350 PROFESSOR WHEWELL, ON CAUSE AND EFFECT. 



a different character in the different cases. Phenomenal time has a dif- 

 ferent nature and essence according to the kind of the changes which 

 we consider, and which gives us our sole phenomenal indication of 

 cause. 



I fear that I am traveling into matters too abstruse and metaphysical 

 for the occasion : but before I conclude, I will present one other aspect 

 of the subject. 



In stating the difficulty, I referred to cases of moral as well as physical 

 causation ; as when prudence produces prosperity, or when folly produces 

 ruin. It may be asked, whether we are here to apply the same ex- 

 planation ; — whether we are to assume a normal condition of human 

 existence, in which neither prudence nor folly are displayed, neither pros- 

 perity nor adversity produced ; — whether we are to conceive the progress 

 of such a state to measure the progress of time, and deviations from it 

 to denote causes of the kind mentioned. It may be asked further, whether, 

 if we do make this supposition, we can resolve the influence of such causes 

 as prudence or imprudence into instantaneous acts, which produce their 

 effects immediately : and which occupy time only by being separated by 

 intervals of the inactive normal moral condition. To this I must here 

 reply, that the discussion of such questions would carry me too far, and 

 would involve speculations not included within the acknowledged domain 

 of this Society, from which I therefore abstain. But I may say, before 

 quitting the subject, that I do not think the suppositions above suggested 

 are untenable ; and that in order to include moral causation under the maxims 

 of causation in general, we must necessarily make some such hypothesis. 

 The peculiarity of that kind of causation which the will and the character 

 exert, and which is exerted upon the will and the character, would make 

 this case far more complex and difficult than those already considered ; but, 

 at the same time, would offer us the means of explaining what may seem 

 harsh, in the above analogy. For instance, we should have to assume 

 such a maxim as this : that in moral causation, time is not to be measured 

 by the flow of mechanical or physiological events ; — not by the clock, or 

 by the pulse. Moral causation has its own clock, its own pulse, in the 

 progress of man's moral being ; and by this measure of time is the relation 

 of moral cause and effect to be defined. 



