[76] See Sir William Hamilton, Discussions on Philosophy, Appendix, p. 585. The debates about what was meant in philosophy by the word Cause are certainly older than Plato. We read that it was discussed among the philosophers who frequented the house of Perikles; and that that eminent statesman was ridiculed by his dissolute son Xanthippus for taking part in such useless refinements (Plutarch, Perikles, c. 36). But the Platonic dialogues are the oldest compositions in which any attempts to analyse the meaning of the word are preserved to us.
Αἴτιαι, Ἀρχαί, Στοιχεῖα (Aristot. Metaph. Δ.), were the main objects of search with the ancient speculative philosophers. While all of them set to themselves the same problem, each of them hit upon a different solution. That which gave mental satisfaction to one, appeared unsatisfactory and even inadmissible to the rest. The first book of Aristotle’s Metaphysica gives an instructive view of this discrepancy. His own analysis of Cause will come before us hereafter. Compare the long discussions on the subject in Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhon. Hypo. iii. 13-30; and adv. Mathemat. ix. 195-250. The discrepancy was so great among the dogmatical philosophers, that he pronounces the reality of the causal sequence to be indeterminable — ὅσον μὲν οὖν ἐπὶ τοῖς λεγομένοις ὑπὸ τῶν δογματικῶν, οὐδ’ ἂν ἐννοῆσαί τις τὸ αἴτιον δύναιτο, εἴ γε πρὸς τῷ διαφώνους καὶ ἀλλοκότους (ἀποδιδόναι) ἐννοίας τοῦ αἰτίου ἔτι καὶ τὴν ὑπόστασιν αὐτοῦ πεποιήκασιν ἀνεύρετον διὰ τὴν περὶ αὐτὸ διαφωνίαν. Seneca (Epist. 65) blends together the Platonic and the Aristotelian views, when he ascribes to Plato a quintuple variety of Causa.
The quadruple variety of Causation established by Aristotle governed the speculations of philosophers during the middle ages. But since the decline of the Aristotelian philosophy, there are few subjects which have been more keenly debated among metaphysicians than the Idea of Cause. It is one of the principal points of divergence among the different schools of philosophy now existing. A volume, and a very instructive volume, might be filled with the enumeration and contrast of the different theories on the subject. Upon the view which a man takes on this point will depend mainly the scope or purpose which he sets before him in philosophy. Many seek the solution of their problem in transcendental, ontological, extra-phenomenal causes, lying apart from and above the world of fact and experience; Reid and Stewart, while acknowledging the existence of such causes as the true efficient causes, consider them as being out of the reach of human knowledge; others recognise no true cause except personal, quasi-human, voluntary, agency, grounded on the type of human volition. Others, again, with whom my own opinion coincides, following out the analysis of Hume and Brown, understand by causes nothing more than phenomenal antecedents constant and unconditional, ascertainable by experience and induction. See the copious and elaborate chapter on this subject in Mr. John Stuart Mill’s ‘System of Logic,’ Book iii. ch. 5, especially as enlarged in the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions of that work, including the criticism on the opposite or volitional theory of Causation; also the work of Professor Bain, ‘The Emotions and the Will,’ pp. 472-584. The opposite view, in which Causes are treated as something essentially distinct from Laws, and as ultra-phenomenal, is set forth by Dr. Whewell, ‘Novum Organon Renovatum,’ ch. vii. p. 118 seq.
Last transition of the mind of Sokrates from things to words — to the adoption of the theory of ideas. Great multitude of ideas assumed, each fitting a certain number of particulars.
There is yet another point which deserves attention in this history given by Sokrates of the transitions of his own mind. His last transition is represented as one from things to words, that is, to general propositions:[77] to the assumption in each case of an universal proposition or hypothesis calculated to fit that case. He does not seem to consider the optimistic doctrine, which he had before vainly endeavoured to follow out, as having been an hypothesis, or universal proposition assumed as true and as a principle from which to deduce consequences. Even if it were so, however, it was one and the same assumption intended to suit all cases: whereas the new doctrine to which he passed included many distinct assumptions, each adapted to a certain number of cases and not to the rest.[78] He assumed an untold multitude of self-existent Ideas — The Self-Beautiful, Self-Just, Self-Great, Self-Equal, Self-Unequal, &c. — each of them adapted to a certain number of particular cases: the Self-Beautiful was assumed as the cause why all particular things were beautiful — as that, of which all and each of them partakes — and so of the rest.[79] Plato then explains his procedure. He first deduced various consequences from this assumed hypothesis, and examined whether all of them were consistent or inconsistent with each other. If he detected inconsistencies (as e.g. in the last half of the Parmenidês), we must suppose (though Plato does not expressly say so) that he would reject or modify his fundamental assumption: if he found none, he would retain it. The point would have to be tried by dialectic debate with an opponent: the logical process of inference and counter-inference is here assumed to be trustworthy. But during this debate Plato would require his opponent to admit the truth of the fundamental hypothesis provisionally. If the opponent chose to impugn the latter, he must open a distinct debate on that express subject. Plato insists that the discussion of the consequences flowing from the hypothesis, shall be kept quite apart from the discussion on the credibility of the hypothesis itself. From the language employed, he seems to have had in view certain disputants known to him, by whom the two were so blended together as to produce much confusion in the reasoning.
[77] Aristotle (Metaphysic. A. 987, b. 31, Θ. 1050, b. 35) calls the Platonici οἱ ἐν τοῖς λόγοις: see the note of Bonitz.
[78] Plato, Phædon, p. 100 A. ἀλλ’ οὖν δὴ ταύτῃ γε ὥρμησα, καὶ ὑποθέμενος ἑκάστοτε λόγον ὃν ἂν κρίνω ἐῤῥωμενέστατον εἶναι, ἃ μὲν ἂν μοι δοκῇ τούτῳ ξυμφωνεῖν, τίθημι ὡς ἀληθῆ ὄντα, καὶ περὶ αἰτίας καὶ περὶ τῶν ἄλλων ἁπάντων· ἃ δ’ ἂν μή, ὡς οὐκ ἀληθῆ.
[79] Aristotle controverts this doctrine of Plato in a pointed manner, De Gen. et Corrupt. ii. 9, p. 335, b. 10, also Metaphys. A. 991, b. 3. The former passage is the most animated in point of expression, where Aristotle says — ὥσπερ ὁ ἐν τῷ Φαίδωνι Σωκράτης· καὶ γὰρ ἐκεῖνος, ἐπιτιμήσας τοῖς ἄλλοις ὡς οὐδὲν εἰρηκόσιν, ὑποτίθεται — which is very true about the Platonic dialogue Phædon, &c. But in both the two passages, Aristotle distinctly maintains that the Ideas cannot be Causes of any thing.
This is another illustration of what I have observed above, that the meaning of the word Cause has been always fluctuating and undetermined.
We see that, while Aristotle affirmed that the Ideas could not be Causes of anything, Plato here maintains that they are the only true Causes.