Sequence

“ When we predicate of any thing an abstract name, we affirm of the thing that it is one or other of these five things; that it is a case of Existence, or of Co-existence, or of Causation, or of Sequence, or of Resemblance. ”

“ The phenomena, in both kinds, are phenomena of sequence, and of regular or uniform sequence; but the things that make up the sequence are widely different: in the one, a feeling of the mind, or a concurrence of feelings, is followed by a conscious muscular exertion; in the other, both steps are made up of purely material circumstances. It is the difference between a mental or psychological, and a material or physical sequence —in short, the difference between mind and matter; the greatest contrast within the whole compass of nature, within the universe of being. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the other hand, the argument of sequence is often used to prove the greater importance and activity of consciousness in contrast to matter, consciousness being regarded as antecedent to excitation in general or to some particular excitation. ”

“ Every natural law, therefore, may be defined as the formula of a sequence, which must either ensue upon certain forces of a given intensity impinging upon certain given quantities, kinds, and forms of matter, or else, by not ensuing, prove that the force or the matter concerned were not of a permanent nature. ”

“ Their inquiry always centers upon some manner of process. This notion of process about which the researches of modern science cluster, is a notion of a sequence, or complex, of consecutive change in which the nexus of the sequence, that by virtue of which the change inquired into is consecutive, is the relation of cause and effect. ”

“ Sequences entirely physical and material, as soon as they had become sufficiently familiar to the human mind, came to be thought perfectly natural, and were regarded not only as needing no explanation themselves, but as being capable of affording it to others, and even of serving as the ultimate explanation of things in general. ”

“ When we speak however of the stage of a sequence in ordinary life as causes, I do not think it is because we are approaching the scientific standpoint, but I fear it arises from our associating, through long usage the idea of force with the stone. ”

“ Newspapers and magazines look out for interesting material, and it is for the matter in them that they are read. So memoirs and biographies are read, not to find out what happens at last,—that is known,—but to pick up information concerning an interesting subject.
Plot. Or the sequence may be a more subtle and binding relation of cause and effect. This is the sequence employed in stories. One thing happens because another thing has happened. Generally the sequence of time and the sequence of cause and effect correspond; for effects come after causes. ”

“ The great conception of universal regular sequence, without partiality, and without caprice—the conception which is the most potent force at work in the modification of our faith, and of the practical form given to our sentiments—could only grow out of that patient watching of external fact, and that silencing of preconceived notions, which are urged upon the mind by the problems of physical science. ”

“ The uniformity of sequence is, in fact, in the physical sciences never assumed to express the relation of cause and effect, until the connection between the antecedent and consequent can be set forth abstractly in mathematical formulæ. ”

“ Besides the propositions which assert Sequence or Co-existence, there are some which assert simple Existence; [7] and others assert Causation, which, subject to the explanations which will follow in the Third Book, must be considered provisionally as a distinct and peculiar kind of assertion. ”

“ For the wonderful presupposes the rational sequence of events no less than the clear perceptions of ordinary consciousness which, when it meets with some example of causal effect produced by a higher law breaking the customary chain of events now for the first time notifies the exception as a wonder. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For it may be contended that no fastening bonds are ever observed in physical phenomena, the only thing observed is a relation of sequence of antecedent and consequent, and in case of causation an invariable sequence of a definite antecedent and definite consequent. ”

“ Now, all foresight of phaenomena, and power over them, depend on knowledge of their sequences, and not upon any notion we may have formed respecting their origin or inmost nature. We foresee a fact or event by means of facts which are signs of it, because experience has shown them to be its antecedents. We bring about any fact, other than our own muscular contractions, by means of some fact which experience has shown to be followed by it. ”

“ If we contemplate the world and the creatures it contains we shall recognize a perfect order, a regular [152] system, a sequence of cause and effect, a connexion between different categories of existence, and a transformation of beings from one category of existence to another. ”

“ Has anybody ever been able to testify to a force? No, but to effects, translated into a com pletely strange language. Regularity in sequence has so spoilt us, that we no longer wonder at the wonderful process. ”

“ Any evolutionary science, on the other hand, is a close-knit body of theory. It is a theory of a process, of an unfolding sequence. ”

“ They fall of themselves into two groups, one based upon the general view that all rational connection, or at least all such rational connection as is significant for our knowledge, is mechanical causal sequence, the other upon an appeal to the supposed actual practice of the mental sciences. ”

“ The only true causes are phenomenal ones, or what is certified by experience. There are uniform and unconditional antecedents, and uniform and unconditional sequences. Something goes before, uniformly and invariably; something uniformly and invariably follows. ”

“ All the uniformities which exist in the succession of phenomena, and most of the uniformities in their co-existence, are either, as we have seen, themselves laws of causation, or consequences resulting from, and corollaries capable of being deduced from, such laws. If we could determine what causes are correctly assigned to what effects, and what effects to what causes, we should be virtually acquainted with the whole course of nature. ”

“ Now on account of the various relations that exist between the different modes of being, relations of cause and effect, whole and part, means and end, ground and consequence, etc.—relations which constitute the orders of existing and possible things, the physical and the metaphysical orders—being is of course predicated of its modes by analogy of attribution; and in such predication infinite being is the primary analogue for finite beings, and the substance-mode of being for all accident-modes of being. ”

“ Even those attributes of an object which might seem with greatest propriety to be called states of the object itself, its sensible qualities, its color, hardness, shape, and the like, are in reality (as no one has pointed out more clearly than Brown himself) phenomena of causation, in which the substance is distinctly the agent, or producing cause, the patient being our own organs, and those of other sentient beings. What we call states of objects, are always sequences into which the objects enter, generally as antecedents or causes ”

“ This is a case of casual sequence.12 Human life is 38 deeply interested in ascertaining the constant sequences of all the objects from which human sensations are derived. The great business of philosophy is to find them out ”

“ What the principle of Ground and Consequence says is, that the whole of existence is a single coherent system in which every part is determined by the nature of the whole as revealed in the complete system. ”

“ And here we have the needful supplement to our conception of Life. Adding this all-important characteristic, our conception of Life becomes—The definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external co-existences and sequences. ”

“ The constant resemblances which link phaenomena together, and the constant sequences which unite them as antecedent and consequent, are termed their laws. The laws of phaenomena are all we know respecting them. Their essential nature, and their ultimate causes, either efficient or final, are unknown and inscrutable to us. ”

“ This short sketch is followed by a plain exposition of the anatomy of the circulation, and a detail of the results of numerous experiments; and the new theory is finally maintained in a strain of close and powerful reasoning, and followed into some of its most important consequences. The whole argument is conducted in simple and unpretending language, with great perspicuity, and scrupulous attention to logical form. ”

“ Of the Consequence or Train of Imagination By Consequence, or train of thoughts, I understand that succession of one thought to another which is called, to distinguish it from discourse in words, mental discourse.
When a man thinketh on anything whatsoever, his next thought after is not altogether so casual as it seems to be. Not every thought to every thought succeeds indifferently. ”

“ For what is a proof, what is logical consequence, what contradiction, what truth, what falsehood? Therefore, the third division is necessary because of the second, and the second because of the first; ”

“ Sure when I see such dreadful Consequences rising from a Principle, I would be as fully convinced of the Truth of it, as of a Mathematical Demonstration, before I would venture to act upon it, or make it a part of my Religion. ”

“ The discrete degrees constituting any one thing are always in a series, a lower one of the series being derived from the higher, like end, cause, and effect. End, cause, and effect follow in order, like prior, middle, and ultimate, the end or prior producing the cause or middle, and the cause or middle producing the effect or ultimate. Affection, thought, and act are related as end, cause, and effect. Take the example of speech for illustration. ”

“ In consequence of this perversion of the word Being, philosophers looking about for something to supply its place, laid their hands upon the word Entity, a piece of barbarous Latin, invented by the schoolmen to be used as an abstract name, in which class its grammatical form would seem to place it: but being seized by logicians in distress to stop a leak in their terminology, it has ever since been used as a concrete name. ”

“ And the world as we describe it, is the world viewed in the order of our own processes of description, which as incident in our human life, have their value, but are expressions of the true world order, only in so far as they reveal to us the life of things. Our conclusion is that the true series of facts in the world must be a Well-Ordered Series, in which every fact has its next-following fact. The series discoverable by us in the World of Description are characterized by the prevalence, for our view, of the relation Between. ”

“ On Observation and Experiment.
§ 1. It results from the preceding exposition, that the process of ascertaining what consequents, in nature, are invariably connected with what antecedents, or in other words what phenomena are related to each other as causes and effects, is in some sort a process of analysis. That every fact which begins to exist has a cause, and that this cause must be found in some fact or concourse of facts which immediately preceded the occurrence, may be taken for certain. ”

“ When arranged in systematic order, they form a series, progressing from those that consist of one central thought, of one single germ, to others that exhibit various degrees or modes of development by means of an accompanying narrative. And in order to show the universality of these threads of thought or categories, as we may now call them, they have been illustrated, whenever I could do so, by examples drawn from the origin-stories and myths of other peoples in different parts of the world. ”

“ The causation whereby I explain the data of experience is itself a transcendent sort of causation, that, as a relation existent outside of experience, links us to the transcendent objects which cause experience in us.” Hereupon, however, one asks, at the present stage: What, then, leads you to believe in the existence of that transcendent sort of causation? The realist hereupon may reply: “Why, some of the data of consciousness are such as demand, as their sufficient cause, the existence of just such transcendent causality. ”

“ If, therefore, we speak of the mind as a series of feelings we are obliged to complete the statement by calling it a series of feelings which is aware of itself as past and future; and we are reduced to the alternative of believing that the mind, or Ego, is something different from any series of feelings, or possibilities of them, or of accepting the paradox that something which ex hypothesi is but a series of feelings, can be aware of itself as a series. ”

“ Consequently, as there is an ascending series of effects, there must be a like series of causes; or, as the effect- world is an ascending series of effects, the cause-world is an ascending series of causes; and this must be true even though the effects be derived from one general cause, the Creator. The Creator embodies potentially a succession of causes, or more accurately a succession of ends, that supports the proceeding effects. ”