366 METHODOLOGY OF SCIENCE 



the proof of this inadequacy is not to be taken from the obvious 

 argument which Reid raised against the empiricism of Hume, and 

 which compelled Stuart Mill in his criticism of that attack 1 to abandon 

 his empiristic position at this point. No doubt the conclusion to which 

 we also have come for the time being, goes much too far, the conclu- 

 sion that the cause is nothing but the uniform antecedent and the 

 effect merely the uniform consequens. Were it true, as we have 

 hitherto assumed, that every uniformly preceding event is to be 

 regarded as cause and every uniformly following event as effect, then 

 day must be looked upon as cause of night and night as cause of day. 



Empiricism can, however, meet this objection without giving up 

 its position; in fact, it can employ the objection as an argument in its 

 favor; for this objection affects only the manifestly imperfect formu- 

 lation of the doctrine, not the essential arguments. 



It should have been pointed out again and again in the foregoing 

 exposition that only in the first indiscriminating view of things may 

 we regard the events given us in perception as the basis of our concepts 

 of cause and effect. All these events are intricately mixed, those that 

 are given in self perception as well as those given in sense perception. 

 The events of both groups flow along continuously. Consequently, 

 as regards time, they permit a division into parts, which division 

 proceeds, not indeed for our perception, but for our scientific thought, 

 in short, conceptually, into infinity. The events of sense perception 

 permit also conceptually of infinite division in their spatial relations. 



It is sufficient for our present purpose, if we turn our attention to 

 the question of divisibility in time. This fact of divisibility shows 

 that the events of our perception, which alone we have until now 

 brought under consideration, must be regarded as systems of events. 

 We are therefore called upon to apportion the causal relations among 

 the members of these systems. Only for the indiscriminating view 

 of our practical Weltanschauung is the perceived event a the cause 

 of the perceived event b. The more exact analysis of our theoretical 

 apprehension of the world compels us to dissect the events a and b 

 into the parts a a , a^, a , b a , b^, b , and, where occasion calls for it, to 

 continue the same process in turn for these and further components. 

 We have accordingly to relate those parts to one another as causes 

 and effects which, from the present standpoint of analysis, follow one 

 another uniformly and immediately, viz., follow one another so that 

 from this standpoint no other intervening event must be presupposed. 

 In this way we come to have a well-ordered experience. The disposi- 

 tions to such experience which reveal themselves within the field of 

 practical thought taught man long before the beginning of scientific 

 methods not to connect causally day and night with one another, but 

 the rising and setting of the sun with day and night. The theoretical 



1 A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, bk. m, ch. v, 6. 



