372 METHODOLOGY OF SCIENCE 



ther conclusions. Our scientific, no less than our practical thought 

 has always been accustomed to regard the relation between cause 

 and effect not as a matter of mere sequence, not therefore as a mere 

 formal temporal one. Rather it has always, in both forms of our 

 thought, stood for a real relation, that is, for a relation of dynamic 

 dependence of effect upon cause. Accordingly, the effect arises out 

 of the cause, is engendered through it, or brought forth by it. 



The historical development of this dynamic conception of cause 

 is well known. The old anthropopathic interpretation, which inter- 

 polates anthropomorphic and yet superhuman intervention between 

 the events that follow one another uniformly, has maintained itself 

 on into the modern metaphysical hypotheses. It remains standing 

 wherever God is assumed as the first cause for the interaction be- 

 tween parts of reality. It is made obscure, but not eliminated, when, 

 in other conceptions of the world, impersonal nature, fate, neces- 

 sity, the absolute identity, or an abstraction related to these, ap- 

 pears in the place of God. On the other hand, it comes out clearly 

 wherever these two tendencies of thought unite themselves in an 

 anthropopathic pantheism. That is, it rests only upon a differ- 

 ence in strength between the governing religious and scientific in- 

 terests, whether or not the All-One which unfolds itself in the 

 interconnection and content of reality is thought of more as the im- 

 manent God, or more as substance. Finally, we do not change our 

 position, if the absolute, self-active being (in all these theories a first 

 cause is presupposed as causa sui) is degraded to a non-intellectual 

 will. 



However, the dynamic interpretation of cause has not remained 

 confined to the field of these general speculations, just because it 

 commanded that field so early. There is a second branch, likewise 

 early evolved from the stem of the anthropopathic interpretation, 

 the doctrine that the causal relations of dependence are effected 

 through "forces." These forces adhere to, or dwell in, the ultimate 

 physical elements which are thought of as masses. Again, as spiritual 

 forces they belong to the "soul," which in turn is thought of as a 

 substance. In the modern contrast between attractive and repulsive 

 forces, there lies a remnant of the Empedoklean opposition between 

 Love and Hate. In the various old and new hylozoistic tendencies, 

 the concepts of force and its correlate, mass, are eclectically united. 

 In consistent materialism as well as spiritualism, and in the abstract 

 dynamism of energetics, the one member is robbed of its independence 

 or even rejected in favor of the other. 1 



1 Alongside of these dynamic theories, there are to be found mechanical ones 

 that arose just as early and from the same source, viz., the practical Weltan- 

 schauung. It is not part of our purpose to discuss them. Their first scientific 

 expression is to be found in the doctrine of effluences and pores in Empedokles 

 and in Atomism. 



