128 THE GRAMMAR OF SCIENCE 



because it was buried in the individuality of another 

 person. We have further noticed that as will and motion 

 are more carefully analysed, the conception that will 

 originates motion ceases to have any consistency. But 

 with will as first cause falls to the ground any possible 

 experience of first causes on our part. We can no longer 

 infer even the possibility of the existence of first causes, 

 for there is nothing like them in our experience, and we 

 cannot by the second canon of logical inference (p. 60) 

 pass from the known to something totally unlike it in the 

 unknown. Science knows nothing of first causes. They 

 cannot, as Stanley Jevons has supposed,^ be inferred from 

 any branch of scientific investigation, and where we see 

 them asserted we may be quite sure they mark a permanent 

 or temporary limit to knowledge. We are either inferring 

 something in the beyond of sense-impression, where know- 

 ledge and inference are meaningless words, or we are 

 implying ignorance within the sphere of knowledge,^ in 

 which case it is more honest to say : " Here, for the 

 present, our ignorance begins," than, " Here is a first cause." 



S 8. — Cause and Effect as the Routine of Experience 



We are now in a position, I think, to appreciate the 

 scientific value of the word cause. Scientifically, cause, 

 as originating or enforcing a particular sequence of per- 

 ceptions, is meaningless — we have no experience of any- 

 thing which originates or enforces something else. Cause, 

 however, used to mark a stage in a routine, is a clear and 



1 In the remarkably unscientific chapter entitled " Reflections on the 

 Results and Limits of Scientific Method," with which his, in so many respects, 

 excellent Principles of Science concludes. 



2 The latter alternative — the temporary limit in ignorance — has been the 

 chief source of "first causes." So long as the routine of history cannot be 

 traced hack more than a few centuries, we find no difficulty in asserting that 

 the world began 6000 years ago. So long as we do not grasp the evolution 

 of life from its most primitive types, we postulate a first cause creating each 

 type (Paley). So long as we do not observe the various grades of animal 

 intelligence and consciousness, we suppose a soul implanted in every human 

 being at birth. So long as we do not see that the mutual motion of two 

 atoms is as mysterious as the life changes in a cell, we postulate a total differ- 

 ence between the two kinds of motion and a separate creation of life. 



