§ I.—CHAPTER II

DOCTRINE OF CAUSATION.

THERE have been few if any questions in Philosophy more thoroughly discussed than that of causation. Especially since the sceptical genius of Hume carried its pitiless search into the foundations of the prevailing philosophy of his day, and exposed its genuine logical consequences, has speculative discussion gathered round this point as a centre, and found unceasing life in it. It appears to us that at length the ground may be said to be pretty well cleared, if not for a settlement of the question, yet for a definite truce regarding it. For it has become clearly apparent that the combatants, on one side at least, contend, not so much in direct opposition to the view held on the other side, as for a further and higher view in addition. The two classes of thinkers are indeed fundamentally opposed, but they are not throughout opposed. For the one class only insists on carrying up the position of the other into a higher, and, as they think, more comprehensive Truth than the other will admit. The one feels impelled to look beyond the mere physical view, and to 23find everywhere in Nature a further and more sacred MEANING than the other is content to accept.

It is no longer, for example, disputed by any school of philosophy, that all we perceive of the relation between physical phenomena is a relation of succession. “It is now universally admitted that we have no perception of the causal nexus in the material world.”¹¹¹¹   SIR W. HAMILTON’S Discussions, Appendix, p. 587. The writings of Hume and of Brown, and again of Mill in our own day, have been so far successful in making this plain beyond doubt, and exposing, in its precise form, the bearing of the question between them and the opposite school of thinkers. We see events following events in regular succession. All that we really see and apprehend is the succession. “The impulse of one billiard ball is attended with motion in the second. This is the whole that appears to the outward senses.”¹²¹²   HUME’S Works, vol. ii. p. 74. But is this perception of sequence commensurate with our notion of causation? Is it what we specially mean when we express the relation of cause and effect? If the measure of our experience be the measure of our conception, why is it that we do not apply the one universally to the objects of the other? To take the often repeated illustration of the relation between day and night. This we apprehend as an invariable succession. Yet we never understand nor speak of day as the cause of night, or the reverse. It must be admitted, then, that our empirical apprehension is at least not commensurate with our causal judgment. And this is in fact admitted by Mr Mill in reference to this very relation, and the “very 24specious objection” which he acknowledges has been often founded upon it, against his view of the subject. “When we define,” he says,¹³¹³   MILL’S Logic, vol. i. p. 350. “the cause of anything to be ‘the antecedent, which it invariably follows,’ we do not use this phrase as exactly synonymous with ‘the antecedent which it invariably has followed in our past experience.’ Such a mode of conceiving causation would be liable to the objection very plausibly urged by Dr Reid—namely, that, according to this doctrine, night must be the cause of day, and day the cause of night; since these phenomena have invariably succeeded one another from the beginning of the world. But 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, and this would not be true of day and night.”

The concession forced upon Mr Mill, and expressed in this passage is, we cannot help thinking, remarkable. It is here clearly admitted, that the measure of our observational experience is not the measure of the idea of causation, even as held by him. It is not the perception of uniform succession merely, but a certain belief regarding the succession, which specially determines it to be a relation of cause and effect. But what do the opponents of a mere sensational philosophy everywhere contend for, but just the admission of such an element of belief, as the determining element of the idea of causation? The belief, no doubt, is with them 25of a very different character, and arises in a very different manner from that represented by Mr Mill; but it is significant how, in the most earnest effort which has been made in our time to resolve the idea of causation into that of mere antecedence and consequence, there should be allowed to enter an element of belief which is confessedly not generated by our mere observation of sequence. The sequence, besides being invariable, or, in other words, uniformly observed, Mr Mill says must be unconditional; and day and night is not a sequence of this character. “We do not believe that night will be followed by day under all imaginable circumstances, but only that it will be so, provided the sun rises above the horizon.” According to this view, before we can pronounce any two phenomena to be in the relation of cause and effect, we must not only have observed the fact of their invariable association, but we must know that, according to the “present constitution of things,”¹⁴¹⁴   There seems to be an inaccuracy and misapplication of language here, singular in a writer generally so clear-sighted and accurate as Mr Mill. For surely the regular rising of the sun above the horizon, or, in other words, the diurnal revolution of the earth, is, if anything can be said to be so, a part of “the present constitution of things.” According to this “constitution,” then, it may be said to be truly known that night will always be followed by day. The terms of this sequence, even on his own interpretation, are therefore unconditional, and yet we do not regard them as cause and effect.
   We can, no doubt, conceive the sun not to rise above the horizon, compatibly with the “general laws of matter,” a phrase by which Mr Mill makes his meaning more distinct and unequivocal. But, in the first place, the “general laws of matter,” while they MAY be conceived by us apart from such a special result of their operation, can yet be only said to be really known to us in their varied actual results, apart from which they are simply abstractions; nonentities, on a mere physical view of things; and, in the second place, we can as easily conceive, it appears to us, the general laws of matter themselves to cease, or be entirely changed. The unconditionalness, therefore, which he considers to attach to them, and which he believes a “distinction of first-rate importance for clearing up the notion of Cause,” does not seem, even in their case, to be available to any further extent than in reference to the constant experience respecting day and night. The fact is, as shown in the text, that the constant succession of day and night is not regarded in the light of cause and effect, simply because it is not succession, but something else, and quite distinct, with which the mind, directly and initially, concerns itself in pronouncing this relation. they always will be associated. We must understand the conditions of 26 the sequence so thoroughly, as to comprehend whether they form a part of “the general laws of matter,” before we can rightly pronounce the one term of the sequence to be the cause of the other.

But if it were not already apparent in the outset of Mr Mill’s discussion, this conclusion were enough to show that the subject with which he concerns himself, under the name of causation, and that which is commonly meant under that name, and in our view is alone entitled to it, are quite different. While, under this name, he really speaks of the order which, according to the “general laws of matter,” obtains among the phenomena of nature—the “invariable and unconditional” dependence which, in virtue of these laws, subsists among physical sequences—the intellectual common sense, by causation, does not mean to express anything of this sort. It does not concern itself with the special conditions under which phenomena emerge, so as to determine their invariable and unconditional antecedents (in Mr Mill’s language, their causes); but on the emergence of any phenomenon, the appearance of any change, it simply says that it is caused; meaning by this, that the change does not originate in itself, but in something else. It says this wholly irrespective of the special sources or conditions 27of the change; and says it equally, although it should never learn anything of these sources or conditions. It pronounces, in short, not what is the relation among observed phenomena, but only that all phenomena, whether lying within the sphere of our observation or not, are related. Springing from even a single basis of experience, this judgment goes forth without hesitation into the whole world of reality, and everywhere proclaims its validity; and it is this judgment which constitutes to the common sense the doctrine of causation.

It is of importance to understand what is the real difference which thus exists between sensationalists of the school of Hume and Mill, and those who contend for a deeper meaning in causation than they allow. Artfully shifting the question of causation into the domain of physical observation, they come, in fact, to treat of something quite special, which, under whatever protestations, they in the end assume to be the whole matter, so far as it has any intelligible relation to the human mind. Mr Mill, for example, while declaring that he is “in no way concerned” in the question of efficient causes, and that he simply passes it by, has no sooner laid down his own “law of causation,” than he turns to contemplate in its light the doctrine of causation as commonly understood, and on the strength of his own principles to engage in an elaborate refutation of this doctrine. Now, this does not seem to us to be really the fairest way of dealing with a subject of so much importance. To profess to have in view simply the discussion of physical causes and effects 28—as to the relation of which there is really no dispute—and yet to pass over from this to the truth of causation as a principle of human knowledge, can only tend to mislead the reader, and embroil still farther the metaphysical controversy which Mr Mill is desirous of avoiding. The Positivist must either abide in the domain of physical phenomena—where none deny that all which comes directly within the sphere of human knowledge is mere antecedence and consequence—or he must be prepared to take up the general fact of causation, as it reveals itself in the common intellectual consciousness, and show it to be coincident in import with the law of mere succession. It is on this ground of common belief that the question must be discussed. We have already so far seen what this belief signifies. Let us still more precisely fix its import.

When, on the appearance of any change, we instinctively pronounce it to have a cause, what do we really mean? Do we affirm merely that some other thing has gone before the observed phenomenon? Is priority the constitutive element of our intellectual judgment? Is it not rather something quite different? Is not our judgment characteristically to this effect that some other thing has not only preceded but produced the change we contemplate? Nay, is it not this element of production that we peculiarly mean to express in the use of the term “cause”? Succession is no doubt also involved, but it is not the relation of succession with which the mind, in the supposed judgment, is directly and initially concerned, but rather the relation of power. That when we speak of cause and effect, we express merely 29 the relation of conjunction between phenomena of antecedence and consequence in any defined sense, is something of which no ingenuity of sophistry will ever be able to persuade the common mind. It matters not in the least degree that it can be so clearly proved that nothing intervenes between the simple facts observed, that all we see is the sequence of the phenomena. This is not in dispute. Only, the intellectual common sense insists on recognising a deeper relation among phenomena than mere sequence. It accepts the order of succession, which it is the special function of Science to trace everywhere to its most general expression; but it moreover says of this order, that it is throughout produced, or, in other words, that it is only explicable as involving a further element of power. That this is really the import of the intellectual judgment which we pronounce in speaking of cause and effect—to which the very words themselves testify in an unmistakable manner—is so clear, that it is now admitted by every school of philosophy which does not rest on a basis of materialism, and has even been conceded by writers of this school, however irresolvable on their principles.¹⁵¹⁵   See LEWES’ Biographical History of Philosophy, vol. iv. p. 47, seq.

Causation, therefore, implies power. What we mean by a cause is something quite different from a mere antecedent, however we may define the conditions of its relation to the consequent. It is peculiarly an AGENT.

But in order to see this more fully, it will be necessary to consider whence we have the idea of power, which we have seen to constitute the main element of causation. 30That this idea is not derived from without—that it does not come through any phase of sensational experience—is already clear in the fact admitted on all hands, that we only perceive succession—that we are only conversant, through the senses, with the two terms of a sequence. But if not from without, it must be from within; we must have the idea of power given us in our own mental experience. This we hold to be the fact; and recent psychological analysis has pretty sufficiently explained the more special origin of this prime intellectual element. It flows from the depths of our self-consciousness; or, more truly speaking, it is nothing else than the ideal projection of our self-consciousness. With the first dawn of mind we apprehend ourselves as distinct from the objective phenomena surrounding us; the Ego emerges, face to face, with the non-Ego. And in this springing forth of self, so far back in the mental history as to elude all trace, is primarily given the idea of power.

What is commonly called the Will, therefore, is, according to this view, the ultimate source or fountain of the notion of causation. We apprehend ourselves as agents, and in this apprehension we have already, in the fullest sense, the idea of cause. Had we not this apprehension, it seems impossible that we could have ever risen above sequence, as the obvious fact given us in outward observation. With this apprehension lying at the very root of our being, and constituting it essentially, it is equally impossible that we can hold by that fact as furnishing the exhaustive conception of the Universe. According to the radical and imperative character of our mental constitution, we must recognise a 31deeper life than mere sequence, however grand and orderly, in the phenomena of nature; and this deeper life is just what we mean by a cause. Not sequency, therefore, but agency, or, in other words, efficiency, is the attribute commensurate with our notion of causation.

The question before us then really passes into the old one as to the origin of our knowledge. Let it only be admitted that our knowledge is the product of a spiritual as well as a material factor, and then it is quite beside the question to argue that because cause, according to our interpretation of it, is not given in external nature, the notion of it is not a valid and real portion of human knowledge; on the very contrary, it becomes, in such a case, only an obvious and expected conclusion that we should find more in outward phenomena than they, so to speak, contain. The subjective brings its element of knowledge as well as the objective; and it is not merely what we apprehend by the senses, but what, through the whole mental life awakened in us by the original contact of subject and object, spirit and matter, we intuitively know or believe to be the truth—that we must hold as the truth. The only available argument against this position—save on a basis of pure materialism—would be to dispute the reality of any such primitive mental experience as we have asserted—the fact of that consciousness of agency, which we have assumed as indisputable.

It is of great importance that the view which we have thus endeavoured to set forth should be comprehended in its precise import, with reference both to certain objections 32which have been urged against it, and to the final conclusion to which it seems to us to lead. It will be observed that we trace the idea of causation, in its primitive origin, to our self-consciousness, our apprehension of ourselves as distinct activities, not carried away in, but exercising a reaction upon, the flow of physical sequences. This apprehension, in its most obscure form, involves what has been specially called the Will. The apprehension of ourselves is and can be nothing else than the apprehension of our personal voluntary activity. In its most mature and developed form this apprehension becomes what is called the consciousness of free will. The causal idea, however, is not dependent on any particular manifestations of this highest form of our activity. It is already present in its dawn in our primitive self-consciousness. It awakens side by side with the Ego; and is therefore truly, as M. Cousin calls it, the “primary idea.”

The clear perception of this will clear away some difficulties from the view exhibited. It has been represented, for example, as if the advocates of the theory of efficient causation held the notion to be given altogether independently of experience in the very conception of voluntary action, apart from its exercise. They have been held as maintaining that the “feeling of energy or force inherent in an act of will is knowledge à priori; assurance prior to experience that we have the power of causing effects.”¹⁶¹⁶   MILL’S Logic, vol. i. p. 360. But, so far as we understand this statement at all, it seems to us to imply something which could not well be deliberately maintained by any one, however an incautious use of 33expressions may have led the writer to suppose so. It implies something, certainly, which we are so far from maintaining, that it appears to us to be simply absurd and inconceivable. To speak of any mental possession as prior to or independent of experience, in the right and comprehensive meaning of that term, is to speak of something which, in the nature of things, is impossible. Our consciousness only comes into being under experience-conditions. All our mental life only arises under them; and of what it would be or contain apart from them, we can have no conception. Of an “assurance prior to experience, that we have the power of causing effects,” we therefore know nothing. Experience is already present in the first act of consciousness, and our idea of cause flows from the primitive awakening of consciousness under the contact of experience. It is already given in the primary apprehension of our personal existence. It may, therefore, certainly be held before the mind apart from special results; but apart from voluntary activity, as such, and in a true sense, it is inconceivable.

Again, with reference to a special objection of more importance, the view we have presented seems to render it inapplicable. The objection in question deserves examination, as having been taken up by Sir W. Hamilton, and urged by him against our doctrine. The weakness, however, which Sir William assails successfully, does not lie in the doctrine itself, but only in the special statement of it which is the subject of his criticism. This statement is that of a distinguished French philosopher, M. de Biran, who has certainly the eminent merit of having, in the most elaborate 34manner, fixed attention on the theory of causation under discussion. It is to this effect: “I will to move my arm, and I move it.” This complex fact gives us on analysis: 1, The consciousness of an act of will; 2, The consciousness of motion produced; 3, The consciousness of a relation of the motion to the volition. This relation is in no respect a simple relation of succession. The motion not merely follows our will, or appears in conjunction with it, but it is consciously produced by it. The idea of power or cause is thus evolved. Sir W. Hamilton objects to the theory thus laid down, that the empirical fact on which it is founded is incorrect. “For,” he says,¹⁷¹⁷   Phil. Discussions, Appendix, p. 588. “between the overt fact of corporeal movement, which we perceive, and the internal act of the will to move, of which we are self-conscious, there intervenes a series of intermediate agencies, of which we are wholly unaware; consequently, we can have no consciousness, as this hypothesis maintains, of any causal connection between the extreme links of this chain—that is, between the volition to move and the arm moving.” The same objection to the general doctrine is hinted at by Mr Mill,¹⁸¹⁸   Logic, pp. 361, 371. and stated fully, and with all his usual ingenuity, by Hume, in his famous chapter on the idea of “necessary connection.”

Now, it is not to be disputed that the point upon which this objection rests is indubitable—viz., that it is only through the intermediate agencies of the nerves and muscles that the act of volition goes forth in corporeal movement. Volitions produce nervous action, and this action again expresses itself 35 in outward movement. We have not, therefore, and cannot have, any proper consciousness of this movement. The volition or act of will itself is all of which we are properly conscious. But in this act, as we conceive, we have already sufficient basis for our theory. For what is this simple movement of the will but the Ego expressing itself? And in this original act of self-expression we have already, according to our view, the idea of cause. Will it be said that, apart from resultant motion or special activity, we could have no evidence of such self-expression? It may be readily granted that, had we possessed no experience of volition passing into activity; had, in truth, the present constitution of things been entirely different from what it is—for this is really what is asserted,—in such a supposed case there is no certainty that we could have had such evidence, or that—which is the same thing—volition could have been to us any longer a fact. We cannot tell; we have simply again to reply that we pretend to no elements of knowledge apart from experience in the sense here intended. All we know is, and can be, only known to us within the conditions of our actual being; in other words, within the sphere of experience. What we might or might not have known out of this sphere, it is utterly idle to conjecture, as we cannot, in the nature of the case, transcend it, and survey ourselves from a point above it. Thus, in the present case, the sense of will or power is to us a fact, given in the first dawn of self-consciousness, and repeated in every moment of self-consciousness. It is implied in every forth-putting of our being. It lies at its root, and our whole mental life is only a continual passing of it into activity. That 36which is specially called the Will is, as already represented, implicitly contained in this original affirmation of self, in which all our knowledge begins. Special acts of freedom are merely special manifestations of a power quickened in us, or, more truly, which constitutes us (the Me) from the first. It is by no means necessary, therefore, that we should be directly conscious of corporeal movement, as the special result of an act of volition, in the sense set forth by M. de Biran, and questioned by Sir W. Hamilton and others, before we can attain the idea of cause. This idea emerges far more deeply in our spiritual life than is thus implied, and is quite independent of such special realisations as are here connected with it.

Let us review, then, the conclusion at which we have arrived; the meaning of causation as thus determined. A cause we have found to be truly coincident with an agent; to have its primitive type in the Ego, the living root of our being; and to be specially represented in that which constitutes the highest expression of our being, Free Will. A cause, therefore, implies Mind. More definitely, and in its full conception, it implies a rational will.

Let this conclusion be fairly pondered, and it will be found to sustain itself irrefragably. The Ego, which in its first dawn and highest life alone gives us the idea of cause, is simply the rational being which we call by the name of Mind. It is this being, no doubt, apprehended predominantly on the side of activity. But this activity, apart from the reason in which it inheres, and which it expresses, is nothing. We can never subtract the one element and leave 37the other. We have been in the habit, indeed, of speaking of different mental faculties; but the mind is really one, and not a separable congeries of powers. Free will is and can be nothing else, therefore, than the highest or consummate expression of our rational being or mind; and a rational will the only fully answering idea to that of Cause. The one idea is the only commensurate of the other. The latter only exhausts itself, and finds rest, in the former.

We will now be able to understand the true character of the causation which we apprehend in nature. In the light of our spiritual consciousness, we everywhere perceive in nature a deeper meaning than it contains. We apprehend a living power in its continual flow. This is the general expression of what reason demands. It never stops short of this. But already it contains a higher and more explicit truth. Already, in its lowest indications, it points to one original, comprehending Will. The savage or childish apprehension of nature, as animated in its different movements by separate voluntary agents like ourselves,¹⁹¹⁹   COUSIN On Locke, p. 166: Ed. Didier; Paris, 1847. is a mere dim and temporary expression of the rational necessity which knows no satisfaction till, driven upwards, it rests in the idea of one all-pervading Power—an Ultimate Cause.

According to this whole view, there is no such thing as mere physical causation. What is so denominated is of course a reality; but inasmuch as it is only in virtue of our spiritual life that we could ever find a cause in nature, this term is truly inapplicable to physical phenomena per se: nature cannot give what it does not contain. Physical 38causes, apart from the idea of a will in which they originate, and which they manifest, have no meaning. Remove the one idea, and the other disappears. It is assuredly only in the reflection of a POWER beyond them, and in which they are contained, that such causes are or can be to us anything but antecedent phenomena. It is only as the expression of such a Will or Power that the physical order of the universe is recognised as caused. And this recognition is truly ineradicable and necessary; in no way affected by the discoveries of science; still asserting itself by the side of the most extended of these discoveries. Let science expose the domain of physical order as it may, Will is still present as its implicate and only explanation. And this Will, according to what we have already said, is no mere naked potentiality. We know nothing of Will apart from Reason; the one is to us merely the peculiarly active, the other the peculiarly intelligent, side of the same spiritual energy. They unite and form one in what we comprehensively call Mind, which we therefore recognise as the only adequate source and explanation of the universe.

It will be observed that we have confined ourselves to the fact of causation—what it implies. Our aim has been to find a true and final explanation of what we mean by a “cause.” The principle of causality, in its characteristic of irresistibleness and necessity, has been rather assumed than dealt with: and rightly so; for the principle, under one form of explanation or another, cannot be said to be in dispute. The real and important subject of dispute is unquestionably what the principle—admitted to be one which conditions 39human Intelligence—involves. What is its import? Does it lead us upwards merely from one link of sequences to another; or does it necessitate our finding, in all sequences, a higher element in which alone they inhere? Is Cause, in short, Antecedence or Power? This is the essential question, and it is this to which we have endeavoured to give an answer.