THE UNIVERSAL CAUSE
In my last lecture I endeavoured to show that matter, so far from constituting the ultimate Reality, cannot reasonably be thought of as existing at all without mind; and that we cannot explain the world without assuming the existence of a Mind in which and for which everything that is not mind has its being. But we are still very far from having fully cleared up the relation between the divine Mind and that Nature which exists in it and for it: while we have hardly dealt at all with the relation between the universal Mind and those lesser minds which we have treated—so far without much argument—as in some way derived from, or dependent upon, that Mind. So far as our previous line of argument goes, we might have to look upon the world as the thought of God, but not as caused by Him or due to His will. We might speak of God as 'making Nature,' but only in the sense in which you or I make Nature when we think it or experience it. {30} 'The world is as necessary to God as God is to the world,' we are often told—for instance by my own revered teacher, the late Professor Green. How unsatisfactory this position is from a religious point of view I need hardly insist. For all that such a theory has to say to the contrary, we might have to suppose that, though God is perfectly good, the world which He is compelled to think is very bad, and going from bad to worse. To think of God merely as the Mind which eternally contemplates Nature, without having any power whatever of determining what sort of Nature it is to be, supplies no ground for hope or aspiration—still less for worship, adoration, imitation. I suggested the possibility that from such a point of view God might be thought of as good, and the world as bad. But that is really to concede too much. A being without a will could as little be bad as he could be good: he would be simply a being without a character. From an intellectual point such a way of looking at the Universe might be more intelligent or intelligible than that of pure Materialism or pure Agnosticism; but morally and religiously I don't know that, when its consequences are fully realized, it is any great improvement upon either of them.[1] {31} Moreover, even intellectually it fails to satisfy the demand which most reflecting people feel, that the world shall be regarded as a Unity of some kind. If God is thought of as linked by some inexplicable fate to a Nature over which He has no sort of control—not so much control as a mere human being who can produce limited changes in the world,—we can hardly be said to have reduced the world to a Unity. The old Dualism has broken out again: after all we still have God and the world confronting one another; neither of them is in any way explained by the other. Still less could such a world be supposed to have a purpose or rational end. For our own mere intellectual satisfaction as well as for the satisfaction of our religious needs we must go on to ask whether we are not justified in thinking of God as the Cause or Creator of the world, as well as the Thinker of it.
This enquiry introduces us to the whole problem of Causality. The sketch which I gave you last time of Bishop Berkeley's argument was a very imperfect one. Bishop Berkeley was from one point of view a great philosophic iconoclast, though he destroyed only that he might build up. He destroyed the superstition of a self-existing matter: {32} he also waged war against what I will venture to call the kindred superstition of a mysterious causal nexus between the physical antecedent and the physical consequent. On this side his work was carried on by Hume. Berkeley resolved our knowledge into a succession of 'ideas.' He did, no doubt, fall into the mistake of treating our knowledge as if it were a mere succession of feelings: he ignored far too much—though he did not do so completely—that other element in our knowledge, the element of intellectual relation, of which I said something last time. Here, no doubt, Berkeley has been corrected by Kant; and, so far, practically all modern Idealists will own their indebtedness to Kant. Even in the apprehension of a succession of ideas, in the mere recognition that this feeling comes after that, there is an element which cannot be explained by mere feeling. The apprehension that this feeling came after that feeling is not itself a feeling. But can I detect any relation between these experiences of mine except that of succession? We commonly speak of fire as the cause of the melting of the wax, but what do we really know about the matter? Surely on reflection we must admit that we know nothing but this—that, so far as our experience goes, the application of fire is always followed by the melting of the wax. Where this is the case we do, from the point of view of {33} ordinary life, speak of the one phenomenon as the cause of the other. Where we don't discover such an invariable succession, we don't think of the one event as the cause of the other.
I shall be told, perhaps, that on this view of the nature of Causality we ought to speak of night as the cause of day. So perhaps we should, if the result to which we are led by a more limited experience were not corrected by the results of a larger experience. To say nothing of the valuable correction afforded by the polar winter and the polar summer, we have learned by a more comprehensive experience to replace the law that day follows night by the wider generalisation that the visibility of objects is invariably coincident upon the presence of some luminous body and not upon a previous state of darkness. But between cases of what we call mere succession and what is commonly called causal sequence the difference lies merely in the observed fact that in some cases the sequence varies, while in others no exception has ever been discovered. No matter how frequently we observe that a sensation of red follows the impact upon the aural nerve of a shock derived from a wave of ether of such and such a length, we see no reason why it should do so. We may, no doubt, make a still wider generalization, and say that every event in Nature is invariably preceded by some definite complex of conditions, {34} and so arrive at a general law of the Uniformity of Nature. And such a law is undoubtedly the express or implied basis of all inference in the Physical Sciences. When we have once accepted that law (as the whole mass of our experience in the purely physical region inclines us to do), then a single instance of A B C being followed by D (when we are quite sure that we have included all the antecedents which we do not know from other experience to be irrelevant) will warrant our concluding that we have discovered a law of nature. On the next occasion of A B C's occurrence we confidently predict that D will follow. But, however often we have observed such a sequence, and however many similar sequences we may have observed, we are no nearer to knowing why D should follow ABC: we can only know that it always does: and on the strength of that knowledge we infer, with a probability which we do no doubt for practical purposes treat as a certainty, that it always will. But on reflection we can see no reason why a wave of ether of a certain length should produce red rather than blue, a colour rather than a sound. There, as always, we discover nothing but succession, not necessary connexion.
These cases of unvaried succession among phenomena, it should be observed, are quite different from cases of real necessary connexion. We don't want to examine thousands of instances of two {35} added to two to be quite sure that they always make four, nor in making the inference do we appeal to any more general law of Uniformity. We simply see that it is and always must be so. Mill no doubt tells us he has no difficulty in supposing that in the region of the fixed stars two and two might make five, but nobody believes him. At all events few of us can pretend to such feats of intellectual elasticity. No amount of contradictory testimony from travellers to the fixed stars, no matter whether they were Bishops of the highest character or trained as Professors of physical Science, would induce us to give a moment's credence to such a story. We simply see that two and two must make four, and that it is inconceivable they should ever, however exceptionally, make five. It is quite otherwise with any case of succession among external phenomena, no matter how unvaried. So long as we confine ourselves to merely physical phenomena (I put aside for the moment the case of conscious or other living beings) nowhere can we discover anything but succession; nowhere do we discover Causality in the sense of a necessary connexion the reversal of which is inconceivable.
Are we then to conclude that there is no such thing as Causality, that in searching for a cause of everything that happens, we are pursuing a mere will o' the wisp, using a mere vox nihili which has {36} as little meaning for the reflecting mind as fate or fortune? Surely, in the very act of making the distinction between succession and causality, in the very act of denying that we can discover any causal connexion between one physical phenomenon and another, we imply that we have got the idea of Causality in our minds; and that, however little we may have discovered a genuine cause, we could not believe that anything could happen without a cause.
For my own part, I find it quite possible to believe that a phenomenon which has been followed by another phenomenon 9999 times should on the 10,000th time be followed by some other phenomenon. Give me the requisite experience, and belief would follow; give me even any adequate evidence that another person has had such an experience (though I should be very particular about the evidence), and I should find no difficulty in believing it. But to tell me that the exception to an observed law might take place without any cause at all for the variation would seem to be pure nonsense. Put the matter in another way. Let us suppose an empty world, if one can speak of such a thing without contradiction—let us suppose that at one time nothing whatever had existed, neither mind nor matter nor any of that mysterious entity which some people find it possible to believe in which is {37} neither mind nor matter. Let us suppose literally nobody and nothing to have existed. Now could you under these conditions rationally suppose that anything could have come into existence? Could you for one moment admit the possibility that after countless aeons of nothingness a flash of lightning should occur or an animal be born? Surely, on reflection those who are most suspicious of a priori knowledge, who are most unwilling to carry their speculations beyond the limits of actual experience, will be prepared to say, 'No, the thing is utterly for ever impossible.' Ex nihilo nihil fit: for every event there must be a cause. Those who profess to reject all other a priori or self-evident knowledge, show by their every thought and every act that they never really doubt that much.
Now, it would be just possible to contend that we have got the bare abstract concept or category of Causality in our minds, and yet that there is nothing within our experience to give it any positive content—so that we should have to say, 'Every event must have a cause, but we never know or can know what that cause is. If we are to talk about causes at all, we can only say "The Unknowable is the cause of all things."' Such a position can be barely stated without a contradiction. But surely it is a very difficult one. Nature does not generally supply us with categories of thought, while it gives us no power {38} or opportunity of using them. It would be like holding, for instance, that we have indeed been endowed with the idea of number in general, but that we cannot discover within our experience any numerable things; that we have got the idea of 1, 2, 3, 4, etc., but have no capacity whatever for actually counting—for saying that here are three apples, and there four marbles. And, psychologically, it would be difficult to find any parallel to anything of the kind. Nature does not first supply us with clearly defined categories of thought, and then give us a material to exercise them upon. In general we discover these abstract categories by using them in our actual thinking. We count beads or men or horses before we evolve an abstract idea of number, or an abstract multiplication table. It is very difficult to see how this idea of Cause could possibly have got into our heads if we had never in the whole course of our experience come into any sort of contact with any actual concrete cause. Where then, within our experience, if not in the succession of external events, shall we look for a cause—for something to which we can apply this category or abstract notion of causality? I answer 'We must look within: it is in our experience of volition that we actually find something answering to our idea of causal connexion.' And here, I would invite you not to think so much of our consciousness of actually {39} moving our limbs. Here it is possible to argue plausibly that the experience of exercising causality is a delusion. I imagine that, if I will to do so, I can move my arm; but I will to stretch out my arm, and lo! it remains glued to my side, for I have suddenly been paralysed. Or I may be told that the consciousness of exerting power is a mere experience of muscular contraction, and the like. I would ask you to think rather of your power of directing the succession of your own thoughts. I am directly conscious, for instance, that the reason why I am now thinking of Causality, and not (say) of Tariff Reform, is the fact that I have conceived the design of delivering a course of lectures on this subject; the succession of ideas which flow through my mind as I write or speak is only explicable by reference to an end—an end which I am striving to bring into actual being. In such voluntarily concentrated purposeful successions of thought I am immediately exercising causality: and this causality does further influence the order of events in physical nature. My pen or my tongue moves in consequence of this striving of mine, though no doubt for such efforts to take place other physical conditions must be presupposed, which are not wholly within my own control. I am the cause, but not the whole or sole cause of these physical disturbances in external nature: I am a cause but not an uncaused cause. {40} My volition, though it is not the sole cause of the event which I will, is enough to give me a conception of a cause which is the sole cause of the events.
The attempt is of course sometimes made, as it was made by Hume, to explain away this immediate consciousness of volition, and to say that all that I immediately know is the succession of my subjective experiences. It may be contended that I don't know, any more than in the case of external phenomena, that because the thought of my lecture comes first and the thought of putting my pen into the ink to write it comes afterwards, therefore the one thought causes the other. Hence it is important to point out that I have a negative experience with which to contrast the positive experience. I do not always, even as regards my own inward experiences, assume that succession implies Causality. Supposing, as I speak or write, a twinge of the gout suddenly introduces itself into the succession of my experiences: then I am conscious of no such inner connexion between the new experience and that which went before it. Then I am as distinctly conscious of passivity—of not causing the succession of events which take place in my mind—as I am in the other case of actively causing it. If the consciousness of exercising activity is a delusion, why does not that delusion occur in the one case as much as in the other? I hold then that in the consciousness of {41} our own activity we get a real direct experience of Causality. When Causality is interpreted to mean mere necessary connexion—like the mathematical connexion between four and twice two or the logical connexion between the premisses of a Syllogism and its conclusion,—its nature is fundamentally misrepresented. The essence of Causality is not necessary connexion but Activity. Such activity we encounter in our own experience of volition and nowhere else.[2]
Now, if the only cause of which I am immediately conscious is the will of a conscious rational being, is it not reasonable to infer that some such agency is at work in the case of those phenomena which we see no reason to attribute to the voluntary actions of men and animals? It is well known that primitive man took this step. Primitive man had no notion of the 'Uniformity of Nature': it is only very gradually that civilized man has discovered it. But primitive man never doubted for one instant the law of Causality: he never doubted that for any change, or at least for any change of the kind which most frequently attracted his attention, there must {42} be a cause. Everything that moved he supposed to be alive, or to be under the influence of some living being more or less like himself. If the sea raged, he supposed that the Sea-god was angry. If it did not rain to-day, when it rained yesterday, that was due to the favour of the Sky-god, and so on. The world for him was full of spirits. The argument of primitive man's unconscious but thoroughly sound Metaphysic is well expressed by the fine lines of Wordsworth in the Excursion: