CONCEPTS OF REASON &quot; AND &quot; CVf /.S &quot; 73 



and so endowed with one fixed tendency that in similar circumstances they 

 must always produce similar effects. And yet Dr. Mellone continues : 



&quot; The student will see on reflection that this principle is included in the 

 principle of universal causation ; for by cause is at least meant a condition 

 on which the effect always follows. If it sometimes followed and sometimes 

 did not, there would be no object in trying to discover it ; you would simply 

 not have a cause at all.&quot; 1 



No doubt we are free to define a cause as &quot; a condition [or group of con 

 ditions, agencies, influences] on which the effect always follows,&quot; and indeed 

 this is the narrower sense in which the term is usually understood when we 

 speak of the non-free causes that operate in external nature, the causes to 

 which the principle of uniformity properly applies. But it is certainly not 

 identical with the wider sense in which Dr. Mellone had rightly used the word 

 when formulating the self-evident law of universal causation, that &quot; every 

 event has a cause,&quot; for in this latter context the term &quot; cause &quot; included free 

 and even &quot; capricious &quot; causes. 



His final statement, that if the effect &quot; sometimes followed and sometimes 

 did not, . . . you would simply not have a cause at all,&quot; is quite too sweep 

 ing. What is true, of course, is this, that we can infer or generalize about the 

 operation, beyond experience, of any cause, only in so far as we are warranted 

 in assuming its operation to be regular, not capricious. But if Dr. Mellone s 

 statement were true, it would follow that man is not the cause of what he does 

 freely, and that no science of human conduct is possible. This is one unsatis 

 factory result of discarding the traditional notion of physical efficient causes as 

 agencies or powers inherent in physical phenomena and productive of physical 

 change, for the empiricist notion of such causes as &quot; invariable and uncon 

 ditional antecedents,&quot; i.e. phenomena or groups of phenomena &quot; sufficient [or 

 necessitating] and indispensable &quot; for the appearance of other [consequent] 

 phenomena. 



The &quot; efficiency &quot; of causation is quite a distinct concept from the 

 &quot; necessity &quot; of causation. Yet these are sometimes confounded. Professor 

 Welton, for example, criticizing Mill s account of causality, writes 2 that the 

 latter &quot; finds cause in a set of conditions whose existence necessitates that of 

 the effect,&quot; and he adds immediately that &quot; greater efficiency than this no one 

 would wish to establish &quot;. But efficiency is not necessity. A cause may be 

 efficient and yet not be necessitating, but free. In fact it is from our con- 



1 MELLONE, ibid., p. 281. Mr. JOSEPH (op. cit., pp. 370 sqq.) adopts the same 

 view : &quot; There is no need then to distinguish the law of causation from the 

 uniformity of nature ; for bating the possible exception of the causality of the 

 human will a cause which does not act uniformly is no cause at all ; and if we are 

 looking for the presuppositions of inductive inference it is plain that the only con 

 nexions whose existence would justify such inference are uniform connexions&quot; 

 (P- 376)- 



2 Logic, ii., p. 19. Mr. Joseph makes a similar mistake about the verb produce : 

 &quot; to say that anything may produce anything is to empty the verb produce of all 

 its meaning. For the causal relation is a necessary relation, such that if you have 

 one thing you must have another. To add that it does not matter what the other 

 is, destroys the force of the must &quot; (p. 374). No doubt it destroys the force of the 

 &quot;must&quot;; but surely &quot;must&quot; is different from &quot;produce,&quot; and this again from 

 &quot; necessarily produce &quot;. 



