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IS THERE ANY^ AXIOM OE CATTSALTTY” ?
AXXo p'tv ri tan to atnov
ovtl, aXXo S’ skilvo, avtv ov to a'irtov ovk av ttot’ tit]
atViov.^PLAT. jpferfo, 99 b.
•
A
rPHE cultivation of the Natural Sciences has advantageously
contractedsthe .meaning of the word “ Cause,” which formerly
was identified (as its derivative “Because” still is) with every answer
to the question “ Why?” and was said to lurk in the conditional
clause of every hypothetical proposition. But now, we withdraw
the word both from the logical ground of a belief (causa cognoscendl),
and from the interdependence of mathematical magnitudes (causa
essendif We do not, with Aristotle, call the premisses of a syllogism
the causes of the conclusion (An. Post. I. ii. 22), and, with Spinoza,
the essence or definition of Substance, the Cartse of its existence. And
though we say “ If two circles touch each other internally, their
centres and point of contact will be in the same straight line,” we
do not speak of the internal contact as the cause of straightness in
the uniting line. The order'of consecutive thought is expressed by
the word “ Beason.” The relations with which mathematical truth
is concerned have no origin or consecution inter se; but exist in
reciprocal interdependence, which may be traversed in various orders.
Were there only an unchanging universe, there would be, in the
modern sense, no Cause and Effect. Between “ Things,” as such,
this relation cannot exist; it requires Phenomena. It is only with
w
�IS THERE ANY “AXIOM OF CAUSALITY”?
637
the causa nascencli that we have now to do. We speak, no doubt, of
objects,—a glacier, a coal-bed, an asteroid,—being caused by this
or that; but only as having assumed their present form in time.
Change alone, however, does not suffice to give entrance to
causality. A body existing in a state of uniform rectilinear motion
would be always under change, bM the ^change would not be an
effect; nor for the body’s movement through one segment of its
course should we assign as cause its movement through the pre
vious segment. Successive stages of continuous and unvaried change
do not constitute the relation : the two terms must be ih^edwgeneous.
There are thus two marks of an effect: .it must <be; a phenomenon, and
not homogeneous with the Cause. Whatever carries these marks
obliges us to look beyond itelf; for what ? for its origin in some
thing different. This difference might be satisfied hither by simply
another phenomenon, or by what is other than phenomenon.
I. Suppose the Cause to be ^another phenomenon; in what does the
relation between the two consist ?
1. Is it in Time-*succession ? Is habitual antecedence tantamount
to Causality ? This hypothesis is already excluded by the rule of
heterogeneity already given, for habitual antecedence, belonging
equally to successions of the like and of the unlike, makes no provi
sion for satisfying this rule. After using up the resources of habitual
succession, we should therefore still .have to set up a .supplementary
law of Thought, that every change must be referred to something
other than its own prior stage.
2. Is it in Sequence + Heterogeneity; so that where two different,
phenomena are invariably successive in the same order,.the prior is
cause of the posterior? Not so, unless the blossoms of the almond
are the cause of its leaves; and low water the cause <of high; and
the off fore leg of a horse moves his hind near one; and the fall of
the leaf is the cause of winter; and (to recur to an old example not
yet tortured to death) night the -cause of day. Successions of this
kind, constant yet independent of each other, we can conceive multi
plied to any extent. Suppose them to be universal, so as to occupy
the whole field of observation,. There would still be laws of invari
able order; definite rules of co-existence and succession, securing
the means of prediction; but no causality. Premonitory signs are
still something short of causes.
3. Is the shortcoming remedied by stipulating that the sequence
shall be “ unconditional” ? By decorating his “invariable antece
dent ” with this new mark, Mr. Mill completes its promotion to the
rank of Cause. First, let us see whether we have got here a new
mark at all. When does an antecedent become invested with this
“ unconditionality ” of relation ? When upon its presence, whatever
�638
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.
else may be or not be, the second phenomenon regularly happens.
Whether it has this character or not can be learned only by letting
all other conditions absent themselves by turns, and so reveal their
indifference to the result; and finding the residuary element to be
the sole constant. What we discover thus, however, is nothing but
our old acquaintance “ invariableness,” cleared by comparison with
its inconstant companions.
Or, in order to make “ uncondition
ality” mean more than “ invariableness,” shall we insist that the
antecedent is to be the sole condition “ requisite,” on the occurrence
of which the second phenomenon is “sure to happen, ” and “ will follow
in any case ” ? How, then, am. I to know such an antecedent when
I see it ? What test do you give me of this exclusive requisiteness,
—this sureness to happen ? If it be anything else than the old
invariableness, it cannot be got out of your time-succession; but
assumes a cognition of necessity other than that of habitual sequence,
a certainty of the future other than lies in the juxtaposition of prior
and posterior. In short, it is not from foreseeing its sequel in the
future that we recognise anything as Cause; but from knowing it
as Cause that we are sure of its sequel. Either, therefore, the mark
“ unconditional?” is simply “ invariable ” over again; or else the
rule given to us is, “ Take an antecedent: see that it is invariable :
mind that nothing else is requisite: and you have the Cause ”—a pre
scription more prudent than instructive.
It is a vain attempt, then, as Sir John Herschel remarks, “to
reason away the connection of cause and effect, and fritter it down
into the unsatisfactory^lation of habitual sequence.” (Treatise on
Ast., ch. vii.)
Yet between phenomenon and phenomenon, as occurring in time,
no other relation is observable. Three things only can we notice
about them; their resemblance or difference; their order in space;
their order in time; and scrutinise them as we may under this last
aspect, we can never (as Hume and Brown have adequately shown)
make out anything more about them than which comes first and
which next. Higher magnifying powers, new refinements of dis
covery, may detect unsuspected intermediaries; and bisect and
re-bisect the intervals, till a pair of seeming proximates is pulverized
into a long series ; as the light of Sirius, once regarded as a simple
transaction between the star and the eye, cannot now be scientifically
described without ;ffiiany xa |phapter on undulations, and refraction,
and physiological optics, and the mental interpretation of the visual
field. But the process only introduces more terms into the conse
cution, and reveals nothing other than consecution. Perceptive
experience and observation, then, can never, it is plain, carry us
beyond premonitory signs, laws of co-existence and succession; and
�■IS
ANY “AXIOM OF CAUSALITY"? 639
Kf, as we have maintained, these fall short of Causality, Comte is so
far right in expunging the quest of causes from the duties of
■Inductive Science, and confining it to the work of generalization,
measurement, and deductive prediction. In this he seems to me to
I be more correct than Brown and the Mills, who continue to use
the language of Causation, after it has been atrophied by reducing
it to live on “habitual sequence.”
And if premonitory signs are all that Science can find, so are they
all that Science wants. It culminates in prevision and its counter
part, retrospection ; and in order to read truly the past and future of
the world, it is needful and it is sufficient to Know the groups of
concomitant and the order of successive phenomena. Were they
all loose from each other as sand-grains, or as soldiers filing out of
a barrack-gate, still, so long as they were regularly disposed and
regimented, we should know what’ to look for behind, before, and
around, and this would satisfy our scientific curiosity. But that
there is something else which it does not satisfy is1 plain, from our
not being content with the language of succession and premonition,
but trespassing into terms of causEion. We compel the antecedents
to profess more than antecedence. "We look on the perceptible con
ditions as standing for an imperceptible Causality, hiding within
them or behind them. That they only represent it to our mind, and
are not identical with it, is evident from the way in which the word
“ Cause ” may be shifted about amongst them, settling now on this
condition, now on that, and again upon the aggregate of them all;
never absent, but always movable. For instance, the clock strikes
twelve: required the Cause. The answer may be,—the hands have
reached that point; or, there is a bell for the hammer to hit; or,
there is a hammer to hit the bell; or, the beats of the pendulum
keep the time; or, the iron weight gives motion to the works; or,
the earth’s attraction operates on pendulum and weight. The prin
ciple on which we select among the conditions that which we
designate as Cause has been variously stated. It has been often said
that we pitch upon the most active element, and single it out in
disregard of the passive conditions ; but it would be a good account
of a robbery to say that the safe was not locked. Mr. Mill thinks
that we elect as cause “the proximate antecedent evMf’ rather than
any antecedent state. And it is, he says, in ordrl^ to indulge this
tendency, and escape the necessity of admitting permanent things,
like the earth, into the list of caus'es, that we have set up the
“ logical fictions ’ of “ Force ” and “ Attraction," and stowed them
away into the earth, to execute for us any jerks and pulls that we
may require; for so I understand the statement, that we represent
to ourselves the “ attraction ” of the earth “ as exhausted by each
effort, and therefore constituting at each successive instant a fresh
vol. xiv.
uu
�640
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.
fact, simultaneous with, or only immediately preceding, the effect/’
(Log., B. III., ch. v., s. 3.) This bold attempt to reclaim the pro-l
vince of dynamical language for the successional theory of causation
seems to me to belong to the class of “ heroic remedies,” getting
over a difficulty by adopting it, and formulating it as an advantage.
Surely the earth’s “ attraction ” is held to be no less “ permanent ”
than the earth itself; and the spasmodic conception of it, as put
forth per saltuni wherever it has some new thing to do, is a pecu
liarity of Mr. Mill’s imagination. To the idea of “Force ” we resort,
not to break down but tojfgpin persistency, and fill the measure of
power fully up to the durability of matter ; so that, instead of being
an escape into the phenomenal theory of Causality, it is precisely our
method of deliverance, from it.
To avoid the difficulty of singling out a cause from among the
conditions, it is now usual^o take them all in the aggregate, and to
deny causality to anything short of the whole. This conception, in
which Mr. Mill rests, is due to Hobbes, who says :—“ When we seek
after the Cause of any propounded effect, we must in the first place
get into ouF mind an exact notion or idea of that which we call
Cause, viz., that a cause is the sum or aggregate of all such acci
dents, both in the agent and the patient, as concur to the producing
of the effect propounded; all which existing together, it cannot be
understood but that the effect existed with them ; or that it can
possibly exist, if any one of them be absent.” (Elem. Phil., P. I.,
ch. vi., s. 10.) However well this definition may work for the pur
poses of natural science, it does not satisfy the psychological condi
tion of saying what
mean by “ Obtuse,” and why we habitually
distinguish between atr/a and aXvaeria, and refuse to put the members
of the “ aggregate ” upon a level. Is it not thus ? In asking for a
Cause, we ask always an a&ma^^Muestion——why Z7w‘s phenomenon
rather than that—why some, phenomenon rather than none : and
whatever it be that upsets th® equilibrium of conditions and turns
the scale of this alternative is selected by us as the Cause. As the
two members are not explicitly stated, the positive phenomenon
inquired about may, in different hearers, undergo comparison with a
different suppressed term ; and hence they will not all alight upon
the same condition as the cause. Why does the clock strike twelve
(rather than eleven)!’ because the hands have just reached that point:
(rather than not strike) ? because of the hammer and bell: (rather
than not go at all) ? because of the pendulum and weight. I believe
that this principle gives an adequate account of the apparently
random selection of a cause from among a host of indispensable con
ditions.
No phenomena, however, whether thus divided or left in the group,
can pass beyond the rank of premonitory signs, or give us more than
�gZA fTHERE ANY “AXIOM OF CAUSALITY”? 641
the nidus of Causality, inasmuch as they disclose nothing but their
order; and by causality we mean more than order.
II. The required heterogeneity, then, of Effect and Cause must be
sought on the remaining side of the alternative; the Cause, not being
another phenomenon, must be other than phenomenon, i.e., “ Noumenon,” or entity given by the very make of the intellect itself. The
axiom, ‘‘Every phenomenon has a cause,” instead of meaning,
“Every phenomenon invariably succeeds anothei' phenomenon,”
really means, “ Every phenomenon springs from something other
than phenomenon.” That this, is a true account of the law of thought
appears :—
1. From its a priori character. This character it plainly has.
For how can the causal law be inductively gathered by experience,
when it is the incunabula of experience itself, the condition of the very
scene in which we gain it ? The external world springs up for us
simply in answer to our intellectual demand for a Cause of our sensa
tions ; which, apart from that demand, could never present them
selves to us as effects, with counterparts elsewhere in space. Why,
but for this primary law, should we want any exit from our own im
mediate states ? Why not take them as they come, stop with them
where they are, and let them weave their tissue upon the inner walls ?
Moreover, as Helmholz has observed, there’rf’is a clear indication of
the logical character of the causal law in this—that no experience
is of the least avail to refute it. We often have occasion to discharge
our long-established explanations of phenomena; but however often
baffled, we can never raise the question whether perhaps they are
without cause. In this persistency of search, however, there are, I
think, two distinct beliefs involved—one, in the 'uniformity of
nature; the other, in the derivative origin of phenomena. These, I
think, are not on the same footing. Of the former, Mr. Mill’s
inductive explanation seems to be sufficient; and it might perhaps
be unlearned in such a world as he supposes, where all uniformity
should be broken up. But the second belief would, I conceive,
survive such experience; nor is there any tendency in the apparent
lawlessness of phenomena to make us think that' they issue from no
power. Of these two beliefs—often confounded together—if is the
second alone which I designate as the principle of Causality, and claim
as an axiom a priori. It has nothing to do with the consecution of
phenomena. Amid order or disorder, we equally regard them as
the outcome of power. The other belief-^-not in causation, but in
premonitions—can only be copied from the successions which it
attests, and it would be absurd to suppose that if their uniformity
were broken up, the mind would be driven by intuitive necessity to
rely upon it when it was gone.
If the principle of Causality is an d priori intellectual law, the
�642
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.
“ Cause ” which, it obliges us to think will naturally be, not pheno
menon, but noumenon.
2. From the indispensableness of Dynamical language for the
proper expression of causal relations, and the confessed impossibility
of translating the literature of science into terms of mere co-existence
and succession among phenomena. The very writers who most
rigorously limit us to laws of uniformity—Comte and Mill—are
obliged, no less than others, t® speak the dialect of “Forceand in
a single page I find the litter recognising “the action of forces,
“ the propagation of influences,” “ instantaneous ” and “ continuous
forces,” “ centres of force ” (Log., B. III., ch. v., s. 1); while the
former, falling in with the phraseology of physical astronomy, tells
how the equilibrium of the solarsystem is the “necessary conse
quence of gravitation 5” atod, in his anthropological exposition, assures
us that, in force and intensity, each lower principle has the advan
tage over the higher. What is this idea of “ Force ” still clinging
to those who insist^ that “ alOii we know is phenomena”? Hume,
admitting that we hav-e it, treated it as a figment of customary
association,.-—-a subjective nexus of ideas turned into an illusory
objective bond. The mere recent representatives of his doctrine
deny that such phrases are more than a shorthand compend for
invariable succession, or carry any other meaning to the mind.
This construction Of the phrases is assisted by the fact that Force is
inconceivable without gradations, while Succession is inconceivable
with them : and the difference between the more and the less, the
difficult and the easy, the intense and the remiss, which intelligibly
enters into dynamical facts, brings only nonsense to the relation of
Prior and Posterior. Another device for recalling “ Force ” into the
Time-field is to define it as “ Tendency to Motion.” Motion I know
as a phenomenon j but what sort of phenomenon is the “ Tendency ” ?
If it is outwardly there at all, is it anything else than just the
dynamical element which it tries to expel ? The only way of con
struing it in harmony with the theory is to treat it as not outwardly
there, but as intimating our belief that, under certain supposed
conditions, there would.be motion. This subjective interpretation
puts into the language a meaning which will work; only it is not
our meaning; for We intend to assert something, not about our
hypothetical beliefs, but about the bodies outside us. And it is
incumbent on one who accepts the construction to explain the
objective character of the language, and why it is that, without
mistake of phrase, we mean one thing, and ought to mean another ?
On the whole, the language of Agency, with its measures of intensity,
could never have sprung from an experience limited to successions.
Laws of order are not yet causes ; and if we know anything of causes,
we know more than Laws.
�IS THERE ANY 11AXIOM OF CAUSALITY"? 643
The axiom, then, stands, that “Every phenomenon springs from
something other than phenomenon
and this TVoz/menon is Power.
III. It remains to find the form in which it is given to us.
1. The cognition of an external world is the most conspicuous
primary application of the Causal law. In virtue of this law the
understanding sets up in space before it the Cause of what is felt in
the organs of Sense, and effects the transition from Sensation to
Perception. In sensation itself there is nothing objective; and that
we ever escape beyond our skin is due to the intellectual intuitions
of Space, Time, and Causality. Physiologically, not less than psycho
logically, it seems, the distinction is marked between mere sense and
perception. Flourens attests that the removal of a tubercle will
destroy visual sensation; the retina becomes insensible, the iris
immovable. The removal of a cerebral lobe leaves undisturbed the
visual sensation, the sensibility of the retina, the contractibility of
the iris; but it destroys perception. (De la Vie et de V Intelligence,
2me Edit., p. 49.) Objectivity, then, is given to us by the Causal
law, and is not itself a phenomenon, but the construction which the
Understanding puts upon phenomena.
2. ’ Mere objectivity, however, or external existence, would still
not appear in the form of Power, were it not introduced to us as the
antithetic term (the non-Ego) to our own personality (the Ego).
Two functions, fundamentally contrary, co-exist in our nature ;—a
sensitive receptivity, in virtue of which we are the theatre of
feelings;—and a spontaneous activity, in virtue of which we expend
energy and effect movements. These are contraries, as taking
opposite lines of direction; to the centre and from the centre; the
initiative abroad, and the initiative at home; sensation arriving
without notice, and sensation earned by executive act signalled from
within. In the crossing lines of these functions do we first find
ourselves, and, as distinguished from ourselves, the objective world.
Had we only the passive receptivity, we should not have sensations,
but be sensations; we should feel,'without knowing that we feel.
But with the exercise of living force or will, the self-consciousness
arises; balanced, in the encounter with limitation and impediment,
by the recognition of something other than self. This pair of
existences becomes known to us merely in relation and antithesis :
in whatever capacity we apprehend the one, in the same must we
oppose to it the other. Now, in putting forth our Will (using the
word for the whole activity which may become voluntary), we
certainly know the Self as Force; we get behind the phenomena
which we produce, and are let into the secret of their origin in a way
which we should miss if we only looked upon them. In other words,
we know ourselves as Cause of them. In this same capacity, then
i.e., dynamically, is the other than Self, known as our own opposite
�644
THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW.
and the universe falls into Causal polarity, in which the outer sphere
is hut the complement of our own Power. Concurrent with this
dynamical antithesis is the geometrical or local antithesis by which
the Ego is known as here, and the non-Ego as there, and whatever is
foreign to ourselves is planted out as external to ourselves. In virtue
of the inseparable union of these two antitheses, as factors of Percep
tion, Objectivity and Causality necessarily blend in our outer world;
and we cannot separate Matter from Force, or Force from Matter.
The use frequently made of the “ Muscular Sense ” to explain our
introduction to the outer world is unsatisfactory, because the muscular
feelings occur during the delivery of the act, and happen to us just
like the passive feelings of any other sensed whilst the Causal nisus
issues the act, and may perform it, though, through sensory paralysis,
the muscles do not feel at all. ?
Mr. Mill denies our self-knowledge of Causality, on the ground
that, prior to experience, we have no foresight of what we can do.
The question is not whether we can foresee, but whether we can try ;
and whether the putting forth of force, with or without success, is an
experience sui generis. Frustration, from want of foresight, is indeed
an important part of the lesson by which we learn the meaning of
Can and Cannot.
It is, then, under the form of Will that we are introduced to
Causality; and the axiom resolves itself into the proposition, “ Every
phenomenon springs from a Will.” The universe, it is admitted,
appears to men in simple times, to young eyes still, to poets in all
times, as Living Objective Will. But it is supposed that, with the
aids of Science, we learn something better. And certainly we do
learn to discharge the host of invisible powers once distributed
through the world, and, as Law flings its arms more wide, to fuse
the multiform life of nature into One. But no fresh way of access
to the cognition of Power is opened to us. We have to reach it
through the same representative typer and to this hour it has no
meaning to us except what we take from Will. The scientific idea
of Force is nothing but Will cut down, by dropping from it some
characters which are irrelevant for the purposes of classification and
prediction. The idea of Will is not arrived at by the addition of
Force + Purpose ; but that of Force is arrived at by the subtraction
of Will — Purpose. Such artificial abstractions supply a notation
highly serviceable for the prosecution of phenomenal knowledge,
but they can gain no authority against the original intuition on
which they work, and to which they owe their own validity. The
necessity may be disguised, but can never be escaped, of interpreting
the universe by man.
James Martineau.
�
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Is there any "axiom of causality"?
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Martineau, James
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: [636]-644 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Contemporary Review 14, October 1870.
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[s.n.]
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[1870]
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Causal Analysis
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<p class="western"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br />This work (Is there any "axiom of causality"?), identified by <a href="www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</p>
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Causation
Conway Tracts