CONTENT AND VALIDITY OF THE CAUSAL LAW 369 



For the empiristic interpretation, the (general) causal law is only 

 the highest genus of the individual cases of empirically synthetic 

 relations of uniform sequence. Starting from these presuppositions, 

 it cannot be other than a generalization from experience, that is, a 

 carrying over of observed relations of uniform, or, as we may now 

 also say, constant sequence to those which have not been or cannot 

 be objects of observation, as well as to those which we expect to ap- 

 pear in the future. Psychologically regarded, it is merely the most 

 general expression of an expectation, conditioned through associative 

 reproduction, of uniform sequence. It is, therefore, -- to bring 

 Hume's doctrine to a conclusion that the father of modern empiricism 

 himself did not draw, - - a species of temporal contiguity. 



The general validity which we ascribe to the causal law is ac- 

 cordingly a merely empirical one. It can never attain apodeictic 

 or even assertorical validity, but purely that type of problematic 

 validity which we may call "real" in contradistinction to the other 

 type of problematic validity attained in judgments of objective as 

 well as of subjective and hypothetical possibility. 1 No possible pro- 

 gress of experience can win for the empiristically interpreted causal 

 law any other than this real problematic validity; for experience 

 can never become complete a parte post, nor has it ever been com- 

 plete a parte ante. The causal law is valid assertorically only in so 

 far as it sums up, purely in the way of an inventory, the preceding 

 experiences. We call such assumptions, drawn from well-ordered 

 experience and of inductive origin, "hypotheses," whether they rest 

 upon generalizing inductive inferences in the narrower sense, or upon 

 specializing inferences from analogy. They, and at the same time 

 the empiristically interpreted causal law, are not hypotheses in the 

 sense in which Newton rightly rejected all formation of hypotheses, 2 

 but are such as are necessarily part of all methods in the sciences of 

 facts in so far as the paths of research lead out beyond the content 

 given immediately in perception to objects of only possible experience. 



The assertion of Stuart Mill, in opposition to this conclusion, 

 that the cause must be thought of as the "invariable antecedent' 

 and, correspondingly, the effect as the "invariable consequent," 

 does all honor to the genius of the thinker; but it agrees by no means 

 with the empiristic presuppositions which serve as the basis for his 

 conclusions. For, starting from these presuppositions, the "invari- 

 able sequence" can only mean one that is uniform and constant 



1 Cf. the author's Logik, bd. i, 61. 



2 " Rationem vero harum gravitatis proprietatum ex phaenomenis nondum potui 

 deducere, et hypotheses non fingo. Quicquid enim ex phaenomenis non deducitur, 

 hypothesis vocanda est ; et hypotheses sen metaphysicae, seu physicae, seu qualita- 

 tum occultarum, seu mechanicae, in philosophia experimental! locum non habent. 

 In hac philosophia propositiones deducuntur ex phaenomenis, et redduntur gener- 

 ales per inductionem." Newton, at the end of his chief work. 



3 Logic, bk. in, ch. v, 2. 



