Part 21 (2/2)

a ”commencement” of any new actual mode of being demands the existence of another actual being as cause-the truth embodied in the Principle of Causality, to this, that, and the other event of his experience: he is _locating_ the ”causes” of these events in the various persons and things which he regards as the agents or producers of these events. In making such applications he may very possibly err in detail. But no actual application of the principle at all is really required for establis.h.i.+ng the objective validity of the concept of cause. There are philosophers who-erroneously, as we shall see-deny that the Principle of Causality finds its application in the domain of _created_ things, who hold, in other words, that no created beings can be efficient causes (102), and who nevertheless recognize, and quite rightly, that the concept of efficient cause is an objectively valid concept. And they do so because they see that since events, beginnings, happenings, changes, are real, there must be really and objectively existent an efficient cause of them-whatever and wherever such efficient cause may be: whether it be one or manifold, finite or infinite, etc.

We have already examined Hume's attempt to deny the ontological necessity of the Principle of Causality and to subst.i.tute therefor a subjectively or psychologically necessary ”feeling of expectation” grounded on habitual a.s.sociation of ideas. Kant, on the other hand, admits the self-evident, necessary character of the Principle; but holds that, since this necessity is engendered by the mind's imposing a subjective form of thought on the data of sense consciousness, the principle is validly applicable only to connexions within the world of mental appearances, and not at all to the world of real being. He thus transfers the discussion to the domain of Epistemology, where in opposition to his theory of knowledge the Principle of Causality can be shown to be applicable to all contingent reality, and to be therefore legitimately employed in Natural Theology for the purpose of establis.h.i.+ng the real existence of an Uncaused First Cause.

101. ORIGIN OF THE CONCEPT OF EFFICIENT CAUSE.-We have seen that universal belief in the real existence of efficient causes is grounded in experience. The formation of the concept, and its application or extension to the world within and around us, are gradual.(471) Active power, force, energy, efficiency, faculty, or by whatever other name we may call it, is of course experienced only in its actual exercise, in action, motion, production of change. Our first experience of its exercise is found in our consciousness of our own personal activities, mental and bodily: in our thinking, willing or choosing, in our deliberate control of our mental processes, and in the deliberate exercise of our sense faculties and bodily organs. In all this we are conscious of exerting power, force, energy: we apprehend _ourselves_ as agents or efficient causes of our mental processes and bodily movements. We apprehend these happenings as due to the exercise of _our own power to produce them_. Seeing other human beings behave like ourselves, we infer by a.n.a.logy that they also possess and exercise active powers like our own, that they, too, are efficient causes. Finally, observing that effects like to those produced by ourselves, whether in ourselves or in the material world around us, are also consequent on certain other changes in external nature, whether organic or inorganic, we infer by a.n.a.logy that these corporeal things have also powers, forces, energies, whereby they produce these effects. While our senses testify only to time and s.p.a.ce connexions between physical happenings in external nature, our intellect apprehends action and interaction, _i.e._ causal dependence of events on the active influence or efficiency of physical things as agents or causes.(472) Thus, our knowledge of the existence and nature of the forces, powers and energies which const.i.tute _material_ things efficient causes is posterior to, and derived by a.n.a.logy from, our knowledge of the _mental_ and bodily powers which reveal themselves to us in our conscious vital processes as const.i.tuting our own personal efficient causality.

This conception of efficient causality even in the inanimate things of external nature, _after the a.n.a.logy of our own vital powers_ as revealed in our conscious activities, is sometimes disparaged as nave anthropomorphism. It just depends on the manner and degree in which we press the a.n.a.logy. Observing that our earlier notion of cause is ”the notion of power combined with a purpose and an end” (thus including _efficient_ and _final_ causality), Newman remarks(473) that ”Accordingly, wherever the world is young, the movements and changes of physical nature have been and are spontaneously ascribed by its people to the presence and will of hidden agents, who haunt every part of it, the woods, the mountains and the streams, the air and the stars, for good or for evil-just as children again, by beating the ground after falling, imply that what has bruised them has intelligence”. This is anthropomorphism.

So, too, would be the conception of the forces or powers of inanimate nature as powers of sub-conscious ”_perception_” and ”_appet.i.tion_”

(Leibniz), or, again, as rudimentary or diminished ”will-power”

(Cousin).(474) ”Physical phenomena, as such, are without sense,” as Newman rightly observes; and consequently we may not attribute to them any sort of conscious efficiency, whether perceptive or appet.i.tive. But Newman appears to err in the opposite direction when he adds that ”experience teaches us nothing about physical phenomena as causes”.(475) The truth lies between these extremes. Taking experience in the wide sense in which it includes rational interpretation of, and inference from, the data of internal and external sense perception, experience certainly reveals to us the _existence_ of physical phenomena as efficient causes, or in other words that there is real and efficient causality not only in our own persons but also in the external physical universe; and as to the _nature_ of this causality it also gives us at least some little reliable information.

By pursuing this latter question a little we shall be led to examine certain difficulties which lie at the root of _Occasionalism_: the error of denying that creatures, or at least merely corporeal creatures, can be in any true sense efficient causes. A detailed inquiry into the nature of the active powers, forces or energies of the inorganic universe, _i.e._ into the nature of _corporeal_ efficient causality, belongs to Cosmology; just as a similar inquiry into _vital_, _sentient_ and _spiritual_ efficient causality belongs to Psychology. Here we have only to ascertain what is common and essential to all efficient causality as such, what in general is involved in the exercise of efficient causality, in _actio_ and _pa.s.sio_, and what are the main implications revealed in a study of it.

102. a.n.a.lYSIS OF EFFICIENT CAUSALITY, OR _Actio_ AND _Pa.s.sio_: (_a_) THE FIRST CAUSE AND CREATED CAUSES.-We have already referred to the universal dependence of all created causes on the First Cause; and we shall have occasion to return to it in connexion with Occasionalism. G.o.d has created all second causes; He has given them their powers of action; He conserves their being and their powers in existence; He applies these powers or puts them in act; He concurs with all their actions; He is therefore the _princ.i.p.al_ cause of all their effects; and in relation to Him they are as instrumental causes: ”Deus est causa actionis cujuslibet inquantum _dat_ virtutem agendi, et inquantum _conservat_ eam, et inquantum _applicat_ actioni, et inquantum _ejus virtute_ omnis alia virtus agit.”(476)

In our a.n.a.lysis of change (10) we saw why no finite, created agent can be the _adequate_ cause of the _new actualities_ or perfections involved in change, and how we are therefore obliged, by a necessity of thought, to infer the existence of a First Cause, an Unchanging, Infinite Source of these new actualities.(477)

The principle upon which the argument was based is this: that the actuality of the effect is something over and above the reality which it had in the pa.s.sive potentiality of its created material cause and in the active powers of its created efficient cause antecedently to its production: that therefore the production of this actuality, this _novum esse_, implies the influence-by way of co-operation or _concursus_ with the created efficient cause-of an Actual Being in whom the actuality of all effects is contained in an eminently perfect way. Even with the Divine _concursus_ a created cause cannot itself _create_, because even with this _concursus_ its efficiency attains only to the modifying or changing of pre-existing being: and in creation there is no pre-existing being, no material cause, no real pa.s.sive potentiality to be actuated. But _without_ this _concursus_ not only can it not create; it cannot even, as an efficient cause, actuate a real pre-existing potentiality. And why?

Because its efficiency cannot attain to the _production of new actuality_.

It determines the mode of this actuality, and therein precisely lies the efficiency of the created cause. But _the positive ent.i.ty or perfection_ of this new actuality can be produced only by the Infinite, Changeless, Inexhaustible Source of all actuality, co-operating with the created cause(478) (103).

But, it might be objected, perhaps created efficient causes are themselves the adequate and absolutely independent principles of the whole actuality of their effects? They cannot be such; and that for the simple reason that they are not always _in act_. Were they such they should be always and necessarily in act: they should always and necessarily contain in themselves, and that actually and in an eminently perfect manner, all the perfections of all the effects which they gradually produce in the universe. But experience shows us that created causes are not always acting, that their active power, their causality _in actu primo_ is not to be identified with their action, their causality _in actu secundo_; and reason tells us that since this is so, since action is something more than _active power_, since a cause acting has more actuality than the same cause not acting, it must have been determined or reduced to action by some actuality other than itself. This surplus of actuality or perfection in an acting cause, as compared with the same cause prior to its acting, is the Divine _concursus_. In other words, an active power which is really distinct from its action requires to be moved or reduced to _its_ act (which is _actio_) no less than a pa.s.sive potentiality required to be moved to _its_ act (which is _pa.s.sio_), by some really distinct actual being. A created efficient cause, therefore, by pa.s.sing from the state of rest, or mere power to act, into the state of action, is perfected by having its active power actualized, _i.e._ by the Divine _concursus_: in this sense action is a perfection of the agent. But it is not an ent.i.tative perfection of the latter's essence; it is not a permanent or stable elevation or perfection of the latter's powers; it is not the completion of any pa.s.sive potentiality of the latter; nor therefore is it properly speaking a _change_ of the agent as such; it is, as we have said already, rather an index of the latter's perfection in the scale of real being.(479) Action really perfects the _patiens_; and only when this is identical in its concrete individuality with the _agens_ is the latter permanently perfected by the action.

The action of created causes, therefore, depends on the action of the First Cause. We derive our notion of action from the former and apply it a.n.a.logically to the latter. If we compare them we shall find that, notwithstanding many differences, the notion of action in general involves a ”simple” or ”unmixed” perfection which can, without anthropomorphism, be applied a.n.a.logically to the Divine Action. The Divine Action is identical with the Divine Power and the Divine Essence. In creatures essence, power and action are really distinct. The Divine Action, when creative, has not for its term a _change_ in the strict sense (10, 11), for it produces being _ex nihilo_, whereas the action of creatures cannot have for term the production of new being _ex nihilo_, but only the change of pre-existing being. The Divine Action, whether in creating or conserving or concurring with creatures, implies in G.o.d no real transition from power to act; whereas the action of creatures does imply such transition in them. Such are the differences; but with them there is this point of agreement: the Divine Action implies in G.o.d an efficiency which has for its term _the origin of new being dependently on this efficiency_.(480) So, too, does the _action of creatures_. _Positive efficient influence on the one side, and the origin, production, or _”fieri”_ of new actual being on the other, with a relation of real dependence on this efficiency_: such is the essential note of all efficient causality, whether of G.o.d or of creatures.(481)

103. (_b_) ACTIO IMMANENS AND ACTIO TRANSIENS.-Let us compare in the next place the perfectly immanent spiritual causality of thought, the less perfectly immanent organic causality of living things, and the transitive physical causality of the agencies of inorganic nature. The term of an immanent action remains either within the very faculty which elicits it, affecting this faculty as a habit: thus acts of thought terminate in the intellectual habits called _sciences_, acts of free choice in the habits of will called _virtues_ or _vices_.(482) Or it remains at least within the agent: as when in the vital process of nutrition the various parts and members of the living organism so interact as procure the growth and development of the living individual which is the cause of these functions.(483) In those cases the agent itself is the _patiens_, whereas every agency in the inorganic universe acts not upon itself, but only on some other thing, _transitively_. But immanent action, no less than transitive action, is productive of real change-not, of course, in the physical sense in which this term is identified with ”motion” and understood of corporeal change, but in the metaphysical sense of an _actuation of some pa.s.sive potentiality_ (10, 11).(484)

What, then, do we find common to the immanent and the transitive causality of created causes? _An active power or influence on the side of the agent, an actuation of this active power_, either by the action of other causes on this agent, or by the fulfilment of all conditions requisite for the action of the agent, and in all cases by the concursus of the First Cause; and, _on the side of the effect, the production of some new actuality, the actuation of some pa.s.sive potentiality, dependently on the cause_ now in action.

Thus we see that in all cases _action_, or the exercise of efficient causality, implies that _something which was not actual becomes actual_, that _something which was not_, _now is_; and that this _becoming_, this _actuation_, this _production_, is really and essentially dependent on the influence, the efficiency, of some actual being or beings, which we therefore call _efficient causes_.

104. ERRONEOUS THEORIES OF EFFICIENT CAUSALITY. IMAGINATION AND THOUGHT.-Are we certain of anything more about the nature of this connecting link between efficient cause and effect, which we call _action_? Speculations and theories there are indeed in abundance.

Some of these can be shown to be false; and thus our knowledge of the real nature of action may be at least negatively if not positively perfected. Our concept of action is derived, like all our concepts, from experience; and although we are conscious of _spiritual_ action in the exercise of intellect and will, yet it is inseparably allied with sentient action and this again with organic and corporeal action. Nor can we conceive or describe spiritual action without the aid of imagination images, or in language other than that borrowed from the domain of corporeal things, which are the proper object of the human intellect.(485) Now in all this there is a danger: the danger of mistaking imagination images for thoughts, and of giving a literal sense to language in contexts where this language must be rightly understood to apply only a.n.a.logically.

In a.n.a.lysing the nature of efficient causality we might be tempted to think that we understood it by imagining some sort of a _flow_ or _transference_ of some sort of actual reality from _agens_ to _patiens_. It is quite true that in describing _action_, the actual connecting link between _agens_ and _patiens_, we have to use language suggestive of some such imagination image. We have no option in the matter, for all human language is based upon sense consciousness of physical phenomena. When we describe efficiency as an ”influence” of cause on effect, or the effect as ”dependent”

on the cause, the former term suggests a ”flowing,” just as the latter suggests a ”hanging”. So, too, when we speak of the effect as ”arising,” ”originating,” ”springing,” or ”emanating,” from the cause.(486) But we have got to ask ourselves what such language _means_, _i.e._, what concepts it expresses, and not what imagination images accompany the use of it.

Now when we reflect that the senses testify only to time and s.p.a.ce sequences and collocations of the phenomena which we regard as causally connected, and when we feel convinced that there is something more than this in the causal connexion,-which something more we describe in the terms ill.u.s.trated above,-we must inquire whether we have any rational ground for thinking that this something more is really anything in the nature of a spatial transference of some actual reality from _agens_ to _patiens_.

There are indeed many philosophers and scientists who seem to believe that there is such a local transference of some actuality from cause to effect, that efficient causality is explained by it, and cannot be intelligibly explained otherwise. As a matter of fact there is no rational ground for believing in any such transference, and even were there such transference, so far from its being the only intelligible explanation of efficient causality, it would leave the whole problem entirely unexplained-and not merely the problem of spiritual, immanent causality, to which it is manifestly inapplicable, but even the problem of corporeal, transitive causality.(487)

We have already referred at some length (9-11) to the philosophy which has endeavoured to reduce all change, or at least all corporeal change, to mechanical change; all qualities, powers, forces, energies of the universe, to ultimate particles or atoms of matter in motion; and all efficient causality to a flow or transference of spatial motion from particle to particle or from body to body. A full a.n.a.lysis of all such theories belongs to Cosmology. But we may recall a few of the more obvious considerations already urged against them.

In the first place, the attempt to explain all _qualities_ in the material universe-all the powers, forces, energies, of matter-by maintaining that objectively and extramentally they are all purely _quant.i.tative_ realities, all spatial motions of matter-does not explain the qualitative factors and distinctions in the world of our sense experience at all, but simply transfers the problem of explaining them from the philosophy of matter to the philosophy of mind, by making them all subjective after the manner of Kant's a.n.a.lysis of experience (11).

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