XVIII. Discussion of the Question: — Are Cause and Effect successive 

 or simultaneous? By the Rev. W. Whewell, B.D., Master of 

 Trinity College, and Professor of Moral Philosophy, 



[Read March 14, 1842.] 



I have at various times laid before this Society dissertations on the 

 metaphysical grounds and elements of our knowledge, and especially on the 

 foundations of the science of mechanics. As these speculations have not 

 failed to excite some attention, both here and elsewhere, I am tempted 

 to bring forward in the same manner some additional disquisitions of 

 the same kind. Indeed, the immediate occasion of the present memoir 

 is of itself an evidence that such subjects are not supposed to be without 

 their interest for the general reader; for I am led to the views and reason- 

 ings which I am now about to lay before the Society, by some remarks 

 in one of our most popular Reviews, {The Quarterly Review, Article on 

 the History and Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences. June 1841.) A 

 writer of singular acuteness and comprehensiveness of view has there made 

 remarks upon the doctrines which I had delivered in the " Philosophy of 

 the Inductive Sciences," which remarks appear to me in the highest degree 

 instructive and philosophical. I am not, however, going here to discuss 

 fully the doctrines contained in this critique. With respect to its general 

 tendency, I will only observe, that the author does not accept, in the 

 form in which I had given it, the account of the origin and ground of 

 necessary and universal truths. I had stated that our knowledge is de- 

 rived from Sensations and Ideas ; and that Ideas, which are the conditions of 

 perception, such as space, time, likeness, cause, make universal and necessary 

 knowledge possible ; whereas, if knowledge were derived from Sensation 

 alone, it could not have those characters. I have moreover enumerated a 



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