322 PROFESSOR WHEWELL, ON CAUSE AND EFFECT. 



cumulative with continued exertion of the cause, yet each elementary 

 or individual action is, to our apprehension, instanter accompanied with 

 its corresponding increment of momentum in the body moved. In all 

 dynamical reasonings no one has ever thought of interposing an instant 

 of time between the action and its resulting momentum ; nor does it 

 appear necessary." This is so evident, that it appears strange it should 

 have the air of novelty ; yet, so far as I am aware, the matter has never 

 before been put in the same point of view. But this being the case, 

 the question occurs, how it is that time seems to be employed in the 

 progress from cause to effect? How is it that the opinion of the effect 

 being subsequent to the cause has generally obtained? And to this the 

 Critic's answer is obvious : — it is so in cases of indirect or of cumulative 

 effect. If a ball A strikes another, B, and puts it in motion, and B strikes 

 C, and puts it in motion, A's impact may be considered as the cause, 

 though not the direct cause, of C's motion. Now time, namely the time of 

 l?'s motion after it is struck by A, and before it strikes C, intervenes 

 between A's impact and the beginning of Cs motion : that is, between 

 the cause and its effect. In this sense, the effect is subsequent to the 

 cause. Again, if a body be put in motion by a series of impulses acting 

 at finite intervals of time, all in the same direction, the motion at the 

 end of all these intervals is the effect of all the impulses, and exists 

 after they have all acted. It is the accumulated effect, and subsequent 

 to each separate action of the cause. But in this case, each impulse 

 produces its effect instantaneously, and the time is employed, not in the 

 transition from any cause to its effect, but in the intervals between the 

 action of the several causes, during which intervals the body goes on with 

 the velocity already communicated to it. In each impulse, force produces 

 motion : and the motion goes on till a new change takes place, by the 

 same kind of action. The force may be said, in the language employed 

 by the Critic, to be transformed into momentum ; and in the successive 

 impulses, successive portions of force are thus transformed ; while in the 

 intervening intervals, the force thus transformed into momentum is 

 carried by the body from one place to another, where a new change 

 awaits it. " The cause is absorbed and transformed into effect, and therein 

 treasured up," Hence, as the Writer says, " The time lost in cases of 



