Varieties of Causation. Abstract causation—the category—consists of a cause and an effect. The former, as we have seen, is complicated, the latter may comprise several objects. Ignoring the complications involved in the use of an organism—which comes between the mind and the final effect—we distinguish four or five varieties of causation.
The cause C produces from its own energy the series of effects e1—e4, like the rebounding of a missile from the surface of ground or water. This may be called 'ricochet.'
Effects, each having an independent cause, sometimes form a series like a ladder:
This is the species illustrated by a successive discharge of musketry. The causation of science consists of the effects in this species considered apart from the causes.
In the 'gamut' the effects are in sequence, but they have all the same physical antecedent.
The successive acts of the same man or animal are of this kind.
In each of these species the effects are in series and may be treated as a sequence, but the cause or causes lie outside the sequence. Far from mere regularity of succession being a proof of causation between the objects, it may very easily be itself a part of the causal design.