CONTENT AND VALIDITY OF THE CAUSAL LAW 365 



decision of the question, whether or not empiricism can determine 

 exhaustively the content that we think in the causal relation, depends 

 upon other considerations than those which we have until now been 

 called upon to undertake. We have so far only made clear what 

 every critical analysis of the causal relation has to concede to empiri- 

 cism. In reality the empiristic hypothesis is inadequate. To be sure, 



As a result of the sum total of the revivals actual and possible, there is finally 

 pi'oduced, according to the particular circumstances, either a motor reaction or an 

 inhibitant of such reaction. Both innervations can take place involuntarily or 

 voluntarily. 



The critical analysis of the fact that we dread contact with fire, even has another 

 purpose and accordingly proceeds on other lines. It must make clear under what 

 presuppositions the foresight that lies at the basis of such dread is valid for future 

 experience. It must then formulate the actual process of revival that constitutes 

 the foundation of this feeling as a series of judgments, from which the meaning and 

 interconnection of the several judgments will become clear. Thus the critical 

 analysis must give a logical presentation of the apperceptive and associative 

 processes of revival. 



For this purpose the three cases of the psychological analysis reduce themselves 

 to two: viz., first, to the case in which an immediate experience forms the basis, 

 and secondly, to that in which a variety of similar mediately or immediately 

 communicated experiences form such basis. 



In the first of these logically differentiated cases, the transformation into the 

 speech of formulated thought leads to the following inference from analogy : 



Fire A burned. 



Fire B is similar to fire A. 



Fire B will burn. 

 In the second case there arises a syllogism of some such form as: 



All fire causes burning upon contact. 

 This present phenomenon is fire. 



This present phenomenon will cause burning upon contact. 



Both premises of this syllogism are inductive inferences, whose implicit meaning 

 becomes clear when we formulate as follows : 



All heretofore investigated instances of fire have burned, therefore all fire 



burns. 

 The present phenomenon manifests some properties of fire, will consequently 



have all the properties thereof. 



The present phenomenon will, in case of contact, cause burning. 



The first syllogism goes from the particular to the particular. The second proves 

 itself to be (contrary to the analysis of Stuart Mill) an inference that leads from 

 the general to the particular. For the conclusion is the particular of the second 

 parts of the major and minor premises; and these second parts of the premises are 

 inferred from their first parts in the two possible ways of inductive inference. The 

 latter do not contain the case referred to in the conclusion, but set forth the con- 

 ditions of carrying a result of previous experience over to a new case with inductive 

 probability, in other words, the conditions of making past experience a means of 

 foreseeing future experience. It would be superfluous to give here the symbols 

 of the two forms of inductive inference. 



We remain within the bounds of logical analysis, if we state under what condi- 

 tions conclusions follow necessarily from their premises, viz., the conclusions 

 of arguments from analogy and of syllogisms in the narrower sense, as well as 

 those of the foregoing inductive arguments. For the inference from analogy and 

 the two forms of inductive inference, these conditions are the presuppositions 

 already set forth in the text of the present paper, that in the as yet unobserved 

 portion of reality the like causes will be found and they will give rise to like effects. 

 For the syllogism they are the thought that the predicate of a predicate is the 

 (mediate) predicate of the subject. Only the further analysis of these presupposi- 

 tions, which is undertaken in the text, leads to critical considerations in the 

 narrower sense. 



