Part 21 (1/2)

(_d_) Efficient causes are divided into _free_ causes and _necessary_ causes. A free or self-determining cause is _one which is not determined by its nature to one line of action_, but _has the power of choosing, or determining itself_, to act or abstain, when all the conditions requisite for acting are present. Man is a free agent, or free cause, of his deliberate actions. A necessary cause, or natural cause as it is sometimes called, is _one which is determined by its nature to one invariable line of action_, so that, granted the conditions requisite for action, it cannot naturally abstain from acting in that invariable manner. All the physical agencies of the inorganic world, all plant and animal organisms beneath man himself, are necessary causes.

The freedom of the human will is established against determinism in Psychology.(460) The difficulties of determinists against this doctrine are for the most part based on misconceptions, or on erroneous and gratuitous a.s.sumptions. We may mention two of them here.(461) Free activity, they say, would be _causeless_ activity: it would violate the ”law of universal causation”. We reply that free activity is by no means causeless activity. The free agent himself is in the fullest and truest sense the efficient cause of his free acts. It is by his causal, efficient influence that the act of free choice is determined and elicited. Free causality evidently does not violate the necessary, _a priori_ principle set forth above under the t.i.tle of the Principle of Causality. But-they urge in the second place-it violates the ”law of universal causation,”

_i.e._ the law that every event in nature must be the result of some set of phenomenal antecedents which _necessitate_ it, and which, therefore, whenever verified, _must_ produce this result and no other; and by violating this law it removes all supposed ”free” activities from the domain of that regularity and uniformity without which no scientific knowledge of such phenomena would be possible. To this we reply, firstly, that the law of uniform causation in nature, the law which is known as the ”Law of the Uniformity of Nature,” and which, under the t.i.tle of the ”Law of Universal Causation” is confounded by determinists and phenomenists with the entirely distinct ”Principle of Causality”-is not by any means a law of _necessary_ causation.(462) The statement that Nature is uniform in its activities is not the expression of an _a priori_, necessary truth, like the Principle of Causality. It is a generalization from experience.

And experience testifies to the existence of grades in this all-prevailing uniformity. In the domain of physical nature it is the expression of the Free Will of the Author of Nature, who may miraculously derogate from this physical uniformity for higher, moral ends. In the domain of deliberate human activities it is the expression of that less rigorous but no less real uniformity which is dependent on the free will of man. And just as the possibility of miracles in the former domain does not destroy the regularity on which the generalizations of the physical sciences are based, so neither does the fact of human free will render worthless or unreliable the generalizations of the human sciences (ethical, social, political, economic, etc.) about human conduct. Were the appearance of miracles in the physical domain, or the ordinary play of free will in the human domain, entirely _capricious_, _motiveless_, _purposeless_, the results would, of course, be chaotic, precarious, unaccountable, unintelligible, and scientific knowledge of them would be impossible: for the a.s.sumption that reality is the work of intelligent purpose, and is therefore a regular, orderly expression of law, in other words, the a.s.sumption that the universe is intelligible, is a prerequisite condition for scientific knowledge about the universe. But determinists seem to a.s.sume that Divine Providence and human free will must necessarily imply that the whole universe of physical phenomena and human activities would be an unintelligible chaos; and having erected this philosophical scarecrow on a gratuitous a.s.sumption they think it will gradually exorcise all belief in Divine Providence and human freedom from the ”scientific”

mind!

(_e_) Efficient causes are either _physical_ or _moral_. A physical efficient cause is _one which produces its effect by its own proper power and action_-whether immediately or by means of an instrument. For instance, the billiard player is the physical cause of the motion he imparts to the b.a.l.l.s by means of the cue. A moral cause is one which produces its effect by the representation of something as good or evil to the mind of a free agent; by inducing the latter through example, advice, persuasion, promises, threats, commands, entreaties, etc., to produce the effect in question. For instance, a master is the moral cause of what his servant does in obedience to his commands. The motives set forth by way of inducement to the latter are of course _final_ causes of the latter's action. But the former, by setting them forth, is the moral cause of the action: he is undoubtedly more than a mere condition; he contributes positively and efficiently to the effect. His physical causation, however, does not reach to the effect itself, but only to the effect wrought in the mind of the servant by his command. It is causally connected with the physical action of the servant by means of an intermediate link which we may call _mental_ or _psychical causation_-_actio_ ”_intentionalis_,”-the action of cognition on the mind of a cognitive agent.

The agent employed by a moral cause to produce an effect physically may be called an instrumental cause in a wide and less proper sense of this term, the instrumentality being moral, not physical. Only free agents can be moral causes; and as a rule they are termed moral causes only when they produce the effect through the physical operation of another free agent.

What if they employ not free agents, nor yet inanimate instruments, but agents endowed with sense cognition and sense appet.i.te, to produce effects? If a man set his dog at another, is he the _moral_ or the _physical_ cause of the injuries inflicted by the dog? That he is the princ.i.p.al _efficient_ cause is unquestionable. But is he the princ.i.p.al _physical_ cause and the dog the _instrument_? We think it is more proper to call the princ.i.p.al efficient cause a _moral_ cause in all cases where there intervenes between his physical action and the effect an intermediate link of ”psychical” or ”intentional” action, even though, as in the present example, this psychical link is of the sentient, not the intellectual, order.

(_f_) The efficient cause, like other causes, may be either _partial_ or _total_, according as it produces the effect by co-operation with other causes, or by itself alone. The aim of the inductive sciences is to discover for each kind of natural event or phenomenon the ”total cause” in the comprehensive sense of the whole group of _positive_ agencies or causes proper, and _negative_ antecedent and concomitant _conditions_ which are _indispensable_ and _necessitating_ principles of the happening of such kind of event.(463)

(_g_) We can distinguish between the _immediate or determining_, the more or less _proximate_, and the more or less _remote_, efficient causes of an event. Thus, the application of the fuse to the charge of dynamite in a rock is the immediate or determining cause of the explosion which bursts the rock; the lighting of the fuse, the placing of the charge, etc., the more proximate causes; the making of the fuse, dynamite, instruments, etc., the more remote causes. Again the aim of the inductive sciences is to discover the ”total _proximate_ cause” of events,(464) leaving the investigation of ultimate causes, as well as the a.n.a.lysis of causality itself, to philosophy.

(_h_) Finally, we must distinguish between the _individual_ agent itself as cause (the _suppositum_ or person that acts); the agent's _nature_ and _active power_ as causes; and the _action_, or exercise of this power as cause. The former, the individual, concrete agent, is the ”principium _quod_ agit,” and is called the ”causa _ut quae_”. The nature and the active power of the agent are each a ”principium _quo_ agens agit,” the remote and the proximate principle of action respectively; and each is called a ”causa _ut qua_”. The action of the agent is the cause of the effect in the sense that the actual production or _fieri_ of anything is the immediate cause of this thing _in facto esse_. Corresponding to these distinctions we distinguish between the cause _in actu primo remoto_, _in actu primo proximo_, and _in actu secundo_. These distinctions are of no little importance. By ignoring them, and by losing sight of the intrinsic (formal and material) causes of natural phenomena, many modern scientists and philosophers have confounded cause and effect with the process itself of causation, and declared that cause and effect are not distinct realities, but only two mental aspects of one and the same reality.(465)

The same may be said of all the distinctions so far enumerated.

They are absolutely essential to the formation of clear ideas on the question of causality. No term in familiar use is of more profound philosophical significance, and at the same time more elastic and ambiguous in its popular meanings, than the term _cause_. This is keenly felt in the Logic of the Inductive Sciences, where not only the discovery, but the exact measurement, of physical causes, is the goal of research.

”When we call one thing,” writes Mr. Joseph,(466) ”the cause of another, the real relation between them is not always the same....

We say that molecular action is the cause of heat, that the heat of the sun is the cause of growth, that starvation is sometimes the cause of death, that jealousy is a frequent cause of crime. We should in the first case maintain that cause and effect are reciprocally necessary; no heat without molecular motion and no molecular motion without heat. In the second the effect cannot exist without the cause, but the cause may exist without the effect, for the sun s.h.i.+nes on the moon but nothing grows there. In the third the cause cannot exist without the effect, for starvation must produce death, but the effect may exist without the cause, since death need not have been produced by starvation.

In the fourth case we can have the cause without the effect, and also the effect without the cause; for jealousy may exist without producing crime, and crime may occur without the motive of jealousy. It is plain then that we do not always mean the same thing by our words when we say that two things are related as cause and effect; and anyone who would cla.s.sify and name the various modes in which two things may be causally related would do a great service to clear thinking.”

In the popular acceptation of the term _cause_, the same kind of event can have a _plurality of (efficient) causes_. Death, for example, may be brought about in different cases by different diseases or accidents. But if we understand by the total efficient cause of any given kind of effect the sum-total of agencies and conditions which when present _necessitate_ this kind of an effect, and which are collectively and severally _indispensable_ for its production, then it is obvious that a given _kind_ of effect can have _only one kind_ of such total group of antecedents as total cause, just as any one individual effect can have only one individual total cause, _viz._ the one which actually produced it; a _similar_ total cause would produce a _similar_ effect, but could not produce the numerically identical individual effect of the other similar cause.(467)

The medieval scholastics discussed the question in connexion with the problem of individuation: ”Would Alexander the Great have been the same individual had he been born of other parents than Philip and Olympia?” The question is hardly intelligible. The person born of these other parents might indeed have been as similar as you will to the actual Alexander of history, but would not and could not have been the actual Alexander of history. Nowadays the question discussed in this connexion is not so much whether the same kind of natural phenomenon can be produced by different kinds of total cause-for the answer to this question depends wholly on the wider or the narrower meaning attached to the term ”total cause,”(468)-but rather whether or how far the inductive scientist's ideal of searching always for the _necessitating and indispensable_ cause (or, as it is also called, the ”reciprocating” or ”commensurate” cause) is a practical ideal.

CHAPTER XIV. EFFICIENT CAUSALITY; PHENOMENISM AND OCCASIONALISM.

100. OBJECTIVE VALIDITY OF THE TRADITIONAL CONCEPT OF EFFICIENT CAUSALITY.-We have seen how modern sensists, phenomenists, and positivists have doubted or denied the power of the human mind to attain to a knowledge of any objective reality corresponding to the category of substance (---- 61 _sqq._). They treat in a similar way the traditional concept of efficient causality. And in delivering their open or veiled attacks on the real validity of this notion they have made a misleading use of the proper and legitimate function of the inductive sciences. The chief aim of the natural scientist is to seek out and bring to light the _whole group of necessitating and indispensable_ (phenomenal) _antecedents_ of any given kind of event, and to formulate the natural law of their connexion with this kind of event. There is no particular objection to his calling these antecedents the _invariable_, or even the _necessary_ or _necessitating_, antecedents of the event; provided he does not claim what he cannot prove-and what, as we shall see later (104), is not true, _viz._-that the invariability or necessity of this connexion between phenomenal antecedents and consequents is wholly inviolable, fatal, absolute in character. He may rightly claim for any such established connexion the hypothetical, conditional necessity which characterizes all inductively established laws of physical nature. There are such antecedents and consequents in the universe; there are connexions between them which are more than mere _casual_ connexions of _time sequence_, which are connexions of physical law, inasmuch as they are connexions based on the _natures_ of agencies in an _orderly_ universe, connexions of these agencies with their natural effects. All this is undeniable. Moreover, so long as _the scientist_ confines himself to inferences concerning such connexions between phenomena, to inferences and generalizations based on the a.s.sumed uniformity of nature, he is working in his proper sphere. Nay, even if he chooses to designate these groups of invariable phenomenal antecedents by the t.i.tle of ”physical causes” we know what he means; though we perceive some danger of confusion, inasmuch as we see him arrogating to the notion of regularity or uniformity of connexion _i.e._ to the notion of _physical law_, a term, _causality_, which traditionally expressed something quite distinct from this, _viz._ the notion of _positive influence_ of one thing on the being or happening of another. But when _phenomenist philosophers_ adopt this usage we cannot feel rea.s.sured against the danger of confusion by such protestations as those of Mill in the following pa.s.sage:-(469)

I premise, then, that when in the course of this inquiry I speak of the cause of any phenomenon, I do not mean a cause which is not itself a phenomenon; I make no research into the ultimate or ontological cause of anything. To adopt a distinction familiar in the writings of the Scotch metaphysicians, and especially of Reid, the causes with which I concern myself are not _efficient_, but _physical_ causes. They are causes in that sense alone, in which one physical fact is said to be the cause of another. Of the efficient causes of phenomena, or whether any such causes exist at all I am not called upon to give an opinion. The notion of causation is deemed, by the schools of metaphysics most in vogue at the present moment, to imply a mysterious and most powerful tie, such as cannot, or at least does not, exist between any physical fact and that other physical fact on which it is invariably consequent, and which is popularly termed its cause; and thence is deduced the supposed necessity of ascending higher, into the essences and inherent const.i.tution of things, to find the true cause, the cause which is not only followed by, but actually produces, the effect. No such necessity exists for the purposes of the present inquiry, nor will any such doctrine be found in the following pages. The only notion of a cause, which the theory of induction requires, is such a notion as can be gained by experience. The Law of Causation, which is the main pillar of inductive science, is but the familiar truth, that invariability of succession is found by observation to obtain between every fact in nature and some other fact which has preceded it; independently of all considerations respecting the ultimate mode of production of phenomena, and of every other question regarding the nature of ”Things in themselves”.

This pa.s.sage-which expresses fairly well the phenomenist and positivist att.i.tude in regard to the reality, or at least the cognoscibility, of _efficient_ causes-fairly bristles with inaccuracies, misconceptions, and false insinuations.(470) But we are concerned here only with the denial that any notion of an _efficient_ cause ”can be gained from experience,”

and the doubt consequently cast on the objective validity of this notion.

The Sensism which regards our highest intellectual activities as mere organic a.s.sociations of sentient states of consciousness, has for its logical issue the Positivism which contends that all valid knowledge is confined to the existence and time and s.p.a.ce relations of sense phenomena.

In thus denying to the mind all power of attaining to a valid knowledge of anything suprasensible-such as substance, power, force, efficient cause, etc.-Positivism pa.s.ses over into Agnosticism.

In refutation of this philosophy, in so far as it denies that we have any grounds in experience for believing in the real existence of efficient causes, we may set down in the first place this universal belief itself of the human race that there are in the universe efficient causes of the events that happen in it. Men universally believe that they themselves as agents contribute by a real and positive influence to the actual occurrence of their own thoughts, reasonings, wishes, desires, sensations; that their mental resolves to speak, walk, write, eat, or perform any other external, bodily works do really, positively, and efficiently produce or cause those works; that external phenomena have a real influence on happenings in their own bodies, that fire burns them and food nourishes them; that external phenomena also have a real and positive influence on their sense organs, and through these on their minds by the production there of conscious states such as sensations; finally that external phenomena have a real and positive influence on one another; that by action and interaction they really produce the changes that are constantly taking place in the universe: that the sun does really heat and light the earth, that the sowing of the seed in springtime has really a positive influence on the existence of crops in the harvest, that the taking of poison has undoubtedly a real influence on the death which results from it. And if any man of ordinary intelligence and plain common sense is told that such belief is an illusion, that in all such cases the connexion between the things, facts or events which he designates as ”cause” and ”effect,” is a mere connexion of invariable time sequence between antecedents and consequents, that in no case is there evidence of any _positive, productive influence_ of the one fact upon the other, he will either smile incredulously and decline to take his objector seriously, or he will simply ask the latter to _prove_ the universal belief to be an illusion. His conviction of the real and objective validity of his notion of efficient cause, as something which positively influences the happening of things, is so profound and ineradicable that it must necessarily be grounded in, and confirmed by, his constant experience of the real world in which he lives and moves. Not that he professes to be able to explain the _nature_ of this efficient influence in which he believes. Even if he were a philosopher he might not be able to satisfy himself or others on this point But being a plain man of ordinary intelligence he has sense enough to distinguish between the _existence_ of a fact and its _nature_, its explanation, its _quomodo_; and to believe in the real existence of a _positive efficient, productive_ influence of cause on effect, however this influence is to be conceived or explained.

A second argument for the objective validity of the concept of efficient cause may be drawn from a consideration of the _Principle of Causality_.

The experience on which the plain man grounds his belief in the validity of his notion of cause is not mere uninterpreted sense experience in its raw and brute condition, so to speak; it is this sense experience rationalized, a.s.similated into his intelligence-spontaneously and half unconsciously, perhaps-by the light of the self-evident Principle of Causality, that whatever happens has a cause. When the plain man believes that all the various agencies in nature, like those enumerated above, are not merely _temporal_ antecedents or concomitants of their effects, but are _really productive_ of those effects, he is really applying the universal and necessary truth-that an ”event,” a ”happening,” a ”change,”