inference to the relation of cause and effect nor in the conclusions
we draw from it do we go ‘beyond experience,’ [1] this will merely
be, if his account of it as a ‘philosophical relation’ be true,
because in experience we already go beyond sense. ‘There is nothing,’
says Hume, ‘in any object considered in itself that can afford
us a reason for drawing a conclusion beyond it’ [2]--a statement
which to him means that, if the mind really passes from it to
another, this is only because as a matter of fact another feeling
follows on the first. But, in truth, if each feeling were merely
‘considered in itself,’ the fact that one follows on another would
be no fact _for the subject of the feelings_, no starting-point of
intelligent experience at all; for the fact is the relation between
the feelings--a relation which only exists for a subject that
considers neither feeling ‘in itself,’ as a ‘separate and perishing
existence,’ but finds a reality in the determination of each by the
other which, as it is not either or both of them, so survives, while
they pass, as a permanent factor of experience. Thus in order that
any definite ‘object’ of experience may exist for us, our feelings
must have ceased to be what according to Hume they are in themselves.
They cease to be so in virtue of the presence to them of the Ego,
in common relation to which they become related to each other as
mutually qualified members of a permanent system--a system which at
first for the individual consciousness exists only as a forecast
or in outline, and is gradually realized and filled up with the
accession of experience. It is quite true that nothing more than
the reference to such a system, already necessary to constitute the
simplest object of experience, is involved in that interpretation
of every event as a changed appearance of an unchanging order,
and therefore to be accounted for, which we call inference to a
cause or the inference of necessary connection; or, again, in the
identification of the event, the determination of its particular
nature by the discovery of its particular cause.
[1] Above, pars. 285 & 286.
[2] P. 436 and elsewhere. [Book I, part III., sec. XII.]
How his doctrine might have been developed. Its actual outcome.
315. The supposed difference then between immediate and mediate
cognition is no absolute difference. It is not a difference between
experience and a process that goes beyond experience, or between an
experience unregulated by a conception of a permanent system and
one that is so regulated. It lies merely in the degree of fullness
and articulation which that conception has attained. If this had
been what Hume meant to convey in his assimilation of inference to
perception, he would have gone far to anticipate the result of the
enquiry which Kant started. And this is what he might have come
to mean if, instead of playing fast and loose with ‘impression’
and ‘object,’ using each as plausibility required on the principle
of accommodation to the ‘vulgar,’ he had faced the consequence of
his own implicit admission, that every perception of an object as
identical is a ‘fiction’ in which we go beyond present feeling. As
it is, his ‘scepticism with regard to the senses’ goes far enough
to empty their ‘reports’ of the content which the ‘vulgar’ ascribe
to them, and thus to put a breach between sense and the processes
of knowledge, but not far enough to replace the ‘sensible thing’ by
a function of reason. In default of such replacement, there was no
way of filling the breach but to bring back the vulgar theory under
the cover of habits and ‘tendencies to feign,’ which all suppose a
ready-made knowledge of the sensible thing as their starting-point.
Hence the constant contradiction, which it is our thankless task
to trace, between his solution of the real world into a succession
of feelings and the devices by which he sought to make room in his
system for the actual procedure of the physical sciences. Conspicuous
among these is his allowance of that view of relation in the way of
cause and effect as an objective reality, which is represented by his
definition of it as a ‘philosophical relation.’ It is in the sense
represented by that definition that his doctrine has been understood
and retained by subsequent formulators of inductive logic; but on
examining it in the light of his own statements we have found that
the relation, as thus defined, is not that which his theory required,
and as which to represent it is the whole motive of his disquisition
on the subject. It is not a sequence of impression upon impression,
distinguished merely by its constancy; nor a sequence of idea upon
impression, distinguished merely by that transfer of liveliness to
the idea which arises from the constancy of its sequence upon the
impression. It is a relation between ‘objects’ of which each is what
it is only as ‘an instance of a species’ that exists continuously,
and therefore in distinction from our ‘perishing impressions,’
according to a regular order of ‘contiguity and succession.’ As
such existence and order are by Hume’s own showing no possible
impressions, and by consequence no possible ideas, so neither are the
‘objects’ which derive their whole character from them.
No philosophical relation admissible with Hume that is not derived
from a natural one.
316. It may be said, however, that wherever Hume admits a definition
purporting to be of a ‘philosophical relation,’ he does so only as
an accommodation, and under warning that every such relation is
‘fictitious’ except so far as it is equivalent to a natural one; that
according to his express statement ‘it is only so far as causation
is a _natural_ relation, and produces an union among our ideas, that
we are able to reason upon it or draw any inference from it’; [1]
and that therefore it is only by his definition of it as a ‘natural
relation’ that he is to be judged. Such a vindication of Hume would
be more true than effective. That with him the ‘philosophical’
relation of cause and effect is ‘fictitious,’ with all the
fictitiousness of a ‘continued existence distinct from perceptions,’
is what it has been the object of the preceding paragraphs to show.
But the fictitiousness of a relation can with him mean nothing else
than that, instead of having an idea of it, we have only a ‘tendency
to suppose’ that we have such an idea. Thus the designation of the
philosophical relation of cause and effect carries with it two
conditions, one negative, the other positive, on the observance of
which the logical value of the designation depends. The ‘tendency
to suppose’ must _not_ after all be itself translated into the idea
which it is to replace; and it _must_ be accounted for as derived
from a ‘natural relation’ which is not fictitious. That the negative
condition is violated by Hume, we have sufficiently seen. He treats
the ‘philosophical relation’ of cause and effect, in spite of the
‘fictions’ which it involves, not as a name for a tendency to suppose
that we have an idea which we have not, but as itself a definite
idea on which he founds various ‘rules for judging what objects are
really so related and what are not’. [2] That the positive condition
is violated also--that the ‘natural relation’ of cause and effect,
according to the sense in which his definition of it is meant to be
understood, already itself involves ‘fictions,’ and only for that
reason is a possible source of the ‘philosophical’--is what we have
next to show.
[1] P. 394. [Book I, part III., sec. VII.]
[2] Part III. § 15.
Examination of his account of cause and effect as ‘natural relation’.
317. That definition, it will be remembered, runs as follows: ‘A
cause is an object precedent and contiguous to another, and so united
with it in the imagination that the idea of the one determines the
mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to
form a more lively idea of the other.’ Now, as has been sufficiently
shown, the object of an idea with Hume can properly mean nothing but
the impression from which the idea is derived, which again is only
the livelier idea, even as the idea is the fainter impression. The
idea and the object of it, then, only differ as different stages
in the vivacity of a feeling. [1] It must be remembered, further,
in regard to the ‘determination of the mind’ spoken of in the
definition, that the ‘mind’ according to Hume is merely a succession
of impressions and ideas, and that its ‘determination’ means no more
than a certain habitualness in this succession. Deprived of the
benefit of ambiguous phraseology, then, the definition would run
thus: ‘A cause is a lively feeling immediately precedent to another,
[2] and so united with it that when either of the two more faintly
recurs, the other follows with like faintness, and when either occurs
with the maximum of liveliness the other follows with less, but still
great, liveliness.’ Thus stated, the definition would correspond
well enough to the process by which Hume arrives at it, of which the
whole drift, as we have seen, is to merge the so-called objective
relation of cause and effect, with the so-called inference from it,
in the mere habitual transition from one feeling to another. But it
is only because not thus stated, and because the actual statement
is understood to carry a meaning of which Hume’s doctrine does not
consistently admit, that it has a chance of finding acceptance. Its
plausibility depends on ‘object’ and ‘mind’ and ‘determination’ being
understood precisely in the sense in which, according to Hume, they
ought not to be understood, so that it shall express not a sequence
of feeling upon feeling, as this might be for a merely feeling
subject, but that permanent relation or law of nature which to a
subject that thinks upon its feelings, and only to such a subject,
their sequence constitutes or on which it depends.
[1] See above, paragraphs 195 and 208. Cf. also, among other
passages, one in the chapter now under consideration (p. 451) [Book
I, part III., sec. XIV.]--‘Ideas always represent their _objects or
impressions_.’
[2] The phrase ‘immediately precedent’ would seem to convey Hume’s
meaning better than his own phrase ‘precedent and contiguous.’
Contiguity _in space_ (which is what we naturally understand by
‘contiguity,’ when used absolutely) he could not have deliberately
taken to be necessary to constitute the relation of cause and effect,
since the impressions so related, as he elsewhere shows, may often
not be in space at all.
Double meaning of natural relation. How Hume turns it to account.
318. It is this essential distinction between the sequence of
feeling upon feeling for a sentient subject and the relation which
to a thinking subject this sequence constitutes--a distinction not
less essential than that between the conditions, through which a
man passes in sleep, as they are for the sleeping subject himself,
and as they are for another thinking upon them--which it is the
characteristic of Hume’s doctrine of natural relation in all its
forms to disguise. Only in virtue of the presence to feelings of
a subject, which distinguishes itself from them, do they become
related objects. Thus, with Hume’s exclusion of such a subject,
with his reduction of mind and world alike to the succession of
feelings, relations and ideas of relation logically disappear. But
by help of the phrase ‘natural relation,’ covering, as it does, two
wholly different things--the involuntary sequence of one feeling
upon another, and that determination of each by the other which can
only take place for a synthetic self-consciousness--he is able on
the one hand to deny that the relations which form the framework
of knowledge are more than sequences of feeling, and on the other
to clothe them with so much of the real character of relations as
qualifies them for ‘principles of union among ideas.’ Thus the mere
occurrence of similar feelings is with him already that relation in
the way of resemblance, which in truth only exists for a subject
that can contemplate them as permanent objects. In like manner the
succession of feelings, which can only constitute time for a subject
that contrasts the succession with its own unity, and which, if ideas
were feelings, would exclude the possibility of an idea of time, is
yet with him indifferently time and the idea of time, though ideas
are feelings and there is no ‘mind’ but their succession.
If an effect is merely a constantly observed sequence, how can an
event be an effect the first time it is observed? Hume evades this
question;
319. The fallacy of Hume’s doctrine of causation is merely an
aggravated form of that which has generally passed muster in his
doctrine of time. If time, because a relation between feelings, can
be supposed to survive the exclusion of a thinking self and the
reduction of the world and mind to a succession of feelings, the
relation of cause and effect has only to be assimilated to that of
time in order that its incompatibility with the desired reduction
may disappear, The great obstacle to such assimilation lies in that
opposition to the mere sequence of feelings which causation as
‘matter of fact’--as that in discovering which we ‘discover the real
existence and relations of objects’--purports to carry with it. Why
do we set aside our usual experience as delusive in contrast with the
exceptional experience of the laboratory--why do we decide that an
event which has seemed to happen cannot really have happened, because
under the given conditions no adequate cause of it could have been
operative--if the relation of cause and effect is itself merely a
succession of seemings, repeated so often as to leave behind it a
lively expectation of its recurrence? This question, once fairly put,
cannot be answered: it can only be evaded. It is Hume’s method of
evasion that we have now more particularly to notice.
Still, he is a long way off the Inductive Logic, which supposes an
objective sequence.
320. In its detailed statement it is very different from the method
adopted in those modern treatises of Logic which, beginning with
the doctrine that facts are merely feelings in the constitution
of which thought has no share, still contrive to make free use in
their logical canon of the antithesis between the real and apparent.
The key to this modern method is to be found in its ambiguous use
of the term ‘phenomenon,’ alike for the feeling as it is felt,
‘perishing’ when it ceases to be felt, and for the feeling as it
is for a thinking subject--a qualifying and qualified element in a
permanent world. Only if facts were ‘phenomena’ in the former sense
would the antithesis between facts and conceptions be valid; only if
‘phenomena’ are understood in the latter sense can causation be said
to be a law of phenomena. So strong, however, is the charm which this
ambiguous term has exercised, that to the ordinary modern logician
the question above put may probably seem unmeaning. ‘The appearance,’
he will say, ‘which we set aside as delusive does not consist in any
of the reports of the senses--these are always true--but in some
false supposition in regard to them due to an insufficient analysis
of experience, in some reference of an actual sensation to a group
of supposed possibilities of sensation, called a “thing,” which
are either unreal or with which it is not really connected. The
correction of the false appearance by a discovery of causation is
the replacement of a false supposition, as to the possibility of the
antecedence or sequence of one feeling to another, by the discovery,
through analysis of experience, of what feelings do actually precede
and follow each other. It implies no transition from feelings to
things, but only from a supposed sequence of feelings to the actual
one. Science in its farthest range leaves us among appearances still.
It only teaches us what really appears.’
Can the principle of uniformity of nature be derived from sequence of
feelings?
321. Now the presupposition of this answer is the existence of just
that necessary connexion as between appearances, just that objective
order, for which, because it is not a possible ‘impression or idea,’
Hume has to substitute a blind propensity produced by habit. Those
who make it, indeed, would repel the imputation of believing in any
‘necessary connexion,’ which to them represents that ‘mysterious
tie’ in which they vaguely suppose ‘metaphysicians’ to believe. They
would say that necessary connexion is no more than uniformity of
sequence. But sequence of what? Not of feelings as the individual
feels them, for then there would be no perfect uniformities, but
only various degrees of approximation to uniformity, and the
measure of approximation in each case would be the amount of the
individual’s experience in that particular direction. The procedure
of the inductive logician shows that his belief in the uniformity
of a sequence is irrespective of the number of instances in which
it has been experienced. A single instance in which one feeling is
felt after another, if it satisfy the requirements of the ‘method
of difference,’ _i.e._ if it show exactly what it is that precedes
and what it is that follows in that instance, suffices to establish
a uniformity of sequence, on the principle that what is fact once
is fact always. Now a uniformity that can be thus established is in
the proper sense necessary. Its existence is not contingent on its
being felt by anyone or everyone. It does not come into being with
the experiment that shows it. It is felt because it is real, not real
because it is felt. It may be objected indeed that the principle of
the ‘uniformity of nature,’ the principle that what is fact once is
fact always, itself gradually results from the observation of facts
which are feelings, and that thus the principle which enables us to
dispense with the repetition of a sensible experience is itself due
to such repetition. The answer is, that feelings which are conceived
as facts are already conceived as constituents of a nature. The same
presence of the thinking subject to, and distinction of itself from,
the feelings, which renders them knowable _facts_, renders them
members of a world which is one throughout its changes. In other
words, the presence of facts from which the uniformity of nature, as
an abstract rule, is to be inferred, is already the consciousness of
that uniformity _in concreto_.
With Hume the only uniformity is in expectation, as determined by
habit; but strength of such expectation must vary indefinitely.
322. Hume himself makes a much more thorough attempt to avoid
that pre-determination of feelings by the conception of a world,
of things and relations, which is implied in the view of them as
permanent facts. He will not, if he can help it, so openly depart
from the original doctrine that thought is merely weaker sense. Such
conceptions as those of the uniformity of nature and of reality,
being no possible ‘impressions or ideas,’ he only professes to admit
in a character wholly different from that in which they actually
govern inductive philosophy. Just as by reality he understands not
something to which liveliness of feeling may be an index, but simply
that liveliness itself, and by an inferred or believed reality a
feeling to which this liveliness has been communicated from one that
already has it; so he is careful to tell us ‘that the supposition
that the future resembles the past is derived entirely from habit,
by which we are determined to expect for the future the same train
of objects to which we have been accustomed’. [1] The supposition
then _is_ this ‘determination,’ this ‘propensity,’ to expect. Any
‘idea’ derived from the propensity can only be the propensity itself
at a fainter stage; and between such a propensity and the conception
of ‘nature,’ whether as uniform or otherwise, there is a difference
which only the most hasty reader can be liable to ignore. But if
by any confusion an expectation of future feelings, determined by
the remembrance of past feelings, could be made equivalent to any
conception of nature, it would not be of nature as uniform. As is
the ‘habit’ which determines the expectation, such must be the
expectation itself; and as have been the sequences of feeling in
each man’s past, such must be the habit which results from them. Now
no one’s feelings have always occurred to him in the same relative
order. There may be some pairs of feelings of which one has always
been felt before the other and never after it, and between which
there has never been an intervention of a third--although (to take
Hume’s favourite instance) even the feeling of heat may sometimes
precede the sight of the flame--and in these cases upon occurrence of
one there will be nothing to qualify the expectation of the other.
But just so far as there are exceptions in our past experience to
the immediate sequence of one feeling upon another, must there be a
qualification of our expectation of the future, if it be undetermined
by extraneous conceptions, with reference to those particular
feelings.
[1] P. 431. [Book I, part III., sec. XII.]
It could not serve the same purpose as the conception of uniformity
of nature.
323. Thus the expectation that ‘the future will resemble the past,’
if the past means to each man (and Hume could not allow of its
meaning more) merely the succession of his own feelings, must be made
up of a multitude of different expectations--some few of these being
of that absolute and unqualified sort which alone, it would seem,
can regulate the transition that we are pleased to call ‘necessary
connexion;’ the rest as various in their strength and liveliness
as there are possible differences between cases where the chances
are evenly balanced and where they are all on one side. From Hume’s
point of view, as he himself says, ‘every past experiment,’ _i.e._
every instance in which feeling _(a)_ has been found to follow
feeling _(b)_, ‘may be considered a kind of chance’. [1] As are the
instances of this kind to the instances in which some other feeling
has followed _(b)_, such are the chances or ‘probability’ that _(a)_
will follow _(b)_ again, and such upon the occurrence of _(b)_ will
be that liveliness in the expectation of _(a)_, which alone with Hume
is the reality of the connexion between them. In such an expectation,
in an expectation made up of such expectations, there would be
nothing to serve the purpose which the conception of the uniformity
of nature actually serves in inductive science. It could never make
us believe that a feeling felt before another--as when the motion
of a bell is seen before the sound of it has been heard--represents
the real antecedent. It could never set us upon that analysis of our
experience by which we seek to get beyond sequences that are merely
usual, and admit of indefinite exceptions, to such as are invariable;
upon that ‘interrogation of nature’ by which, on the faith that
there is a uniformity if only we could find it out, we wrest from
her that confession of a law which she does not spontaneously offer.
The fact that some sequences of feeling have been so uniform as to
result in unqualified expectations (if it be so) could of itself
afford no motive for trying to compass other expectations of a like
character which do not naturally present themselves. Nor could there
be anything in the appearance of an exception to a sequence, hitherto
found uniform, to lead us to change our previous expectation for
one which shall not be liable to such modification. The previous
expectation would be so far weakened, but there is nothing in the
mere weakening of our expectations that should lead to the effort
to place them beyond the possibility of being weakened. Much less
could the bundle of expectations come to conceive themselves as one
system so as that, through the interpretation of each exception to
a supposed uniformity of sequence as an instance of a real one, the
changes of the parts should prove the unchangeableness of the whole.
[1] P. 433. [Book I, part III., sec. XII.]
Hume changes the meaning of this expectation by his account of
the ‘remembrance’ which determines it. Bearing of his doctrine
of necessary connexion upon his argument against miracles. This
remembrance, as he describes it, supposes conception of a system of
nature.