Cause

“ By farther degrees we learn such a use of the words cause and effect as to call nothing a cause, whose cause, or preceding circumstance, we can see, denominating all such things mere effects, all others causes. ”

“ Cause and effect, effect and cause, going on producing and reproducing each other, each successive step leading further and deeper into the mire, return becoming more and more difficult, and at last impossible. ”

“ And its First Cause, I must proceed to remark, reason and observation alike lead us to believe must be one—a single cause. When one First Cause is sufficient to explain all the facts, it is contrary to reason to suppose another or several. ”

“ The influence of the First Cause is universal, that is to say, it produces all creatural acts without exception,—necessary and free, good and bad,—because no secondary cause has power to act unless it is set in motion by the motor primus. ”

“ Does a cause always stand with its effect in the relation of antecedent and consequent? Do we not often say of two simultaneous facts that they are cause and effect—as when we say that fire is the cause of warmth, the sun and moisture the cause of vegetation, and the like? Since a cause does not necessarily perish because its effect has been produced, the two things do very generally co-exist ”

“ Fallacies of cause occur in every hour of waking life. We attribute effects to wrong causes. We are especially liable to this from the fact that both cause and effect are conditions, and causation is a change of condition from an antecedent to a consequent. ”

“ And in practice, that particular condition is usually styled the cause, whose share in the matter is superficially the most conspicuous, or whose requisiteness to the production of the effect we happen to be insisting on at the moment. So great is the force of this last consideration, that it sometimes induces us to give the name of cause even to one of the negative conditions. ”

“ But it may be said, we have not any such Idea of Cause, implying necessary connexion with effect, and a quality by which this connexion is produced. 176 We see nothing but the succession of events; and by cause we mean nothing but a certain succession of events;—namely, a constant, unvarying succession. Cause and effect are only two events of which the second invariably follows the first. We delude ourselves when we imagine that our idea of causation involves anything more. ”

“ So that when I speak of cause, and efficient cause, I only mean certain affections of the mind, that cause certain changes in the body; or certain powers and properties in bodies, that work a change in the mind. ”

“ Without dwelling upon a subject, the discussion of which does not enter into the design of the present work, I may remark that the question whether an à priori proof of the existence of a First Cause be possible, is a question concerning the nature of our Ideas, and the evidence of the axioms which they involve, of the same kind as many questions which we have already had to discuss. Is our Conception or Idea of a First Cause gathered from the effects we see around us? ”

“ Again, a cause has the nature of a cause in proportion as it is more universal; for the lower cause is such only on account of the higher one, as appears from the Treatise on Causes. [176] And, in proportion as a cause is really a cause, it loves what it effects; for such love follows the cause by itself. ”

“ The most important of these is the Principle of Causality, which has been enunciated in a variety of ways: Whatever happens has a cause; Whatever begins to be has a cause; Whatever is contingent has a cause; Nothing occurs without a cause. ”

“ If as a cause, the substance is either suffering action, or acting itself; if as a measure, it denominates the subject as in time, or in place, or in regard to the relative position of its parts, its posture, in the place which it occupies. ”

“ No two persons—that is to say, human causes—present exactly the same effects. Every fact evolved will differ more or less. And, lastly, every cause is manifested as a unit by its occupation or pervasion of a given space. ”

“ But the proposition which I wish to bring before the mind of the reader, is; that the natural world has now a cause;—not only a primary cause, which, in other words, is the final end for which it exists, and which originates in the divine love, but that it has also an efficient or instrumental cause, and that this cause exists from the divine wisdom. ”

“ The reference of my being, and of all the determinations of my being, to a cause out of myself,—the manifestations of which were again determined by other causes external to itself,—this it was from which I so violently recoiled. ”

“ If the external cause or object be absent, the consequent feeling, direct or indirect, which we term perception, will not be induced, precisely as any other feeling will not arise without its peculiar antecedent. The relation of cause and effect, in short, is exactly the same in perception as in all the other mental phenomena—a relation of invariable sequence of one change after another change. ”

“ The conditions of every causation are multifarious as we look at them in a regressus of causes or a progressus of effects, and as the mind of the individual can make but one judgment at a time, it may be that the one of the causes or effects which is considered, is in fact a trivial element in the causation, for in all our language we are accustomed to speak of one of the causes as the special cause, for it must be the special one in consideration. ”

“ And the teacher and the learner are to one another causes of progressing as respects the predicate.
And mutual and reciprocal causes are predicated, some of the same things, as the merchant and the retailer are causes of gain; and sometimes one of one thing and others of another, as the sword and the flesh; for the one is the cause to the flesh of being cut, and the flesh to the sword of cutting. [It is well said,] “An eye for an eye, life for life.” For he who has wounded another mortally, is the cause to him of death, or of the occurrence of death. ”

“ All the visible manifestations of human life, then, are effects; and as such, although they may possess a reflex action, they can never be causes, but must remain forever what they are—dead effects, galvanized into life by an enduring and profound cause. ”

“ We have already seen that a difficulty of the same kind, which arises in the contemplation of causes and effects considered as forming an historical series, drives us to the assumption of a First Cause, as an Axiom 252 to which our Idea of Causation in time necessarily leads. ”

“ It may be asked, how come we to ascribe our sensations to any external cause? And is there sufficient ground for so ascribing them? It is known, that there are metaphysicians who have raised a controversy on the point; maintaining that we are not warranted in referring our sensations to a cause such as we understand by the word Body, or to any external cause whatever. ”

“ The relation of cause and effect is a relation or condition under which events are apprehended, which relation is not given by observation, but supplied by the mind itself. According to the views which explain our apprehension of cause by reference to habit, or to a supposed law of our mental nature, causal connexion is a consequence of agencies which the mind passively obeys ”

“ In vain, therefore, should we pretend to determine any single event, or infer any cause or effect, without the assistance of observation and experience. ”

“ solitude, fasting, and sexual abstinence—but without its being possible to determine with certainty which is cause and which is effect, or IF any relation at all of cause and effect exists there. ”

“ Now there are four kinds of cause, viz., final, formal, efficient, and material, to which a material disposition also is to be reduced, though it is not a cause simply but relatively. According to these four different causes one thing is said to be loved for another. ”

“ We reply that while the absolutely independent causality of the First Cause is essentially Divine, another kind or order of causality, dependent on the former, but none the less real, can be and is communicated to creatures. ”

“ I conceive it to be necessary, when the hypothesis relates to causation, that the supposed cause should not only be a real phenomenon, something actually existing in nature, but should be already known to exercise, or at least to be capable of exercising, an influence of some sort over the effect. ”

“ As it is experience only that discovers these connections between natural causes and their effects; without inquiring further, we attribute to the cause some vague and indistinct notion of power or virtue to produce the effect. ”

“ We seek its cause, as we do that of all other secondary causes; until at last we reach the only position in which there is mental rest, an infinite cause of all causes, the primordial and ultimate reality of all being. ”

“ Does he not hold the doctrine that there can be no effect, mental or physical, without an adequate cause? and that mental states, faculties, and idiosyncrasies, that are the result of gradual development and life-long—or even ancestral—habit, cannot be suddenly changed by any known or imaginable cause? ”

“ And now remains That we find out the cause of this effect, Or rather say, the cause of this defect, For this effect defective comes by cause. ”

“ But if, with reference to the scientific value of this popular view, we turn to psychology for advice, we find at the present time, in that science, decidedly opposed interpretations of the sense in which the human will can be regarded as a cause. According to one of these interpretations the word “act” is properly to be applied merely to the physical process by which our organism gets adjusted to its environment. ”

“ The remote cause, or belief, is not more dangerous, because of its priority, and the connection of past mortal thoughts with present, — than the predisposing and exciting cause.
Perhaps an adult has a deformity, produced, thirty years ago, by the terror of his mother. ”

“ There is yet one other Idea which I shall mention, though it is one about which difficulties have been raised, since the consideration of such difficulties may be instructive: the Idea of a purpose, or as it is often termed, a Final Cause, in organized bodies. It has been held, and rightly, that the assumption of a Final Cause of each part of animals and plants is as inevitable as the assumption of an efficient cause of every event. ”

“ Thus, if a cause be defined, that which produces any thing; it is easy to observe, that producing is synonymous to causing. In like manner, if a cause be defined, that by which any thing exists; this is liable to the same objection. ”

“ We must look within the child for their cause. An inner cause must be either acquired or inherited. The idea of an acquired cause, presupposes varied experiences and observations, of which the child has had none. ”

“ Ordinarily, the word “cause” is understood to mean a force or agency which produces a given effect or result, which could not happen without that force or agency. Such a force or agency is termed an efficient cause. ”

“ For everything that happens in this world, there must be a cause; and for every act of a living thing, there must be a motive, either conscious or unconscious. These are universal facts which have been adequately [Pg 192] established by scientific research. ”

“ Causes are Synectic (which are also univocally perfect of themselves) whenever a cause is capable of producing the effect of itself, independently.
Now all the causes may be shown in order in the case of the learner. The father is the Procatarctic cause of learning, the teacher the Synectic, and the nature of the learner the Co-operating cause, and time holds the relation of the Cause sine quâ non. ”

“ In this sense human will may be thought of as the cause of human activities or conscious omissions; for activities and conscious omissions are, from a psychological point of view, nothing but successions of ideas. ”

“ Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule. ”

“ You seem not to remember, that all your reasonings on this subject can only be drawn from effects to causes; and that every argument, deducted from causes to effects, must of necessity be a gross sophism; since it is impossible for you to know anything of the cause, but what you have antecedently, not inferred, but discovered to the full, in the effect. ”

“ When, therefore, we find that like results are produced through the instrumentality of totally dissimilar causes, we must attribute the analogy to some prior and more potent cause, influencing the whole alike. ”

“ If when the supposed cause is present the effect is present, and when the supposed cause is absent the effect is wanting, there being in neither case any other agents present to effect the result, we may reasonably infer that the supposed cause is the real one. ”

“ But what has been just said suggests to us that it may be an improvement to put our problem in another shape:—not to take for granted that the cause of all vital processes is one, but to suppose that there may be several separate causes at work in a living body. ”