LAW, CAUSE 353 



because I felt it.' ' 1 Effect arises out of cause because the 

 future is immanent in the present. "The future is immanent 

 in the present by reason of the fact that the present bears in 

 its own essence the relationships which it will have to the 

 future. It thereby includes in its essence the necessities to 

 which the future must conform. The future is there in the 

 present, as a general fact belonging to the nature of things. 

 It is also there with such general determinations as it lies in 

 the nature of the particular present to impose on the partic- 

 ular future which must succeed it. All of this belongs to the 

 essence of the present, and constitutes the future, as thus 

 determined, an object for prehension in the subjective 

 immediacy of the present." 2 



If Whitehead's statement is obscure, that of one of his 

 followers is unambiguous: "In examining my experiences I 

 discover cases of causal efficacy: for example, I may be 

 angry at one moment and calmer at the next. I not only 

 perceive that the moment of calm follows the moment of 

 anger, but I perceive the moment of calm rise out of the 

 moment of anger. In the very moment of calm I perceive 

 the influences of the previous feeling. The experience not 

 only follows but inherits the emotional tones of past experi- 

 ence. In general, I perceive genuine causal influence when I 

 become conscious of the relations of emotions and feelings. 

 Regarding each feeling or emotion as an event, there is here 

 an indubitable experience of the causal relation of events." 3 



The decision between these sharply opposed points of 

 view is a difficult one. From one point of view the issue is 

 irrelevant to science. As will be seen later, regardless of 

 what may be the case at the empirical level, at the scientific 

 level nothing like causal efficacy seems to play an important 

 part; for science a purely descriptive view is adequate. But 

 from another point of view the issue is relevant. Though 

 science does not require the notion of causal efficacy it does 



1 Process and Reality (New York: Macmillan, 1929), pp. 265-266. 



2 Adventures of Ideas (New York: Macmillan, 1933), p. 250. 



3 Mortimer Taube, Causation, Freedom, and Determinism (London: Allen and 

 Unwin, 1936), p. 155. 



