, but

consciousness does not arise, provided we mean by the term

"consciousness" the genus of our thoughts, feelings, and volitions. None

the less it must not be forgotten that this awareness of the essential

identity of the present revived content with that of the previous

perception can be brought about in every such case of reproduction. How

all this takes place is not our present problem.

We can apply to this second element in the reproductive process, which

we have found to be essential to the causal relation, a Kantian term,

"Recognition." This term, however, is to be taken only in the sense

called for by the foregoing statements; for the rationalistic

presuppositions and consequences which mark Kant's "Synthesis of

Recognition" are far removed from the present line of thought.

We may, then, sum up our results as follows: In the presupposition of a

uniform sequence of events, which we have accepted from tradition as the

necessary condition of the possibility of the causal relation, there

lies the thought that the contents of perception given us through

repeated sense stimulation are related to one another through a

reproductive recognition.

The assumption of such reproductive recognition is not justified merely

in the cases so far considered. It is already necessary in the course of

the individual perceptions _a_ and _b_, and hence in the apprehension of

an occurrence. It makes the sequence itself in which _a_ and _b_ are

joined possible; for in order to apprehend _b_ as following upon _a_, in

case the perception of _a_ has not persisted in its original form, _a_

must be as far revived and recognized upon _b_'s entrance into the field

of perception as it has itself passed out of that field. Otherwise,

instead of _b_ following upon _a_ and being related to _a_, there would

be only the relationless change from _a_ to _b_. This holds generally

and not merely in the cases where the perception of _a_ has disappeared

before that of _b_ begins, for example, in the case of lightning and

thunder, or where it has in part disappeared, for example, in the

throwing of a stone.

We have represented _a_ as an event or change, in order that uniform

sequences of events may alone come into consideration as the

presupposition of the causal relation. But every event has its course in

time, and is accordingly divisible into many, ultimately into infinitely

many, shorter events. Now if _b_ comes only an infinitely short interval

later than _a_, and by hypothesis it must come later than _a_, then a

corresponding part of _a_ must have disappeared by the time _b_ appears.

But the infinitesimal part of a perception is just as much out of all

consideration as would be an infinitely long perception; all which only

goes to show that we have to substitute intervals of finite length in

place of this purely conceptual analysis of a continuous time interval.

This leaves the foregoing discussion as it stands. If _b_ follows _a_

after a perceptible finite interval, then the flow or development of _a_

by the time of _b_'s appearance must have covered a course corresponding

to that interval; and all this is true even though the earlier stages of

_a_ remain unchanged throughout the interval preceding _b_'s appearance.

The present instant of flow is distinct from the one that has passed,

even though it takes place in precisely the same way. The former, not

the latter, gives the basis of relation which is here required, and

therefore the former must be reproduced and recognized. This thought

also is included in the foregoing summary of what critical analysis

shows to be involved in the presupposition of a uniform sequence.

In all this we have already abandoned the field of mere perception which

gave us the point of departure for our analysis of uniform sequence. We

may call the changing course of perception only in the narrower meaning

the sensory presupposition of the causal relation. In order that these

changing contents of perception may be known as like one another, as

following one another, and as following one another uniformly, they must

be related to one another through a recognitive reproduction.

Our critical analysis of uniform sequence is, however, not yet complete.

To relate to one another the contents of two ideas always requires a

process at once of identifying and of differentiating, which makes these

contents members of the relation, and which accordingly presupposes that

our attention has been directed to each of the two members as well as to

the relation itself--in the present case, to the sequence. Here we come

to another essential point. We should apply the name "thought" to every

ideational process in which attention is directed to the elements of the

mental content and which leads us to identify with one another, or to

differentiate from one another, the members of this content.[10] The act

of relating, which knows two events as similar, as following one

another, indeed, as following one another uniformly, is therefore so far

from being a sensation that it must be claimed to be an act of thinking.

The uniformity of sequence of _a_ and _b_ is therefore an act of

relating on the part of our thought, so far as this becomes possible

solely through the fact that we at one and the same time identify with

one another and differentiate from one another _a_ as cause and _b_ as

effect. We say "at one and the same time," because the terms identifying

and differentiating are correlatives which denote two different and

opposing sides of one and the same ideational process viewed logically.

Accordingly, there is here on need of emphasizing that the act of

relating, which enables us to think _a_ as cause and _b_ as effect, is

an act of thought also, because it presupposes on our part an act of

naming which raises it to being a component of our formulated and

discursive thought. We therefore _think a_ as cause and _b_ as effect in

that we apprehend the former as uniform _antecedens_ and the latter as

uniform _consequens_.

[Footnote 10: Cf. the author's "Umrisse zur Psychologie des

Denkens," in _Philosophische Abhandlungen Chr. Sigwart ...

gewidmet_, Tübingen, 1900.]

* * * * *

Have we not the right, after the foregoing analysis, to interpret the

uniform sequence of events solely as the _necessary_ presupposition of

the causal relation? Is it not at the same time the _adequate_

presupposition? Yes, is it not the causal relation itself? As we know,

empiricism since Hume has answered the last question in the affirmative,

and rationalism since Kant has answered it in the negative.

We, too, have seemingly followed in our discussion the course of

empiricism. At least, I find nothing in that discussion which a

consistent empiricist might not be willing to concede; that is, if he is

ready to set aside the psychological investigation of the actual

processes which we here presuppose and make room for a critical analysis

of the content of the relation of cause and effect.[11] However, the

decision of the question, whether or not empiricism can determine

exhaustively the content that we think in the causal relation, depends

upon other considerations than those which we have until now been called

upon to undertake. We have so far only made clear what every critical

analysis of the causal relation has to concede to empiricism. In reality

the empiristic hypothesis is inadequate. To be sure, the proof of this

inadequacy is not to be taken from the obvious argument which Reid

raised against the empiricism of Hume, and which compelled Stuart Mill

in his criticism of that attack[12] to abandon his empiristic position

at this point. No doubt the conclusion to which we also have come for

the time being, goes much too far, the conclusion that the cause is

nothing but the uniform _antecedens_ and the effect merely the uniform

_consequens_. Were it true, as we have hitherto assumed, that every

uniformly preceding event is to be regarded as cause and every uniformly

following event as effect, then day must be looked upon as cause of

night and night as cause of day.

[Footnote 11: The difference between the two points of view

can be made clearer by an illustration. The case that we

shall analyze is the dread of coming into contact with fire.

The psychological analysis of this case has to make clear

the mental content of the dread and its causes. Such dread

becomes possible only when we are aware of the burning that

results from contact with fire. We could have learned to be

aware of this either immediately through our own experience,

or mediately through the communication of others'

experience. In both cases it is a matter of one or repeated

experiences. In all cases the effects of earlier experiences

equal association and recall, which, in turn, result in

recognition. The recognition explaining the case under

discussion arises thus. The present stimuli of visual

perception arouse the retained impressions of previous

visual perceptions of fire and give rise to the present

perception (apperception) by fusing with them. By a process

of interweaving, associations are joined to this perception.

The apperceptively revived elements which lie at the basis

of the content of the perception are interwoven by

association with memory elements that retain the additional

contents of previous perceptions of fire, viz., the burning,

or, again, are interwoven with the memory elements of the

communications regarding such burning. By means of this

interweaving, the stimulation of the apperceptive element

transmits itself to the remaining elements of the

association complex. The character of the association is

different under different conditions. If it be founded only

upon one experience, then there can arise a memory or a

recall, in the wider sense, of the foregoing content of the

perception and feeling at the time of the burning, or,

again, there can arise a revival wherein the stimulated

elements of retention remain unconscious. Again, the words

of the mother tongue that denote the previous mental

content, and which likewise belong to the association

complex (the apperceiving mass, in the wider sense), can be

excited in one of these three forms and in addition as

abstract verbal ideas. Each one of these forms of verbal

discharge can lead to the innervations of the muscles

involved in speech, which bring about some sort of oral

expression of judgment. Each of these verbal reproductions

can be connected with each of the foregoing sensory

(_sachlichen_) revivals. Secondly, if the association be

founded upon repeated perceptions on the part of the person

himself, then all the afore-mentioned possibilities of

reproduction become more complicated, and, in addition, the

mental revivals contain, more or less, only the common

elements of the previous perceptions, _i. e._, reappear in

the form of abstract ideas or their corresponding

unconscious modifications. In the third case the association

is founded upon a communication of others' experience. For

the sake of simplicity, let this case be confined to the

following instance. The communication consisted in the

assertion: "All fire will burn upon contact." Moreover, this

judgment was expressed upon occasion of imminent danger of

burning. There can then arise, as is perhaps evident, all

the possibilities mentioned in the second case, only that

here there will be a stronger tendency toward verbal

reproduction and the sensory reproduction will be less

fixed.

In the first two cases there was connected with the

perception of the burning an intense feeling of pain. In the

third the idea of such pain added itself to the visual

perception of the moment. The associated elements of the

earlier mental contents belong likewise to the apperceiving

mass excited at the moment, in fact to that part of it

excited by means of association processes, or, as we can

again say, depending upon the point from which we take our

view, the associative or apperceptive completion of the

content of present perception. If these pain elements are

revived as memories, _i. e._, as elements in consciousness,

they give rise to a new disagreeable feeling, which is

referred to the possible coming sensation of burning. If the

mental modifications corresponding to these pain elements

remain unconscious, as is often possible, there arises none

the less the same result as regards our feeling, only with

less intensity. This feeling tone we call the dread.

As a result of the sum total of the revivals actual and

possible, there is finally produced, according to the

particular circumstances, either a motor reaction or an

inhibitant of such reaction. Both innervations can take

place involuntarily or voluntarily.

The critical analysis of the fact that we dread contact with

fire, even has another purpose and accordingly proceeds on

other lines. It must make clear under what presuppositions

the foresight that lies at the basis of such dread is valid

for future experience. It must then formulate the actual

process of revival that constitutes the foundation of this

feeling as a series of judgments, from which the meaning and

interconnection of the several judgments will become clear.

Thus the critical analysis must give a logical presentation

of the apperceptive and associative processes of revival.

For this purpose the three cases of the psychological

analysis reduce themselves to two: viz., first, to the case

in which an immediate experience forms the basis, and

secondly, to that in which a variety of similar mediately or

immediately communicated experiences form such basis.

In the first of these logically differentiated cases, the

transformation into the speech of formulated thought leads

to the following inference from analogy:

Fire A burned.

Fire B is similar to fire A.

----------------------------

Fire B will burn.

In the second case there arises a syllogism of some such

form as:

All fire causes burning upon contact.

This present phenomenon is fire.

--------------------------------------------------------

This present phenomenon will cause burning upon contact.

Both premises of this syllogism are inductive inferences,

whose implicit meaning becomes clear when we formulate as

follows:

All heretofore investigated instances of fire have burned,

therefore all fire burns.

The present phenomenon manifests some properties of fire,

will consequently have all the properties thereof.

---------------------------------------------------------

The present phenomenon will, in case of contact, cause burning.

The first syllogism goes from the particular to the

particular. The second proves itself to be (contrary to the

analysis of Stuart Mill) an inference that leads from the

general to the particular. For the conclusion is the

particular of the second parts of the major and minor

premises; and these second parts of the premises are

inferred from their first parts in the two possible ways of

inductive inference. The latter do not contain the case

referred to in the conclusion, but set forth the conditions

of carrying a result of previous experience over to a new

case with inductive probability, in other words, the

conditions of making past experience a means of foreseeing

future experience. It would be superfluous to give here the

symbols of the two forms of inductive inference.

We remain within the bounds of logical analysis, if we state

under what conditions conclusions follow necessarily from

their premises, viz., the conclusions of arguments from

analogy and of syllogisms in the narrower sense, as well as

those of the foregoing inductive arguments. For the

inference from analogy and the two forms of inductive

inference, these conditions are the presuppositions already

set forth in the text of the present paper, that in the as

yet unobserved portion of reality the like causes will be

found and they will give rise to like effects. For the

syllogism they are the thought that the predicate of a

predicate is the (mediate) predicate of the subject. Only

the further analysis of these presuppositions, which is

undertaken in the text, leads to critical considerations in

the narrower sense.]

[Footnote 12: _A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and

Inductive_, bk. III, ch. v, § 6.]

Empiricism can, however, meet this objection without giving up its

position; in fact, it can employ the objection as an argument in its

favor; for this objection affects only the manifestly imperfect

formulation of the doctrine, not the essential arguments.

It should have been pointed out again and again in the foregoing

exposition that only in the first indiscriminating view of things may we

regard the events given us in perception as the basis of our concepts of

cause and effect. All these events are intricately mixed, those that are

given in self perception as well as those given in sense perception. The

events of both groups flow along continuously. Consequently, as regards

time, they permit a division into parts, which division proceeds, not

indeed for our perception, but for our scientific thought, in short,

conceptually, into infinity. The events of sense perception permit also

conceptually of infinite division in their spatial relations.

It is sufficient for our present purpose, if we turn our attention to

the question of divisibility in time. This fact of divisibility shows

that the events of our perception, which alone we have until now brought

under consideration, must be regarded as systems of events. We are

therefore called upon to apportion the causal relations among the

members of these systems. Only for the indiscriminating view of our

practical _Weltanschauung_ is the perceived event _a_ the cause of the

perceived event _b_. The more exact analysis of our theoretical

apprehension of the world compels us to dissect the events _a_ and _b_

into the parts _a_alpha , _a_beta, _a_gamma--_b_alpha, _b_beta,

_b_gamma, and, where occasion

calls for it, to continue the same process in turn for these and further

components. We have accordingly to relate those parts to one another as

causes and effects which, from the present standpoint of analysis,

follow one another uniformly and _immediately_, viz., follow one another

so that from this standpoint no other intervening event must be

presupposed. In this way we come to have a _well-ordered experience_.

The dispositions to such experience which reveal themselves within the

field of practical thought taught man long before the beginning of

scientific methods not to connect causally day and night with one

another, but the rising and setting of the sun with day and night. The

theoretical analysis, indeed, goes farther. It teaches that in what is

here summed up as rising of the sun and yonder as day, there lie again

intricate elements requiring special attention, in our own day extending

perhaps to the lines of thought contained in the electro-dynamic theory

of light and of electrons. Still the ways of thought remain the same, on

all the levels of penetrating analysis. We have throughout to relate to

one another as cause and effect those events which, in a well-ordered

experience, must be regarded as following one another immediately. The

cause is then the _immediate_ uniform _antecedens_, the effect the

_immediate_ uniform _consequens_. Otherwise stated, the perceived events

that we are accustomed, from the standpoint of the practical

_Weltanschauung_, to regard as causes and effects, _e. g._, lightning

and thunder, from the theoretical apprehension of the world prove to be

infinitely involved collections of events, whose elements must be

related to one another as causes and effects in as far as they can be

regarded as following one another immediately. No exception is formed by

expressions of our rough way of viewing and describing which lead us

without hesitation to regard as cause one out of the very many causes of

an event, and this, too, not necessarily the immediate uniformly

preceding event. All this lies rather in the nature of such a hasty

view.

The present limitation of uniform sequence to cases of immediate

sequence sets aside, then, the objection from which we started, in that

it adopts as its own the essential point in question.

Moreover, the way that leads us to this necessary limitation goes

farther: it leads to a strengthening of the empiristic position. It

brings us to a point where we see that the most advanced analysis of

intricate systems of events immediately given to us in perception as

real nowhere reveals more than the simple fact of uniform sequence.

Again where we come to regard the intervals between the events that

follow one another immediately as very short, there the uniformity of

the time relation makes, it would seem, the events for us merely causes

and effects; and as often as we have occasion to proceed to the smaller

time differences of a higher order, the same process repeats itself; for

we dissect the events that make up our point of departure into ever more

complex systems of component events, and the coarser relations of

uniform sequence into ever finer immediate ones. Nowhere, seemingly, do

we get beyond the field of events in uniform sequence, which finally

have their foundation in the facts of perception from which they are

drawn. Thus there follows from this conceptual refinement of the point

of departure only the truth that nothing connects the events as causes

and effects except the immediate uniformity of sequence.

None the less, we have to think the empiristic doctrine to the bottom,

if we desire to determine whether or not the hypothesis which it offers

is really sufficient to enable us to deduce the causal relation. For

this purpose let us remind ourselves that the question at issue is,

whether or not this relation is merely a temporal connection of events

that are given to us in perception or that can be derived from the data

of perception.

Besides, let us grant that this relation is as thoroughly valid for the

content of our experience as empiricism has always, and rationalism

nearly always, maintained. We presuppose, therefore, as granted, that

every event is to be regarded as cause, and hence, in the opposite time

relation, as effect, mental events that are given to us in self

perception no less than the physical whose source is our sense

perception. In other words, we assume that the totality of events in our

possible experience presents a closed system of causal series, that is,

that every member within each of the contemporary series is connected

with the subsequent ones, as well as with the subsequent members of all

the other series, backward and forward as cause and effect; and

therefore, finally, that every member of every series stands in causal

relationship with every member of every other series. We do not then,

for the present purpose, burden ourselves with the hypothesis which was

touched upon above, that this connection is to be thought of as a

continuous one, namely, that other members can be inserted _ad

infinitum_ between any two members of the series.

We maintain at the same time that there is no justification for

separating from one another the concepts, causality and interaction.

This separation is only to be justified through the metaphysical

hypothesis that reality consists in a multitude of independently

existing substances inherently subject to change, and that their mutual

interconnection is conditioned by a common dependence upon a first

infinite cause.[13] Every connection between cause and effect is mutual,

if we assume with Newton that to every action there is an equal opposing

reaction.

[Footnote 13: This doctrine began in the theological

evolution of the Christian concept of God. It was first

fundamentally formulated by Leibnitz. It is retained in

Kant's doctrine of the _harmonia generaliter stabilita_ and

the latter's consequences for the critical doctrine of the

_mundus intelligibilis_. Hence it permeates the metaphysical

doctrines of the systems of the nineteenth century in

various ways.]

In that we bring the totality of knowable reality, as far as it is

analyzable into events, under the causal relation, we may regard the

statement that every event requires us to seek among uniformly preceding

events for the sufficient causes of its own reality, namely, _the

general causal law_, as the principle of all material sciences. For all

individual instances of conformity to law which we can discover in the

course of experience are from this point of view only special cases of

the general universal conformity to law which we have just formulated.

For the empiristic interpretation, the (general) causal law is only the

highest genus of the individual cases of empirically synthetic relations

of uniform sequence. Starting from these presuppositions, it cannot be

other than a generalization from experience, that is, a carrying over of

observed relations of uniform, or, as we may now also say, constant

sequence to those which have not been or cannot be objects of

observation, as well as to those which we expect to appear in the

future. Psychologically regarded, it is merely the most general

expression of an expectation, conditioned through associative

reproduction, of uniform sequence. It is, therefore,--to bring Hume's

doctrine to a conclusion that the father of modern empiricism himself

did not draw,--a species of temporal contiguity.

The general validity which we ascribe to the causal law is accordingly a

merely empirical one. It can never attain apodeictic or even

assertorical validity, but purely that type of problematic validity

which we may call "real" in contradistinction to the other type of

problematic validity attained in judgments of objective as well as of

subjective and hypothetical possibility.[14] No possible progress of

experience can win for the empiristically interpreted causal law any

other than this real problematic validity; for experience can never

become complete _a parte post_, nor has it ever been complete _a parte

ante_. The causal law is valid assertorically only in so far as it sums

up, purely in the way of an inventory, the preceding experiences. We

call such assumptions, drawn from well-ordered experience and of

inductive origin, "hypotheses," whether they rest upon generalizing

inductive inferences in the narrower sense, or upon specializing

inferences from analogy. They, and at the same time the empiristically

interpreted causal law, are not hypotheses in the sense in which Newton

rightly rejected all formation of hypotheses,[15] but are such as are

necessarily part of all methods in the sciences of facts in so far as

the paths of research lead out beyond the content given immediately in

perception to objects of only possible experience.

[Footnote 14: Cf. the author's _Logik_, bd. I, § 61.]

[Footnote 15: "_Rationem_ vero harum gravitatis proprietatum

ex phaenomenis nondum potui deducere, et hypotheses non

fingo. _Quicquid enim ex phaenomenis non deducitur,

hypothesis vocanda est_; et hypotheses seu metaphysicae, seu

physicae, seu qualitatum occultarum, seu mechanicae, in

philosophia experimentali locum non habent. In hac

philosophia propositiones deducuntur ex phaenomenis, et

redduntur generales per _inductionem_." Newton, at the end

of his chief work.]

The assertion of Stuart Mill, in opposition to this conclusion, that the

cause must be thought of as the "invariable antecedent" and,

correspondingly, the effect is the "invariable consequent,"[16] does all

honor to the genius of the thinker; but it agrees by no means with the

empiristic presuppositions which serve as the basis for his conclusions.

For, starting from these presuppositions, the "invariable sequence" can

only mean one that is uniform and constant according to past experience,

and that we henceforth carry over to not yet observed events as far as

these prove in conformity with it, and in this way verify the

anticipation contained in our general assertion. The same holds of the

assertion through which Mill endeavors to meet the above-mentioned

objection of Reid, namely, that the unchanging sequence must at the same

time be demonstrably an "unconditional" one. The language in which

experience speaks to us knows the term "the unconditioned" as little as

the term "the unchangeable," even though this have, as Mill explains,

the meaning that the effect "will be, whatever supposition we may make

in regard to all other things," or that the sequence will "be subject to

no other than negative conditions." For in these determinations there

does not lie exclusively, according to Mill, a probable prediction of

the future. "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 endures, it always _will_ be so." Likewise, Mill, the man of

research, not the empiristic logician, asserts that there belongs to the

causal law, besides this generality referring to all possible events of

uniform sequence, also an "undoubted assurance;" although he could have

here referred to a casual remark of Hume.[17] Such an undoubted

assurance, "that for every event ... there is a law to be found, if we

only know where to find it," evidently does not know of a knowledge

referred exclusively to experience.

[Footnote 16: _Logik_, bk. III, ch. v, § 2.]

[Footnote 17: _Logic_, bk. III, ch. v, § 6, and end of § 2.

Hume says in a note to section VI of his _Enquiry Concerning

Human Understanding_: "We ought to divide arguments into

_demonstrations_, _proofs_, _and probabilities_. By proofs

Meaning such arguments from experience as leave no room for

doubt or opposition." The note stands in evident contrast to

the well-known remarks at the beginning of section IV, pt. I.]

Hence, if the causal law is, as empiricism to be consistent must

maintain, only a general hypothesis which is necessarily subject to

verification as experience progresses, then it is not impossible that in

the course of experience events will appear that are not preceded or

followed uniformly by others, and that accordingly cannot be regarded as

causes or effects. According to this interpretation of the causal law,

such exceptional events, whether in individual or in repeated cases of

perception, must be just as possible as those which in the course of

preceding experience have proved themselves to be members of series of

constant sequence. On the basis of previous experience, we should only

have the right to say that such exceptional cases are less probable; and

we might from the same ground expect that, if they could be surely

determined, they would only have to be regarded as exceptions to the

rule and not, possibly, as signs of a misunderstood universal

non-uniformity of occurrence. No one wants to maintain an empirical

necessity, that is, a statement that so comprehends a present experience

or an hypothesis developed on the basis of present experience that its

contradictory is rationally impossible. An event preceded by no other

immediately and uniformly as cause would, according to traditional

usage, arise out of nothing. An event that was followed immediately and

constantly by no other would accordingly be an event that remained

without effect, and, did it pass away, it must disappear into nothing.

The old thought, well known in its scholastic formulation, _ex nihilo

nihil fit, in nihilum nihil potest reverti_, is only another expression

for the causal law as we have interpreted it above. The contradictories

to each of the clauses of the thought just formulated, that something

can arise out of nothing and pass into nothing, remain therefore, as a

consequence of empiricism, an improbable thought, to be sure, but none

the less a thought to which a real possibility must be ascribed.

It was in all probability this that Stuart Mill wished to convey in the

much-debated passage: "I am convinced that anyone accustomed to

abstraction and analysis, who will fairly exert his faculties for the

purpose, will, when his imagination has once learnt to entertain the

notion, find no difficulty in conceiving that in some one, for instance,

of the many firmaments into which sidereal astronomy now divides the

universe, events may succeed one another at random without any fixed

law; nor can anything in our experience, or in our mental nature,

constitute a sufficient, or indeed any, reason for believing that this

is nowhere the case." For Mill immediately calls our attention to the

following: "Were we to suppose (what it is perfectly possible to

imagine) that the present order of the universe were brought to an end,

and that a chaos succeeded in which there was no fixed succession of

events, and the past gave no assurance of the future; if a human being

were miraculously kept alive to witness this change, he surely would

soon cease to believe in any uniformity, the uniformity itself no longer

existing."[18]

[Footnote 18: _Logic_, bk. III, ch. xxi, § 1.]

We can throw light from another side upon the thought that lies in this

outcome of the empiristic interpretation of the causal law. If we still

desire to give the name "effect" to an event that is preceded uniformly

by no other, and that we therefore have to regard as arising out of

nothing, then we must say that it is the effect of itself, that is, its

cause lies in its own reality, in short, that it is _causa sui_.

Therefore the assumption that a _causa sui_ has just as much real

possibility as have the causes of our experience which are followed

uniformly by another event, is a necessary consequence of the empiristic

view of causation. This much only remains sure, there is nothing

contained in our previous experience that in any way assures us of the

validity of this possible theory.

The empiristic doctrine of causation requires, however, still further

conclusions. Our scientific, no less than our practical thought has

always been accustomed to regard the relation between cause and effect

not as a matter of mere sequence, not therefore as a mere formal

temporal one. Rather it has always, in both forms of our thought, stood

for a _real_ relation, that is, for a relation of _dynamic dependence_

of effect upon cause. Accordingly, the effect _arises out_ of the cause,

is _engendered through_ it, or _brought forth by_ it.

The historical development of this dynamic conception of cause is well

known. The old anthropopathic interpretation, which interpolates

anthropomorphic and yet superhuman intervention between the events that

follow one another uniformly, has maintained itself on into the modern

metaphysical hypotheses. It remains standing wherever God is assumed as

the first cause for the interaction between parts of reality. It is made

obscure, but not eliminated, when, in other conceptions of the world,

impersonal nature, fate, necessity, the absolute identity, or an

abstraction related to these, appears in the place of God. On the other

hand, it comes out clearly wherever these two tendencies of thought

unite themselves in an anthropopathic pantheism. That is, it rests only

upon a difference in strength between the governing religious and

scientific interests, whether or not the All-One which unfolds itself in

the interconnection and content of reality is thought of more as the

immanent God, or more as substance. Finally, we do not change our

position, if the absolute, self-active being (in all these theories a

first cause is presupposed as _causa sui_) is degraded to a

non-intellectual will.

However, the dynamic interpretation of cause has not remained confined

to the field of these general speculations, just because it commanded

that field so early. There is a second branch, likewise early evolved

from the stem of the anthropopathic interpretation, the doctrine that

the causal relations of dependence are effected through "forces." These

forces adhere to, or dwell in, the ultimate physical elements which are

thought of as masses. Again, as spiritual forces they belong to the

"soul," which in turn is thought of as a substance. In the modern

contrast between attractive and repulsive forces, there lies a remnant

of the Empedoklean opposition between Love and Hate. In the various old

and new hylozoistic tendencies, the concepts of force and its correlate,

mass, are eclectically united. In consistent materialism as well as

spiritualism, and in the abstract dynamism of energetics, the one member

is robbed of its independence or even rejected in favor of the

other.[19]

[Footnote 19: Alongside of these dynamic theories, there are

to be found mechanical ones that arose just as early and

from the same source, viz., the practical _Weltanschauung_.

It is not part of our purpose to discuss them. Their first

scientific expression is to be found in the doctrine of

effluences and pores in Empedokles and in Atomism.]

It is evident in what light all these dynamic conceptions appear, when

looked at from the standpoint of consistent extreme empiricism. These

"forces," to consider here only this one of the dynamic hypotheses, help

to explain nothing. The physical forces, or those which give rise to

movement, are evidently not given to us as contents of sense perception,

and at the most they can be deduced as non-sensuous foundations, not as

contents of possible sense perception. The often and variously expressed

belief that self perception reveals to us here what our senses leave

hidden has proved itself to be in all its forms a delusion. The forces

whose existence we assume have then an intuitable content only in so far

as they get it through the uniformities present in repeated perceptions,

which uniformities are to be "explained" through them. But right here

their assumption proves itself to be not only superfluous but even

misleading; for it makes us believe that we have offered an explanation,

whereas in reality we have simply duplicated the given by means of a

fiction, quite after the fashion of the Platonic doctrine of ideas. This

endeavor to give the formal temporal relations between events, which we

interpret as causes and effects, a dynamic real substructure, shows

itself thus to be worthless in its contributions to our thought. The

same holds true of every other dynamic hypothesis. The critique called

forth by these contributions establishes therefore only the validity of

the empiristic interpretation.

If, however, we have once come so far, we may not hold ourselves back

from the final step. Empiricism has long ago taken this step, and the

most consistent among its modern German representatives has aroused anew

the impulses that make it necessary. Indeed, if we start from the

empiristic presuppositions, we must recognize that there lies not only

in the assumption of forces, but even in the habit of speaking of causes

and effects, "a clear trace of fetishism." We are not then surprised

when the statement is made: The natural science of the future, and

accordingly science in general, will, it is to be hoped, set aside these

concepts also on account of their formal obscurity. For, so it is

explained, repetitions of like cases in which _a_ is always connected

with _b_, namely, in which like results are found under like

circumstances, in short, the essence of the connection of cause and

effect, exists only in the abstraction that is necessary to enable us to

repicture the facts. In nature itself there are no causes and effects.

_Die Natur ist nur einmal da._

It is, again, Stuart Mill, the man of research, not the empiricist, that

opposes this conclusion, and indeed opposes it in the form that Auguste

Comte had given it in connection with thoughts that can be read into

Hume's doctrine. Comte's "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.... 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."[20]

[Footnote 20: _Logic_, bk. III, ch. v, § 6.]

For my own part, the right seems to be on the side of Comte and his

recent followers in showing the old nomenclature to be worn out, if

viewed from the standpoint of empiricism. If the relation between cause

and effect consists alone in the uniformity of sequence which is

hypothetically warranted by experience, then it can be only misleading

to employ words for the members of this purely formal relation that

necessarily have a strong tang of real dynamic dependence. In fact, they

give the connection in question a peculiarity that, according to

consistent empiricism, it does not possess. The question at issue in the

empiristically interpreted causal relation is a formal functional one,

which is not essentially different, as Ernst Mach incidentally

acknowledges, from the interdependence of the sides and angles of a

triangle.

Here two extremes meet. Spinoza, the most consistent of the dogmatic

rationalists, finds himself compelled in his formulation of the analytic

interpretation of the causal relation handed down to him to transform it

into a mathematical one. Mach, the most consistent of recent German

empiricists, finds himself compelled to recognize that the empirically

synthetic relation between cause and effect includes no other form of

dependence than that which is present in the functional mathematical

relations. (In Germany empiricism steeped in natural science has

supplanted the naïve materialism saturated with natural science.) That

the mathematical relations must likewise be subjected to a purely

empirical interpretation, which even Hume denied them, is a matter of

course.

However, this agreement of two opposing views is no proof that

empiricism is on the right road. The empiristic conclusions to which we

have given our attention do not succeed in defining adequately the

specific nature of the causal relation; on the contrary, they compel us

to deny such a relation. Thus they cast aside the concept that we have

endeavored to define, that is, the judgment in which we have to

comprehend whatever is peculiar to the causal connection. But one does

not untie a knot by denying that it exists.

It follows from this self-destruction of the empiristic causal

hypothesis that an additional element of thought must be contained in

the relation of cause and effect besides the elements of reproductive

recognition and those of identification and discrimination, all of which

are involved in the abstract comprehension of uniform sequence. The

characteristics of the causal connection revealed by our previous

analysis constitute the necessary and perhaps adequate conditions for

combining the several factual perceptions into the abstract registering

idea of uniform sequence. We may, therefore, expect to find that the

element sought for lies in the tendency to extend the demand for causal

connections over the entire field of possible experience; and perhaps we

may at the same time arrive at the condition which led Hume and Mill to

recognize the complete universality of the causal law in spite of the

exclusively empirical content that they had ascribed to it. In this

further analysis also we have to draw from the nature of our thought

itself the means of guiding our investigation.

In the first place, all thought has a formal necessity which reveals

itself in the general causal law no less than in every individual

thought process, that is, in every valid judgment. The meaning of this

formal necessity of thought is easily determined. If we presuppose, for

example, that I recognize a surface which lies before me as green, then

the perception judgment, "This surface is green," that is, the

apprehension of the present perceptive content in the fundamental form

of discursive thought, repeats with predicative necessity that which is

presented to me in the content of perception. The necessity of thought

contained in this perception judgment, as _mutatis mutandis_ in every

affirmative judgment meeting the logical conditions, is recognizable

through the fact that the contradictory judgment, "This surface is not

green," is impossible for our thought under the presupposition of the

given content of perception and of our nomenclature. It contradicts

itself. I can express the contradictory proposition, for instance, in

order to deceive; but I cannot really pass the judgment that is

contained in it. It lies in the very nature of our thought that the

predicate of an assertive judgment call contain only whatever belongs as

an element of some sort (characteristic, attribute, state, relation) to

the subject content in the wider sense. The same formal necessity of

thought, to give a further instance, is present in the thought process

of mediate syllogistic predication. The conclusion follows necessarily

from the premises, for example, the judgment, "All bodies are

divisible," from the propositions, "All bodies are extended," and,

"Whatever is extended is divisible."

These elementary remarks are not superfluous; for they make clear that

the casually expressed assertion of modern natural scientific

empiricism, declaring in effect that there is no such thing as necessity

of thought, goes altogether too far. Such necessity can have an

admissible meaning only in so far as it denotes that in predicting or

recounting _the content_ of possible experience every hypothesis is

possible for thought. Of course it is, but that is not the subject under

discussion.

The recognition of the formal necessity of thought that must be

presupposed helps us to define our present question; for it needs no

proof that this formal necessity of thought, being valid for every

affirmative judgment, is valid also for each particular induction, and

again for the general causal law. If in the course of our perceptions we

meet uniform sequences, then the judgment, "These sequences are

uniform," comprehends the common content of many judgments with formal

necessity of thought. Empiricism, too, does not seriously doubt that the

hypothesis of a general functional, even though only temporal, relation

between cause and effect is deduced as an expectation of possible

experience with necessity from our real experience. It questions only

the doctrine that the relation between the events regarded as cause and

effect has any other than a purely empirical import. The reality of an

event that is preceded and followed uniformly by no other remains for

this view, as we have seen, a possibility of thought.

In opposition to empiricism, we now formulate the thesis to be

established: Wherever two events _a_ and _b_ are known to follow one

another uniformly and immediately, there we must require with formal

necessity that some element in the preceding _a_ be thought of as

fundamental, which will determine sufficiently _b_'s appearance or make

that appearance necessary. The necessity of the relation between the

events regarded as cause and effect is, therefore, the question at

issue.

We must keep in mind from the very start that less is asserted in this

formulation than we are apt to read into it. It states merely that

something in _a_ must be thought of as fundamental, which makes _b_

necessary. On the other hand, it says nothing as to what this

fundamental something is, or how it is constituted. It leaves entirely

undecided whether or not this something that our thought must

necessarily postulate is a possible content of perception or can become

such, accordingly whether or not it can become an object of our

knowledge, or whether or not it lies beyond the bounds of all our

possible experience and hence all our possible knowledge. It contains

nothing whatsoever that tells us how the determination of _b_ takes

place through _a_. The word "fundamental" is intended to express all

this absence of determination.

Thus we hope to show a necessity of thought peculiar to the relation

between cause and effect. This is the same as saying that our proof will

establish the logical impossibility of the contradictory assertion; for

the logical impossibility of the contradictory assertion is the only

criterion of logical necessity. Thus the proof that we seek can be given

only indirectly. In the course of this proof, we can disregard the

immediacy of the constant sequence and confine our attention to the

uniformity of the sequence, not only for the sake of brevity, but also

because, as we have seen, we have the right to speak of near and remote

causes. We may then proceed as follows.

If there is not something fundamental in a constant antecedent event

_a_, which determines necessarily the constant subsequent appearance of

one and the same _b_,--that is, if there is nothing fundamental which

makes this appearance necessary,--then we must assume that also _c_ or

_d_ ..., in short, any event you will, we dare not say "follows upon,"

but appears after _a_ in irregular alternation with _b_. This

assumption, however, is impossible for our thought, because it is in

contradiction with our experience, on the basis of which our causal

thought has been developed. Therefore the assumption of a something that

is fundamental in _a_, and that determines sufficiently and necessarily

the appearance of _b_, is a necessity for our thought.

The assertion of this logical impossibility (_Denkunmöglichkeit_) will

at once appear thoroughly paradoxical. The reader, merely recalling the

results of the empiristic interpretation given above, will immediately

say: "The assumption that a _b_ does not follow constantly upon an _a_,

but that sometimes _b_, sometimes _c_, sometimes _d_ ... irregularly

appears, is in contradiction only with all our previous experience, but

it is not on this account a _logical_ impossibility. It is merely

improbable." The reader will appeal especially to the discussion of

Stuart Mill, already quoted, in which Mill pictures _in concreto_ such

an improbable logical impossibility, and therefore at the same time

establishes it in fact. Again, the reader may bring forward the words in

which Helmholtz introduces intellectual beings of only two dimensions.

"By the much misused expression, 'to be able to imagine to one's self,'

or, 'to think how something happens,' I understand (and I do not see how

anybody can understand anything else thereby without robbing the

expression of all meaning) that one can picture to one's self the series

of sense impressions which one would have if such a thing actually took

place in an individual case."[21]

[Footnote 21: _Vorträge und Reden_, bd. II, "Über den

Ursprung und die Bedeutung der geometrischen Axiome."]

Nevertheless, pertinent as are these and similar objections, they are

not able to stand the test. We ask: "Is in fact a world, or even a

portion of our world, possible for thought that displays through an

absolutely irregular alternation of events a chaos in the full sense; or

is the attempt to picture such a chaos only a mere play of words to

which not even our imagination, not to mention our thought, can give a

possible meaning?"

Perhaps we shall reach a conclusion by the easiest way, if we subject

Mill's description to a test. If we reduce it to the several

propositions it contains, we get the following: (1) Every one is able to

picture to himself in his imagination a reality in which events follow

one another without rule, that is, so that after an event _a_ now _b_

appears, now _c_, etc., in complete irregularity. (2) The idea of such a

chaos accordingly contradicts neither the nature of our mind nor our

experience. (3) Neither the former nor the latter gives us sufficient

reason to believe that such an irregular alternation does not actually

exist somewhere in the observable world. (4) If such a chaos should be

presented to us as fact, that is, if we were in a position to outlive

such an alternation, then the belief in the uniformity of time relations

would soon cease.

Every one would subscribe to the last of these four theses, immediately

upon such a chaos being admitted to be a possibility of thought; that

is, he would unless he shared the rationalistic conviction that our

thought constitutes an activity absolutely independent of all

experience. We must simply accept this conclusion on the ground of the

previous discussion and of a point still to be brought forward.

If we grant this conclusion, however, then it follows, on the ground of

our previous demonstration of the reproductive and recognitive, as well

as thought elements involved in the uniform sequence, that the

irregularity in the appearance of the events, assumed in such a chaos,

can bring about an absolutely relationless alternation of impressions

for the subject that we should presuppose to be doing the perceiving. If

we still wish to call it perception, it would remain only a perception

in which no component of its content could be related to the others, a

perception, therefore, in which not even the synthesis of the several

perception contents could be apprehended as such. That is, every

combination of the different perception contents, by which they become

components of one and the same perception, presupposes, as we have seen,

those reproductive and recognitive acts in revival which are possible

only where uniformities of succession (and of coexistence) exist. Again,

every act of attention involved in identifying and discriminating, which

likewise we have seen to be possible only if we presuppose uniformities

in the given contents of perception, must necessarily disappear when we

presuppose the chaotic content; and yet they remain essential to the

very idea of such a chaos. A relationless chaos is after all nothing

else than a system of relations thought of without relations! That the

same contradiction obtains also in the mere mental picturing of a

manifold of chaotic impressions needs no discussion; for the productive

imagination as well as the reproductive is no less dependent than is our

perceptive knowledge upon the reproductive recognition and upon the

processes of identifying and discriminating.

Thus the mental image of a chaos could be formed only through an

extended process of ideation, which itself presupposes as active in it

all that must be denied through the very nature of the image. A

relationless knowledge, a relationless abstraction, a relationless

reproduction or recognition, a relationless identification or

discrimination, in short, a relationless thought, are, as phrases, one

and all mere contradictions. We cannot picture "through our relating

thought," to use Helmholtz's expression, nor even in our imagination,

the sense impressions that we should have if our thought were

relationless, that is, were nullified in its very components and

presuppositions. In the case of Helmholtz's two dimensional beings, the

question at issue was not regarding the setting aside of the conditions

of our thought and the substituting conditions contradictory to them,

but regarding the setting aside of a part of the content of our sense

intuition, meanwhile retaining the conditions and forms peculiar to our

thought. In this case, therefore, we have a permissible fiction, whereas

in Mill's chaos we have an unthinkable thought.

Again, the sense impressions that must be presupposed in an inherently

relationless chaos have no possible relation to the world of our

perception, whose components are universally related to each other

through the uniformities of their coexistences and sequences.

Accordingly, the remark with which Helmholtz concludes the passage above

quoted holds, _mutatis mutandis_, here also. "If there is no sense

impression known that stands in relation to an event which has never

been observed (by us), as would be the case for us were there a motion

toward a fourth dimension, and for those two dimensional beings were

there a motion toward our third dimension; then it follows that such an

'idea' is impossible, as much so as that a man completely blind from

childhood should be able to 'imagine' the colors, if we could give him

too a conceptual description of them."

Hence the first of the theses in which we summed up Stuart Mill's

assumptions must be rejected. With it go also the second and third. In

this case we need not answer the question: In how far do these theses

correspond to Mill's own statements regarding the absolute surety and

universality of the causal law?

We have now found what we sought, in order to establish as a valid

assertion the seeming paradox in the proof of the necessity that we

ascribe to the relation between cause and effect. We have proved that

the assumption of a completely irregular and therefore relationless

alternation of impressions contradicts not only our experience, but even

the conditions of our thought; for these presuppose the uniformities of

the impressions, and consequently our ability to relate them, all which

was eliminated from our hypothetical chaos. Hence we have also

established that a necessary relation is implied in the thought of a

constant sequence of events, which makes the uniformly following _b_

really dependent upon the uniformly preceding _a_.

* * * * *

From still another side, we can make clear the necessity asserted in the

relation of cause and effect. We found that the connection between each

definite cause and its effect is an empirically synthetic one and has as

its warrant merely experience. We saw further that the necessity

inherent in the causal connection contains merely the demand that there

shall be something fundamental in the constantly preceding _a_ which

makes the appearance of _b_ necessary; not, however, that it informs us

what this efficacy really is, and hence also not that it informs us how

this efficacy brings about its effect. Finally, we had to urge that

every induction, the most general no less than the most particular,

depends upon the presupposition that the same causes will be given in

the reality not yet observed as in that already observed. This

expectation is warranted by no necessity of thought, not even by that

involved in the relation of cause and effect; for this relation begins

for future experience only when the presupposition that the same causes

will be found in it is assumed as fulfilled.[22] This expectation is

then dependent solely upon previous experience, whose servants we are,

whose lords we can never be. Therefore, every induction is an hypothesis

requiring the verification of a broader experience, since, in its work

of widening and completing our knowledge, it leads us beyond the given

experience to a possible one. In this respect we can call all inductive

thought empirical, that is, thought that begins with experience, is

directed to experience, and in its results is referred to experience.

The office of this progressing empirical thought is accordingly to form

hypotheses from which the data of perception can be regressively

deduced, and by means of which they can be exhibited as cases of known

relations of our well-ordered experience, and thus can be explained.

[Footnote 22: The only empiricism which can maintain that

the same causes would, in conformity with the causal law, be

given in the unobserved reality, is one which puts all

events that can be regarded as causes in the immediately

given content of perception as its members. Such a view is

not to be found in Mill; and it stands so completely in the

way of all further analysis required of us by every

perception of events that no attention has been paid in the

text to this extreme of extremes.]

The way of forming hypotheses can be divided logically into different

sections which can readily be made clear by an example. The police

magistrate finds a human corpse under circumstances that eliminate the

possibility of accident, natural death, or suicide; in short, that

indicate an act of violence on the part of another man. The general

hypothesis that he has here to do with a crime against life forms the

guide of his investigation. The result of the circumstantial evidence,

which we presuppose as necessary, furnishes then a special hypothesis as

following from the general hypothesis.

It is clear that this division holds for all cases of forming

hypotheses. A general hypothesis serves every special hypothesis as a

heuristic principle. In the former we comprehend the causal explanation

indicated immediately by the facts revealed to our perception in the

special case. It contains, as we might also express it, the genus to the

specific limitations of the more exact investigation. But each of these

general hypotheses is a modification of the most general form of

building hypotheses, which we have already come to know as the condition

of the validity of all inductive inferences, that is, as the condition

for the necessity of their deduction, and, consequently, as the

condition for the thought that like causes will be given in the reality

not yet observed as in that already observed. We have further noticed

that in this most general form of building hypotheses there lie two

distinct and different valid assumptions: beside the empirical statement

that like causes will be given, which gives the inductive conclusion the

hypothetical form, there stands the judgment that like causes bring

forth like effects, a corollary of the causal law. The real dependence

of the effect upon the cause, presupposed by this second proposition and

the underlying causal law, is not, as was the other assumption, an

hypothesis, but a necessary requirement or _postulate_ of our thought.

Its necessity arises out of our thought, because our experience reveals

uniformity in the sequence of events. From this point of view,

therefore, the causal law appears as a postulate of our thought,

grounded upon the uniformity in the sequence of events. It underlies

every special case of constructing hypotheses as well as the expectation

that like causes will be given in the reality not yet observed.

Mill's logic of induction contains the same fault as that already

present in Hume's psychological theory of cause. Hume makes merely the

causal law itself responsible for our inductive inferences, and

accordingly (as Mill likewise wrongly assumes) for our inferences in

general. But we recognize how rightly Mill came to assert, in

contradiction to his empiristic presuppositions, that the causal law

offers "an undoubted assurance of an invariable, universal, and

unconditional," that is, necessary, sequence of events, from which no

seeming irregularity of occurrence and no gap in our experience can lead

us astray, as long as experience offers uniformities of sequence.

Rationalism is thus in the right, when it regards the necessary

connection as an essential characteristic of the relation between cause

and effect, that is, recognizes in it a relation of real dependence. At

this point Kant and Schopenhauer have had a profounder insight than Hume

and Stuart Mill. Especially am I glad to be in agreement with Lotze on a

point which he reached by a different route and from essentially

different presuppositions. Lotze distinguishes in pure logic between

postulates, hypotheses, and fictions. He does not refer the term

"postulate" exclusively to the causal law which governs our entire

empirical thought in its formation of hypotheses, but gives the term a

wider meaning. "Postulates" are only corollaries from the inductive

fundamental form of all hypothesis construction, and correspond

essentially to what we have called general or heuristic hypotheses. His

determination of the validity of these postulates, however, implies the

position to be assigned to the causal law and therefore not to those

heuristic hypotheses. "The postulate is not an assumption that we can

make or refrain from making, or, again, in whose place we can substitute

another. It is rather an (absolutely) necessary assumption without which

the content of the view at issue would contradict the laws of our

thought."[23]

[Footnote 23: _Logic_, 1874, buch II, kap. viii.]

Still the decision that we have reached is not on this account in favor

of rationalism, as this is represented for instance by Kant and his

successors down to our own time, and professed by Lotze in the passage

quoted, when he speaks of an absolute necessity for thought. We found

that the causal law requires a necessary connection between events given

us in constant sequence. It is not, however, on that account a law of

our thought or of a "pure understanding" which would be absolutely

independent of all experience. When we take into consideration the

evolution of the organic world of which we are members, then we must say

that our intellect, that is, our ideation and with it our sense

perception, has evolved in us in accordance with the influences to which

we have been subjected. The common elements in the different contents of

perception which have arisen out of other psychical elements, seemingly

first in the brute world, are not only an occasion, but also an

efficient cause, for the evolution of our processes of reproduction, in

which our memory and imagination as well as our knowledge and thought,

psychologically considered, come to pass. The causal law, which the

critical analysis of the material scientific methods shows to be a

fundamental condition of empirical thought, in its requirement that the

events stand as causes and effects in necessary connection, or real

dependence, comprehends these uniform contents of perception only in the

way peculiar to our thought.

Doubtless our thought gives a connection to experience through this its

requirement which experience of itself could not offer. The necessary

connection of effect with cause, or the real dependence of the former

upon the latter, is not a component of possible perception. This

requirement of our thought does not, however, become thereby independent

of the perceptive elements in the presuppositions involved in the

uniformity of sequence. The _a priori_ in the sense of "innate ideas,"

denoting either these themselves or an absolutely _a priori_ conformity

to law that underlies them, for instance, our "spontaneity," presupposes

in principle that our "soul" is an independently existing substance in

the traditional metaphysical sense down to the time of Locke. Kant's

rationalistic successors, for the most part, lost sight of the fact that

Kant had retained these old metaphysical assumptions in his

interpretation of the transcendental conditions of empirical interaction

and in his cosmological doctrine of freedom. The common root of the

sensibility and of the understanding as the higher faculty of knowledge

remains for Kant the substantial force of the soul, which expresses

itself (just as in Leibnitz) as _vis passiva_ and _vis activa_. The

modern doctrine of evolution has entirely removed the foundation from

this rationalism which had been undermined ever since Locke's criticism

of the traditional concept of substance.

To refer again briefly to a second point in which the foregoing results

differ from the Kantian rationalism as well as from empiricism since

Hume: The postulate of a necessary connection between cause and effect,

as we have seen, in no way implies the consequence that the several

inductions lose the character of hypotheses. This does not follow merely

from the fact that all inductions besides the causal law include the

hypothetical thought that the same causes will be given in the reality

not yet observed as appear in that already observed. The hypothetical

character of all inductive inferences is rather revealed through the

circumstance that in the causal postulate absolutely nothing is

contained regarding _what_ the efficacy in the causes is, and _how_ this

efficacy arises.

* * * * *

Only such consequences of the foregoing interpretation of the causal law

and of its position as one of the bases of all scientific construction

of hypotheses may be pointed out, in conclusion, as will help to make

easier the understanding of the interpretation itself.

The requirement of a necessary connection, or dependence, is added by

our thought to the reproductive and recognitive presuppositions that are

contained in the uniformity of the sequence of events. If this necessary

connection be taken objectively, then it reveals as its correlate the

requirement of a real dependence of effect upon cause. We come not only

upon often and variously used rationalistic thoughts, but also upon old

and unchangeable components of all empirical scientific thought, when we

give the name "force" to the efficacy that underlies causes. The old

postulate of a dynamic intermediary between the events that follow one

another constantly retains for us, therefore, its proper meaning. We

admit without hesitation that the word "force" suggests fetishism more

than do the words "cause" and "effect;" but we do not see how this can

to any degree be used as a counter-argument. All words that were coined

in the olden time to express thoughts of the practical _Weltanschauung_

have an archaic tang. Likewise all of our science and the greater part

of our nomenclature have arisen out of the sphere of thought contained

in the practical _Weltanschauung_, which centred early in fetishism and

related thoughts. If, then, we try to free our scientific terminology

from such words, we must seek refuge in the Utopia of a _lingua

universalis_, in short, we must endeavor to speak a language which would

make science a secret of the few. Or will any one seriously maintain

that a thought which belongs to an ancient sphere of mental life must be

false for the very reason that it is ancient?

In any case, it is fitting that we define more closely the sense in

which we are to regard forces as the dynamic intermediaries of uniform

occurrence. Force cannot be given as a content of perception either

through our senses or through our consciousness of self; in the case of

the former, not in our kinesthetic sensations, in the case of the

latter, not in our consciousness of volition. Volition would not include

a consciousness of force, even though we were justified in regarding it

as a simple primitive psychosis, and were not compelled rather to regard

it as an intricate collection of feelings and sensations as far as these

elementary forms of consciousness are connected in thought with the

phenomena of reaction. Again, forces cannot be taken as objects that are

derived as _possible_ perceptions or after the analogy of possible

perceptions. The postulate of our thought through which these forces are

derived from the facts of the uniform sequence of events, reveals them

as limiting notions (_Grenzbegriffe_), as specializations of the

necessary connection between cause and effect, or of the real dependence

of the former upon the latter; for the manner of their causal

intermediation is in no way given, rather they can be thought of only as

underlying our perceptions. They are then in fact _qualitates occultae_;

but they are such only because the concept of quality is taken from the

contents of our sense and self perception, which of course do not

contain the necessary connection required by our thought. Whoever,

therefore, requires from the introduction of forces new contents of

perception, for instance, new and fuller mechanical pictures, expects

the impossible.

The contempt with which the assumption of forces meets, on the part of

those who make this demand, is accordingly easily understood, and still

more easily is it understood, if one takes into consideration what

confusion of concepts has arisen through the use of the term "force" and

what obstacles the assumption of forces has put in the way of the

material sciences. It must be frankly admitted that this concept delayed

for centuries both in the natural and moral sciences the necessary

analysis of the complicated phenomena forming our data. Under the

influence of the "concept philosophy" it caused, over and over again,

the setting aside of the problems of this analytical empirical thought

as soon as their solution had been begun. This misuse cannot but make

suspicious from the very start every new form of maintaining that forces

underlie causation.

However, misuse proves as little here against a proper use as it does in

other cases. Moreover, the scruples that we found arising from the

standpoint of empiricism against the assumption of forces are not to the

point. In assuming a dynamic intermediary between cause and effect, we

are not doubling the problems whose solution is incumbent upon the

sciences of facts, and still less is it true that our assumption must

lead to a logical circle. That is, a comparison with the ideas of the

old concept philosophy, which even in the Aristotelian doctrine contain

such a duplication, is not to the point. Those ideas are hypostasized

abstractions which are taken from the uniformly coexisting

characteristics of objects. Forces, on the other hand, are the

imperceivable relations of dependence which we must presuppose between

events that follow one another uniformly, if the uniformity of this

sequence is to become for us either thinkable or conceivable. The

problems of material scientific research are not doubled by this

presupposition of a real dynamic dependence, because it introduces an

element not contained in the data of perception which give these

problems their point of departure. This presupposition does not renew

the thought of an analytic rational connection between cause and effect

which the concept philosophy involves; on the contrary, it remains true

to the principle made practical by Hume and Kant, that the real

connection between causes and their effects is determinable only through

experience, that is, empirically and synthetically through the actual

indication of the events of uniform sequence. How these forces are

constituted and work, we cannot know, since our knowledge is confined to

the material of perception from which as a basis presentation has

developed into thought. The insight that we have won from the limiting

notion of force helps us rather to avoid the misuse which has been made

of the concept of force. A fatal circle first arises, when we use the

unknowable forces and not the knowable events for the purpose of

explanation, that is, when we cut off short the empirical analysis which

leads _ad infinitum_. To explain does not mean to deduce the known from

the unknown, but the particular from the general. It was therefore no

arbitrary judgment, but an impulse conditioned by the very nature of our

experience and of our thought, that made man early regard the causal

connection as a dynamic one, even though his conception was of course

indistinct and mixed with confusing additions.

The concept of force remains indispensable also for natural scientific

thought. It is involved with the causal law in every attempt to form an

hypothesis, and accordingly it is already present in every description

of facts which goes by means of memory or abstraction beyond the

immediately given content of present perception. In introducing it we

have in mind, moreover, that the foundations of every possible

interpretation of nature possess a dynamic character, just because all

empirical thought, in this field as well, is subordinate to the causal

law. This must be admitted by any one who assumes as indispensable aids

of natural science the mechanical figures through which we reduce the

events of sense perception to the motion of mass particles, that is,

through which we associate these events with the elements of our visual

and tactual perception. All formulations of the concept of mass, even

when they are made so formal as in the definition given by Heinrich

Hertz, indicate dynamic interpretations. Whether the impelling forces

are to be thought of in particular as forces acting at a distance or as

forces acting through collision depends upon the answer to the question

whether we have to assume the dynamic mass particles as filling space

discontinuously or continuously. The dynamic basis of our interpretation

of nature will be seen at once by any one who is of the opinion that we

can make the connection of events intelligible without the aid of

mechanical figures, for instance, in terms of energy.

Thus it results that we interpret the events following one another

immediately and uniformly as causes and effects, by presupposing as

fundamental to them forces that are the necessary means of their

uniformity of connection. What we call "laws" are the judgments in which

we formulate these causal connections.

A second and a third consequence need only be mentioned here. The

hypothesis that interprets the mutual connection of psychical and

physical vital phenomena as causal one is as old as it is natural. It is

natural, because even simple observations assure us that the mental

content of perception _follows_ uniformly the instigating physical

stimulus and the muscular movement the instigating mental content which

we apprehend as will. We know, however, that the physical events which,

in raising the biological problem, we have to set beside the psychical,

do not take place in the periphery of our nervous system and in our

muscles, but in the central nervous system. But we must assume, in

accordance with all the psycho-physiological data which at the present

time are at our disposal, that these events in our central nervous

system do not follow the corresponding psychical events, but that both

series have their course simultaneously. We have here, therefore,

instead of the real relation of dependence involved in constant

sequence, a real dependence of the simultaneity or correlative series of

events. This would not, of course, as should be at once remarked, tell

as such against a causal connection between the two separate causal

series. But the contested parallelistic interpretation of this

dependence is made far more probable through other grounds. These are in

part corollaries of the law of the conservation of energy, rightly

interpreted, and in part epistemological considerations. Still it is not

advisable to burden methodological study, for instance, the theory of

induction, with these remote problems; and on that account it is better

for our present investigation to subordinate the psychological

interdependences, to the causal ones in the narrower sense.

The final consequence, too, that forces itself upon our attention is

close at hand in the preceding discussion. The tradition prevailing

since Hume, together with its inherent opposition to the interpretation

of causal connection given by the concept philosophy, permitted us to

make the uniform sequences of events the basis of our discussion. In so

doing, however, our attention had to be called repeatedly to one

reservation. In fact, only a moment ago, in alluding to the

psychological interdependences, we had to emphasize the uniform

_sequence_. Elsewhere the arguments depended upon the _uniformity_ that

characterizes this sequence; and rightly, for the reduction of the

causal relation to the fundamental relation of the sequence of events is

merely a convenient one and not the only possible one. As soon as we

regard the causal connection, along with the opposed and equal reaction,

as an interconnection, then cause and effect become, is a matter of

principle, simultaneous. The separation of interaction from causation is

not justifiable.

In other ways also we can so transform every causal relation that cause

and effect must be regarded as simultaneous. Every stage, for instance,

of the warming of a stone by the heat of the sun, or of the treaty

conferences of two states, presents an effect that is simultaneous with

the totality of the acting causes. The analysis of a cause that was at

first grasped as a whole into the multiplicity of its constituent causes

and the comprehension of the constituent causes into a whole, which then

presents itself as the effect, is a necessary condition of such a type

of investigation. This conception, which is present already in Hobbes,

but especially in Herbart's "method of relations," deserves preference

always where the purpose in view is not the shortest possible

argumentation but the most exact analysis.

If we turn our attention to this way of viewing the problem,--not,

however, in the form of Herbart's speculative method,--we shall find

that the results which we have gained will in no respect be altered. We

do, however, get a view beyond. From it we can find the way to

subordinate not only the uniform sequence of events, but also the

persistent characteristics and states with their mutual relations, under

the extended causal law. In so doing, we do not fall back again into the

intellectual world of the concept philosophy. We come only to regard the

_persisting coexistences_--in the physical field, the bodies, in the

psychical, the subjects of consciousness--as systems or modes of

activity. The thoughts to which such a doctrine leads are accordingly

not new or unheard of. The substances have always been regarded as

sources of modes of activity. We have here merely new modifications of

thoughts that have been variously developed, not only from the side of

empiricism, but also from that of rationalism. They carry with them

methodologically the implication that it is possible to grasp the

totality of reality, as far as it reveals uniformities, as a causally

connected whole, as a cosmos. They give the research of the special

sciences the conceptual bases for the wider prospects that the sciences

of facts have through hard labor won for themselves. The subject of

consciousness is unitary as far as the processes of memory extend, but

it is not simple. On the contrary, it is most intricately put together

out of psychical complexes, themselves intricate and out of their

relations; all of which impress upon us, psychologically and, in their

mechanical correlates, physiologically, an ever-recurring need for

further empirical analysis. Among the mechanical images of physical

reality that form the foundation of our interpretation of nature, there

can finally be but one that meets all the requirements of a general

hypothesis of the continuity of kinetic connections. With this must be

universally coördinated the persistent properties or sensible modes of

action belonging to bodies. The mechanical constitution of the compound

bodies, no matter at what stage of combination and formation, must be

derivable from the mechanical constitution of the elements of this

combination. Thus our causal thought compels us to trace back the

persistent coexistences of the so-called elements to combinations whose

analysis, as yet hardly begun, leads us on likewise to indefinitely

manifold problems. Epistemologically we come finally to a universal

phenomenological dynamism as the fundamental basis of all theoretical

interpretation of the world, at least fundamental for our scientific

thought, and we are here concerned with no other.

ADDENDA PAGES

FOR LECTURE NOTES AND MEMORANDA OF COLLATERAL READING

Transcriber's Notes:

In the original book, ten blank pages follow the last text entry.

On the title page, the copy number (337) is written in by hand.

In the chronological order of proceedings for September 24, there

is no listing for Hall 9 at 3 p.m.

Alterations:

Punctuation was standardized.

Footnotes were moved directly after the paragraph to which they pertain

and are indented.

Greek phrases were transliterated. Stand-alone Greek letters were

spelled out, i.e., 'alpha,' 'beta,' 'gamma.'

Hyphens removed for consistency with remaining text:

... banquet hall of the Tyrolean Alps ...

... breaking down of national Schools ...

... analysis of the material scientific methods ...

... is by no means a passive mirror picture of an ...

... and the much discussed historical laws are ...

... it is in the number series that we have ...

... as well as of the number system, can all be ...

... by our sense perception of this ...

... in the form of sense perception ...

... for the space of sense perception is to ...

... are in the first instance sense perceptions,...

... doctrine of the thought processes,...

... character of the thought processes,...

... introduction of time relations into the ...

... the too much neglected idea of the ...

... in the main, twofold: ...

... sense and self perception,...

Hyphen added for consistency with remaining text:

... of those will-acts which themselves have ...

Changed:

'colaborers' to 'co-laborers' ... and other worthy co-laborers?...

'pyscho' to 'psycho' ... psycho-physical elements ...

'interacademic' to 'inter-academic' ... inter-academic interest ...

'organzied' to 'organized' ... already organized branches ...

'Pyschological' to 'Psychological' ... Psychological Association....

'B' to 'A' and 'C' to 'B' in the Programme, Department 16. Sociology

Capitalized 'Admiral' ... Rear-Admiral John R. Bartlett ...

Added period to 'LL.D.' ... Putnam, Litt.D., LL.D., ...