72 THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



the latter assertion the self-evident principle of causality : 

 &quot; Every event necessarily has a cause &quot; is not to be confounded 

 with this other altogether different assertion, that &quot; Every event 

 has a necessary cause &quot;. This latter statement is not evident ; 

 nay, it is not even true. Effects produced in the universe by the 

 free activity of man have, manifestly, not necessary but free causes. 



Nevertheless, there are many modern writers on inductive logic, who in 

 sinuateperhaps unconsciously in their whole doctrine of causality that the 

 only concept of cause which is at all intelligible or amenable to scientific treat 

 ment is the concept of a necessary or necessitating cause. Thus, Dr. Mellone 

 refers to the self-evident principle of causality under the title of the Law of 

 Universal Causation, and rightly remarks that it refers to &quot; cause &quot; in the 

 widest sense : Every event must have some sort of cause, either a &quot; necessary &quot; 

 (or &quot; uniformly acting &quot;) cause, or a &quot; capricious &quot; cause, or he might add 

 a cause which, though free, is not &quot; capricious,&quot; and about the operation of 

 which we can consequently generalize with some degree of safety. 



&quot; This principle [he writes] may be shown to be implied in all thinking. 

 Even children and the lower races of men, though they do not think of it, 

 think according to it. If the savage were content to leave any event unex 

 plained, he would not imagine that all events are controlled by spirits, 

 malevolent or benevolent. It is in fact IMPOSSIBLE TO THINK OF AN EVENT 

 WITHOUT REFERRING IT TO A CAUSE, known or unknown. Even if we had 

 a state of affairs where the past gave scarcely any assurance as to the future, 

 our way of conceiving it would not be contrary to the principle of the universality 

 of causation. We should think that some capricious power had added itself 

 to the conditions, turning them now this way and now that.&quot; J 



All that is quite true ; for the word &quot; cause &quot; is clearly taken to include 

 conditions, agencies, influences, and powers, of whatsoever kind, capricious and 

 free no less than regular and necessary : on no other supposition indeed would 

 the statement that &quot; every event has a cause &quot; be a self-evident axiom. 



But Dr. Mellone goes on immediately to say that the principle of the 

 Uniformity of Nature, or &quot; Uniformity of Causation&quot; as he prefers to call 

 it that &quot; the same cause must have the same effect &quot;a principle which will 

 be shown to refer properly only to necessitating causes (223) is included in 

 the previous principle of the universality of causation, that &quot; every event has a 

 cause &quot;. Surely this is not so. The universality of the law of causation 

 throughout all contingent being, does not in itself imply that this causality is 

 necessarily uniform. The self-evident principle of causality that nothing 

 can happen without a cause, ex nihilo nihil fit understands &quot; cause &quot; in the 

 widest conceivable sense of any real principle, whether free or mechanical, 

 capricious or regular, which brings about the event : it has nothing to do with 

 the question of repetition or regularity at all. Whereas Uniformity of Causa 

 tion, even understood in the hypothetical sense in which Dr. Mellone takes it,&quot; 

 bears exclusively upon regularity of repetition, and is self-evident only in re 

 gard to non-free, or necessary causes, which are by nature so constituted 



1 MELLONE, Introductory Text-book of Logic, pp. 280-1. 

 *ibid., p. 282. 



