CONTENT AND VALIDITY OF THE CAUSAL LAW 383 



for the most part, lost sight of the fact that Kant had retained these 

 old metaphysical assumptions in his interpretation of the tran- 

 scendental conditions of empirical interaction and in his cosmo- 

 logical doctrine of freedom. The common root of the sensibility and 

 of the understanding as the higher faculty of knowledge remains for 

 Kant the substantial force of the soul, which expresses itself (just as 

 in Leibnitz) as vis passiva and vis activa. The modern doctrine of 

 evolution has entirely removed the foundation from this rationalism 

 which had been undermined ever since Locke's criticism of the tra- 

 ditional concept of substance. 



To refer again briefly to a second point in which the foregoing 

 results differ from the Kantian rationalism as well as from empiricism 

 since Hume: The postulate of a necessary connection between 

 cause and effect, as we have seen, in no way implies the consequence 

 that the several inductions lose the character of hypotheses. This 

 does not follow merely from the fact that all inductions besides the 

 causal law include the hypothetical thought that the same causes 

 will be given in the reality not yet observed as appear in that already 

 observed. The hypothetical character of all inductive inferences is 

 rather revealed through the circumstance that in the causal postulate 

 absolutely nothing is contained regarding what the efficacy in the 

 causes is, and how this efficacy arises. 



Only such consequences of the foregoing interpretation of the 

 causal law and of its position as one of the bases of all scientific con- 

 struction of hypotheses may be pointed out, in conclusion, as will 

 help to make easier the understanding of the interpretation itself. 



The requirement of a necessary connection, or dependence, is 

 added by our thought to the reproductive and recognitive presup- 

 positions that are contained in the uniformity of the sequence of 

 events. If this necessary connection be taken objectively, then 

 it reveals as its correlate the requirement of a real dependence of 

 effect upon cause. We come not only upon often and variously 

 used rationalistic thoughts, but also upon old and unchangeable 

 components of all empirical scientific thought, when we give the 

 name " force " to the efficacy that underlies causes. The old postu- 

 late of a dynamic intermediary between the events that follow one 

 another constantly retains for us, therefore, its proper meaning. 

 We admit without hesitation that the word "force" suggests fetish- 

 ism more than do the words "cause" and "effect;" but we do not 

 see how this can to any degree be used as a counter-argument. All 

 words that were coined in the olden time to express thoughts of the 

 practical Weltanschauung have an archaic tang. Likewise all of our 

 science and the greater part of our nomenclature have arisen out of 

 the sphere of thought contained in the practical Weltanschauung, 



