Scurrility

“ Let us first take as timeless, in the sense of out of time. Here the succession of the change must belong to it, or not. In the former case, what is the relation between the succession and ? If there is none, does not change. If there is any, it forces unintelligibly a diversity onto , which is foreign to its nature and incomprehensible. And then this diversity, by itself, will be merely the unsolved problem. If we are not to remove change altogether, then we have, standing in unintelligible relation with the timeless , a temporal change which offers us all our old difficulties unreduced. ”

“ The order of the occurrence of phenomena in time, is either successive or simultaneous; the uniformities, therefore, which obtain in their occurrence, [pg 407] are either uniformities of succession or of co-existence. Uniformities of succession are all comprehended under the law of causation and its consequences. Every phenomenon has a cause, which it invariably follows; and from this are derived other invariable sequences among the successive stages of the same effect, as well as between the effects resulting from causes which invariably succeed one another. ”

“ As we saw before, it is true that, in one sense, each one of the elements or partial events of a sequence excludes the former and the latter elements from being at the time when this particular element exists. But that, in another and equally obvious and empirical sense, all the members of an actually experienced succession are at once to any consciousness which observes the whole succession as a whole, is equally true. ”

“ Still more devoid is savage life of the experiences which generate the conception of the uniformity of succession. The sequences observed from hour to hour and day to day seem anything but uniform; difference is a far more conspicuous trait among them.... So that if we contemplate primitive human life as a whole, we see that multiformity of sequence, rather than uniformity, is the notion which it tends to generate.... Only as fast as the practice of the arts develops the idea of measure can the consciousness of uniformity become clear.... ”

“ On the other hand, to speak of our succession as being properly discrete seems quite as indefensible. It is in fact neither the one nor the other. I presume that what we notice is events with time between them, whatever that may mean. But, on the other hand, when we deal with pieces of duration, as wholes containing parts and even a variable diversity of parts, the other aspect comes up. And, in the end, reflection compels us to perceive that, however else it may appear, all change must really be continuous. ”

“ Shall we then rest contented with these two relations of contiguity and succession, as affording a compleat idea of causation? By no means. An object may be contiguous and prior to another, without being consider'd as its cause. There is a necessary connexion to be taken into consideration; and that relation is of much greater importance, than any of the other two above-mention'd.
Here again I turn the object on all sides, in order to discover the nature of this necessary connexion, and find the impression, or impressions, from which its idea may be deriv'd. ”

“ Being determin'd by Custom to transfer the past to the future, in all our Inferences; where the past has been entirely regular and uniform, we expect the Event with the greatest Assurance, and leave no room for any contrary Supposition. But where different Effects have been sound to follow from Causes, which are to Appearance exactly similar, all these various Effects must occur to the Mind in transferring the past to the future, and enter into our Consideration, when we determine the Probability of the Event. ”

“ A consciousness for which events that happened within a millionth of a second constituted a definite and observable serial succession of present facts, or, on the other hand, a consciousness for which the events occurring during a thousand years were as much present at once, to a single glance at temporal succession, as are now, to us, the successions that, while not too rapid, occur within a time-span of two seconds, — either one of these types of consciousness would have a profoundly different basis for estimating the significance of any given empirical facts of succession. ”

“ The complex and quasi-discontinuous organism is thus made to function as would a continuous living mass which had simply grown bigger.
But the real and profound causes of division were those which life bore within its bosom. For life is tendency, and the essence of a tendency is to develop in the form of a sheaf, creating, by its very growth, divergent directions among which its impetus is divided. This we observe in ourselves, in the evolution of that special tendency which we call our character. ”

“ Classification, logic, and mathematics all result, then, from the mere play of the mind comparing its conceptions, no matter whence the latter may have come. The essential condition for the formation of all these sciences is that we should have grown capable of apprehending series as such, and of distinguishing them as homogeneous or heterogeneous, and as possessing definite directions of what I have called 'increase.' This consciousness of series is a human perfection which has been gradually evolved, and which varies greatly from man to man. ”

“ When a phenomenon goes on increasing, or periodically increases and diminishes, or goes through any continued and unceasing process of variation reducible to a uniform rule or law of succession, we do not on this account presume that any two successive terms of the series are cause and effect. ”

“ Reaching still farther back into the past, before this state of comparative quiescence, can we not find adequate time for the gradual succession of organized beings on this earth, and for the structural differentiations which have finally resulted in the present position of things? ”

“ Fourthly, Let it now be asked, in what the recollection of a past fact, consisting of one hundred clusters, as above, differs from the transit of the same one hundred clusters, over the fancy, in the way of a reverie? I answer, partly in the vividness of the clusters, partly and principally in the readiness and strength of the associations, by which they are cemented together. ”

“ If the conditions are kept as much alike as is possible, is the average number of repetitions, which is necessary for learning similar series to the point of first possible reproduction, a constant mean value in the natural science sense? ”

“ Order and regularity are not excluded by spatial multiplicity, but they may easily be excluded by the incongruities of an irregular succession of events. Indeterminism and chance are, indeed, inseparable from the course of Nature. ”

“ Along with these phenomena of distribution in space and in medium of life, we have the further element of distribution in time; the facts of which are admitted, however, to be too fragmentary to be conclusive either for or against the doctrine of evolution. ”

“ But the cataclysm once accomplished, a new uniformity must have supervened, and evolution proceeded from that point continuously from the simple to the more heterogeneous, in accordance with strict dynamical law. ”

“ The course of things is uniform, to an Intelligence which can embrace the succession of several cycles, but it is catastrophic to the contemplation of man, whose survey can grasp a part only of one cycle. And thus the hypothesis of uniformity, since it cannot exclude degrees of change, nor limit the range of these degrees, nor define the interval of their recurrence, cannot possess any essential simplicity which, previous to inquiry, gives it a claim upon our assent superior to that of the opposite catastrophic hypothesis. ”

“ The definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, is a formula which fails to call up an adequate conception. And it fails from omitting the most distinctive peculiarity—the peculiarity of which we have the most familiar experience, and with which our notion of Life is, more than with any other, associated. ”

“ In short, diversification is the vestige of chance-spontaneity; and wherever diversity is increasing, there chance must be operative. On the other hand, wherever uniformity is increasing, habit must be operative. But wherever actions take place under an established uniformity, there so much feeling as there may be takes the mode of a sense of reaction. That is the manner in which I am led to define the relation between the fundamental elements of consciousness and their physical equivalents. ”

“ In short, whether the succession of events be taken as continuous or not, the attempt to translate the axiom that 180whatever happens has its ground in the nature of the whole system to which it belongs, into the doctrine that the posterior in time is completely determined by and dependent on the prior, leads straight to the infinite regress. And, as we said in our last chapter, the occurrence of the infinite regress is always a sign that there is imperfection somewhere in the thought which sets it up. ”

“ In all cases of progressive effects, whether arising from the accumulation of unchanging or of changing elements, there is an uniformity of succession not merely between the cause and the effect, but between the first stages of the effect and its subsequent stages. ”

“ If we go on to consider persistence abstractly, we must still remember that the persistence is the persistency of a unity, an extension, a speed, and a consciousness. But between these persistent concomitants there are relations, and these relations are changeable; so when we consider persistence and change, it is the persistence of particles of essentials and change of relations of particles of essentials. Only relations are changeable, essentials are persistent. ”

“ The order of complexity also represents the order of development, so that the more complex is also the latest to appear in the course of evolution. Evolution and stability stand thus in inverse relation. ”

“ Hence, as Mill shows in more detail, we expect no identity of form in nature. We do not expect next year to have the same order of days as this year, and we never wonder when some suggestive regularity is broken by a new event. ”

“ Moral, personal life is the first to succumb, other activities follow in the order of their complexity and duration of function. In other words, the law of disaggregation or that of degeneration is from the complex to the simple, from the highly organized to the lowly organized, from the least stable to the most stable. ”

“ So long as we confine our attention to one or two individuals, we fail to detect any order in the occurrence of variations; but when we examine large numbers we find that it is possible to arrange them in an orderly series, which can be easily and simply described. The series into which we can arrange the results of observing phenomena of complex causation, whether exhibited by living organisms or not, have certain properties in common, which are dealt with by the theory of chance. ”

“ Secondly, the necessitarian may say there are, at any rate, no observed phenomena which the hypothesis of chance could aid in explaining. In reply, I point first to the phenomenon of growth and developing complexity, which appears to be universal, and which though it may possibly be an affair of mechanism perhaps, certainly presents all the appearance of increasing diversification. Then, there is variety itself, beyond comparison the most obtrusive character of the universe: no mechanism can account for this. ”

“ Manifestly the favourable and unfavourable conditions recurring in combinations that are rarely twice alike, cannot be met by any regularly recurring form of heterogenesis; and it is interesting to see how survival of the fittest has established a mixed form. ”

“ Just as we form the idea of continued succession in space by distinguishing different parts of extension, and perceiving that one excludes the others, so we also form the idea of continued succession of time by distinguishing different facts and perceiving that one excludes the others. ”

“ Every cycle of evolution, in the individual life as in the collective life, bears within it the germs of the corresponding cycle of dissolution; and, inversely, the latter, by the decay of the form already worn out, prepares in the eternal laboratory new evolutions and new forms of life. ”

“ Now, if causes like these are inevitably at work upon and within the simplest forms of life, no change in external conditions would be needed in order to insure an increasing complexity of structure, through months or years, to say nothing about long ages of time. ”

“ What I mean now to affirm is, that precisely the same difficulty, arising from millions of possibilities of combined action, occurs at every step of our progress by evolution. The only thing that serves to abate the difficulty is that, when a happy combination is once struck, it is hereditarily transmitted and becomes a possession for ever. ”

“ When we read that 'the succession of events is an endless chain of effects which are in their turn causes of new effects,' what is meant is sequence, and for 'cause' and 'effect' the terms 'antecedent' and 'consequent' should have been employed. ”

“ The most essential fact in these phenomena of cumulative adaptation is that the change of the organism which manifests itself first in the functions, and at a later period in the form, is the result either of long enduring, or of often repeated, influences of an external cause. The smallest cause, by cumulation of its action, can attain the greatest results. ”

“ This train, the measure of other successions. So that to me it seems, that the constant and regular succession of ideas in a waking man, is, as it were, the measure and standard of all other successions. Whereof, if any one either exceeds the pace of our ideas, as where two sounds or pains, &c., take up in their succession the duration of but one idea ”