From these two examples, to which it would be easy to add many more, it is manifest that what we call formal reason is a conspiration of correlative principles towards a common actual result. All results are relations between terms, or principles, communicating with one another, either through themselves or through something which is common to them. In the first case, the result, or relation, is transcendental, and is nothing else than the actuality of one principle in the other—of the soul in the body, for instance. In the second case, the result, or relation, is either predicamental or logical (according as its principles and its formal reason are real or not), and is nothing else than the actuality of the terms as correlated.
Let the reader remark that we have pointed out three kinds of so-called formal principles, viz., the form, or act, which is a principium formale properly, and without qualification; then the principium, formale quod of a resultation, consisting of correlated principles conspiring together into a common result; lastly, the principium formale quo, or the proximate reason of the resultation, consisting in the very conspiration of the correlated principles. In English, the better to distinguish the one from the other, it would be well to retain the name of formal principle for the first alone; the second might be called the formal origin, and the third the formal reason, of a resultation. Thus the name of formal principle would be preserved to its rightful owner, without danger of mistaking it for a formal reason, or vice versa.
Before we conclude, we beg to add, though it may appear unnecessary, that the conditions of causation are not principles. We make this remark because nothing, perhaps, is more common in ordinary speech than to confound conditions with principles and causes. It is not uninstructed persons only, but educated people and men of science too, that express themselves as if they believed that conditions have their own active part in producing effects. If a weight be suspended by a thread, the cutting of the thread is popularly said to cause the fall of the weight. He who throws a piece of paper into the fire is said to burn the paper. He who rubs a match is said to light the match. A change of distance between the sun and a planet is said to cause a change of intensity in the central forces. Now, it is scarcely necessary to show that cutting the thread, throwing the paper, rubbing the match, etc., are only conditions of the falling, the burning, the lighting, etc., respectively; and conditions are neither causes nor principles of causation. A condition of causation may be defined to be an accidental relation between principles or causes, inasmuch as they are concerned in the production of an effect. Causes and principles cause and principiate in a different manner, according to the difference of their mutual relations, but do not cause or principiate through such relations, as is evident.
A weight suspended by a thread falls when the thread is cut. But he who cuts the thread is not the real cause of the falling. The true cause is, on the one hand, the earth by its attractive power, and, on the other, the body itself by its receptive potency. Cutting the thread is only to put a condition of the falling. The fall, in fact, depends on the condition that the body be free to obey the action of gravity; and this condition is fulfilled when the thread is cut. In like manner, he who throws a piece of paper into the fire does not burn it, but only puts it in the necessary relation with the fire, that it may be burnt; and he who rubs the match does not light it, but only rubs it, the rubbing being a condition, not a cause, of the lighting. In fact, the lighting of the match is caused by the actions and reactions which take place between the molecules of certain substances on the end of the match; and such actions and reactions depend on the rubbing only inasmuch as the rubbing alters the relations of distance between molecules, disturbs their equilibrium, and places them in a new condition with respect to their acting on one another. Of course, the rubbing is an effect, and he who does the rubbing is a cause; but he causes the rubbing only. So, also, the change of distance between the sun and a planet is neither the cause nor the principle of a change of intensity in the mutual attraction. The action of celestial bodies follows a law. With such or such relation of distance between them, they act with such or such intensity; but distance is evidently not an active principle, and therefore a change of distance is only the change of a condition of causation.
As we have just mentioned the fact that celestial bodies are subject to a law of action, it might be asked whether law itself be a real principle. We must answer in the negative; for law is nothing but the necessity for every agent or patient of conforming to its own nature in the exertion of its powers, and in the subjection of its potency. Such a necessity is permanent, since it arises from the determination of nature itself, and may be divided into moral, physical, and logical, according as it is viewed in connection with different beings or powers; but it is certainly neither an active power nor a passive potency, but only a natural ordination of the same, and accordingly is not a cause nor a principle, but an exponent of the constant manner in which causes and principles bring about the various changes we witness throughout the world.
These few notions may suffice as an introduction to what we intend to say about the principles of things. We have seen that a principle is less than a cause, a reason less than a principle, and a condition less than a reason; and we have determined as exactly as we could the general character of each of them, by ascertaining the grounds of their several distinctions. This was our only object in the present article; and therefore we will stop here, and reserve particulars for future investigation.
TO BE CONTINUED.
FOOTNOTES:
[138] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
[139] The principle whence anything exists, is made, or is known.