CHAPTER III.
If we reflect cautiously on the history of our opinions, we find that we often fall into error in respect to our freedom in attributing causes. If we are unfortunate we are apt to look on our neighbours, or the world, or, if we are of a self-depreciatory turn of mind, ourselves as the cause.
Again in past times people really felt sure about certain things being causes which we now know had a very slight connection with the result. Incantations have been supposed to have an effect on physical phenomena, such as eclipses. Numbers and their properties have really been conceived as the causes of the modes of existence. Ideas have been supposed to have causative power over the order of the world.
We should be very careful in attributing the notion of causation. If we see a stone lying on the ground, and proceed to pick it up by the strength of the arm, we say that the exertion of the arm is the cause of the stone being lifted. But in this respect even we are too hasty. The arm may exert itself and yet the stone not be lifted up—if it is too heavy. All that we can say about it is that if the stone is lifted, a certain set of muscular actions has gone on in the arm, and a certain movement of the stone has taken place. If we look closely at the matter, the movements in the arm are related to the movements in the stone in a strictly measurable way. There has been so much exertion corresponding to the weight of the stone. But suppose the arm had done anything else, there would have been the same relation traceable between the movements in the arm and the actions which followed its movements. The energy spent by the arm would be equal to the energy imparted to the object moved, whether it be a stone sent flying through the air, or one lifted to a higher position (bearing in mind always the small quantity of energy passing off in the form of heat).
It does not seem advisable that the notion of cause should be brought in to denote the relation of the movement of the arm and the movement of the stone. These are two sets of actions between which the regular relations which hold good between the consecutive states of moving systems hold good.
The notion of “cause” should rather be applied to that act of the will whereby the movements of the arm are connected with the movement of that particular stone rather than the movement of any other object.
We are the cause of the actions we will. The notion of cause is derived from our “will” action, and the notion of cause ought to be kept to this connection.
All that goes on outside us can only be apprehended as consecutive states following on one another. Between certain sets of consecutive events we notice that the same relation holds good which we have observed in other consecutive states. If some water is heated in England it passes off into steam; if water is heated in another part of the world it also passes off into steam. There is an exact analogy in the behaviour of water under the action of heat wherever we observe it. But all that we have obtained as knowledge is the fact that we may practically be confident of an analogous behaviour on the part of water wherever circumstances are similar. We may use the expression that heat is the cause of water boiling for convenience. But the expression should not be used as containing any deep meaning. To say one external event is the cause of another is to put an absolutely unknown and spiritual relation in place of impartial observation.
To cause a motion is the name for the action of our soul on matter—a thing shrouded in mystery. To be the antecedent in a chain of movements is the fact which we can observe about any movement in the external world. We cannot strictly say what movements of gases, water, &c., cause this volcano. We can only say what movements of gases, water, &c., precede this volcanic eruption analogous to movements which have preceded other volcanoes.
There are invariable sequences in the external world to which we do not affix the notion of cause and effect—day and night, summer and winter. Why we should do so in any case is not clear, except that by familiarity and mystery the sequences have become to us something like our own will action. Indeed, is it not the case that when we can trace intermediate links we say so and so comes from so and so in such a manner. But when no intermediate links can be traced we say one event causes another.
If, however, we omit the feeling of causation from the external chain of events, it does not follow that there is no causation to be apprehended in the external world.
Let us not introduce the notion of causation at haphazard. But if we find in the external world signs of an action like our own will action, let us then say, Here is causation.
The inhabitants of the valley would not have been right in saying that one act of a routine caused another: But they were right in saying that the amount of sensation was constant, and that some of it passed off in a form in which they could not feel it.
And so let us not say that one action causes another. Let us not say, for example, that the downward swing of a pendulum is the cause of its upward swing. But let us simply say that the one follows the other; that the amount of energy present is the same except for the small portion that passes off into the form of heat.