F. H. Bradley

“ And, again, not itself, for you have got itself already without any change. In short, if the cause can endure unchanged for any the very smallest piece of duration, then it must endure for ever. It cannot pass into the effect, and it therefore is not a cause at all. On the other hand, (b) Causation cannot be continuous. For this would mean that the cause was entirely without duration. It would never be itself except in the time occupied by a line drawn across the succession. And since this time is not a time, but a mere abstraction, the cause itself will be no better. ”

“ This tendency of the separate cause to pass beyond itself cannot be satisfied, while we retain the relational form essential to causation. And we may easily, I think, convince ourselves of this. For, in the first place, a complete state of existence, as a whole, is at any one moment utterly impossible. Any state is forced by its content to transcend itself backwards in a regress without limit. ”

“ It is forced to admit that the real world is left naked and empty; while it cannot pretend itself to support and to own the wealth of existence. Each party is robbed, and both parties are beggared.
The only positive result which has appeared from our effort to justify causation, seems to be the impossibility of isolating the cause or the effect. In endeavouring to make a defensible assertion, we have had to go beyond the connection as first we stated it. The cause not only recedes backwards in time, but it attempts laterally to take in more and more of existence. ”

“ Let us suppose, first, that it does make a difference to . But, if so, then has already been altered; and hence the problem of causation breaks out within the very cause. and become , and the old puzzle begins about the way in which and become other than they are. We are concerned here with , but, of course, with there is the same difficulty. We are, therefore, driven to correct ourselves, and to say that, not and merely, but and become , and so . But here we perceive at once that we have fallen into endless regress within the cause. ”

“ If it is only our way, then, either it does not concern the thing at all, or else is admitted to be a mere practical makeshift. If, on the other hand, it is a way of ours with the thing which we are prepared to justify, let the justification be produced. ”

“ But it cannot be produced in any form but in the proof that our thinking is consistent. On the other hand, the only reason for our hesitation above to attribute our view to reality seemed to lie in the fact that our view was not consistent. ”