83. After completely eliminating the conception of pure duration as a thing distinct from the beings, there remains only the transition from not-being to being as all that is expressed by the word, beginning. In this case we find that the principle of precedency is the same as the principle of causality; and as we have had to abstract entirely duration in itself in order to solve the difficulties, we find that if the principle of causality is to be placed beyond all doubt, and to be regarded as an axiom, it can only rest on the contradiction between not-being and being, or the impossibility of conceiving a being which suddenly makes its appearance, without any thing more than a pure not-being preceding it.
84. Thus, after examining the question on every side, we come to what we established in the preceding chapters: a not-being cannot arrive at being without the intervention of a being: the series not-A, A, is impossible without the intervention of a being, B. We find it so even in our ideas, and to contradict this truth is to deny our reason.
I believe, then, that the principle of causality is completely explained only in the manner in which we have treated it in the preceding chapters. To begin supposes a not-being of that which begins; and it is impossible and contradictory to deduce being from the conception of not-being. The principle is true subjectively, because it is founded on our ideas; but it is also true objectively, because in these cases objectiveness is necessarily joined with subjectiveness.[81] The being which suddenly appears, without a cause, without a reason, without any thing, is an absurd representation which our intellect rejects as instantly and as strongly as it accepts the principle of contradiction.
As time is the relation of not-being to being—the order of the variable—it is a contradiction to conceive succession without any thing which pre-exists; and thus the principle of precedency confirms the principle of causality; or rather, it shows that the two are one, though presented under different aspects: the principle of precedency relates to duration, that of causality to being; but both of them express an application of the fundamental principle: it is impossible for the same thing to be and not be at the same time.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
CAUSALITY IN ITSELF.—INSUFFICIENCY AND ERROR OF SOME EXPLANATIONS.
85. Causality implies relation: if in exercise, it implies actual relation; considered not in exercise, but in potentia, it implies a possible relation. Nothing causes itself; causality always relates to another. There is no cause where there is no effect; and there is no effect where there is no transition from not-being to being. If this transition takes place in a substance which was not, but begins to be, it is called creation; and is said to be passive, relatively to the effect, and active, in relation to the cause. If the transition is of accidents only, the effect is a new modification; we do not then say that there is a new being, but that the being is in another manner.
86. From this it may be inferred that causality is not the same as activity: all causality is activity, but not all activity is causality. God is active in himself; but he is cause only in relation to the external. His intelligence and his will are certainly infinite activity, considered in themselves, and abstracted from creation, as we conceive God from all eternity before the beginning of the world; yet, inasmuch as they are purely immanent, they are causality, for they produce nothing new in God. His intelligence is a pure act, infinitely perfect, and can never suffer any change; the same must be said of his will: therefore the divine intelligence and will with respect to God himself are not acts of causality. Even as referred to external objects, they are a producing cause in reality, only by subjection to the free will of the Creator; for otherwise we should have to admit that God created the world necessarily.