PROFESSOR WHEWELL, ON CAUSE AND EFFECT. 321 



than by saying, that in the one case it proceeds according to the Idea of 

 Space, in another according to the Idea of Mechanical Cause; and the 

 like phraseology may be employed for all the other cases. 



This then being understood, my present object is to consider some 

 very remarkable, and, as appears to me, novel views of the Idea of 

 Cause which the Reviewer propounds. And these may be best brought 

 under our discussion by considering them as an attempt to solve the 

 question, Whether, according to our fundamental apprehensions of the 

 relation of Cause and Effect, effect follows cause in the order of time, 

 or is simultaneous with it. 



At first sight, this question may seem to be completely decided by 

 our fundamental convictions respecting cause and effect, and by the axioms 

 which have been propounded by almost all writers, and have obtained 

 universal currency among reasoners on this subject. That the cause must 

 precede the effect, — that the effect must follow the cause, — are, it might 

 seem, self-evident truths, assumed and assented to by all persons in all reason- 

 ings in which those notions occur. Such a doctrine is commonly asserted in 

 general terms, and seems to be verified in all the applications of the idea 

 of cause. A heavy body produces motion by its weight; the motion 

 produced is subsequent in time to the pressure which the weight exerts. 

 In a machine, bodies push or strike each other, and so produce a series 

 of motions ; each motion, in this case, is the result of the motions and 

 configurations which have preceded it. The whole series of such motions 

 employs time; and this time is filled up and measured by the series 

 of causes and effects, the effects being, in their turn, causes of other 

 effects. This is the common mode of apprehending the universal course 

 of events, in which the chain of causation, and the progress of time, are 

 contemplated as each the necessary condition and accompaniment of 

 the other. 



But this, the Critic remarks, is not true in direct causation. " If the 

 antecedence and consequence in question be understood as the interpo- 

 sition of an interval of time, however small, between the action of the 

 cause and the production of the effect, we regard it as inadmissible. 

 In the production of motion by force, for instance, though the effect be 



