CONTENT AND VALIDITY OF THE CAUSAL LAW 373 



It is evident in what light all these dynamic conceptions appear, 

 when looked at from the standpoint of consistent extreme empiricism. 

 These "forces," to consider here only this one of the dynamic hypo- 

 theses, help to explain nothing. The physical forces, or those which 

 give rise to movement, are evidently not given to us as contents of 

 sense perception, and at the most they can be deduced as non-sen- 

 suous foundations, not as contents of possible sense perception. The 

 often and variously expressed belief that self perception reveals to 

 us here what our senses leave hidden has proved itself to be in all its 

 forms a delusion. The forces whose existence we assume have then 

 an intuitable content only in so far as they get it through the uniform- 

 ities present in repeated perceptions, which uniformities are to be 

 "explained" through them. But right here their assumption proves 

 itself to be not only superfluous but even misleading; for it makes us 

 believe that we have offered an explanation, whereas in reality we 

 have simply duplicated the given by means of a fiction, quite after the 

 fashion of the Platonic doctrine of ideas. This endeavor to give the 

 formal temporal relations between events, which we interpret as 

 causes and effects, a dynamic real substructure, shows itself thus to 

 be worthless in its contributions to our thought. The same holds 

 true of every other dynamic hypothesis. The critique called forth 

 by these contributions establishes therefore only the validity of the 

 empiristic interpretation. 



If, however, we have once come so far, we may not hold ourselves 

 back from the final step. Empiricism has long ago taken this step, 

 and the most consistent among its modern German representatives 

 has aroused anew the impulses that make it necessary. Indeed, if 

 we start from the empiristic presuppositions, we must recognize that 

 there lies not only in the assumption of forces, but even in the habit 

 of speaking of causes and effects, "a clear trace of fetishism." We 

 are not then surprised when the statement is made: The natural 

 science of the future, and accordingly science in general, will, it is 

 to be hoped, set aside these concepts also on account of their formal 

 obscurity. For, so it is explained, repetitions of like cases in which 

 a is always connected with b, namely, in which like results are found 

 under like circumstances, in short, the essence of the connection of 

 cause and effect, exists only in the abstraction that is necessary to 

 enable us to repicture the facts. In nature itself there are no causes 

 and effects. Die Natur ist nur einmal da, 



It is, again, Stuart Mill, the man of research, not the empiricist, that 

 opposes this conclusion, and indeed opposes it in the form that 

 Auguste Comte had given it in connection with thoughts that can 

 be read into Hume's doctrine. Comte's "objection to the word 

 cause is a mere matter of nomenclature, in which, as a matter of 

 nomenclature, I consider him to be entirely wrong. . . . By reject- 



