8o THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC 



scientific concept of &quot; cause &quot; as the antecedent which is not 

 only always followed by the consequent in question, but which 

 is the only antecedent so followed : not only the sufficient, but 

 the indispensable, antecedent of that consequent. 1 



220. CAUSALITY, SEQUENCE IN TIME AND CONTIGUITY IN 

 SPACE. Mill s account is intelligible so far as it goes. He has, 

 of course, never succeeded in assigning any ultimate rational ex 

 planation of the fact that natural causes and their .effects are 

 connected in the uniform, unchanging, &quot; invariable &quot; manner in 

 dicated by him. Apart from this defect, however, which is due 

 to his empiricist theory of knowledge, there is the erroneous im 

 plication that time sequence is essential to causality, that two 

 phenomena cannot be related as cause and effect unless they 

 succeed each other in time. 



Now, efficient physical causality does not necessarily imply 

 that the cause must totally precede the effect in time. Even 

 popular thought, which seizes on one prominent, partial element 

 in the total cause often a remote element and on a similar 

 element in the effect, does not regard &quot; cause &quot; and &quot; effect &quot; as 

 separate, successive events, but only as distinct : the immediate 

 cause and the immediate effect are always thought of as con 

 nected. The link connecting them the causation, action, change, 

 or process, as it is variously called goes on in time and occupies 

 time. The immediate cause, therefore, cannot entirely precede, 

 but must also coexist with, the immediate effect. The producing 

 cause and the produced effect must be simultaneous, for they are 



1 C/. JOSEPH, op. cit., pp. 64, 65 &quot; When we call one thing [i.e. kind of thing] 

 the cause of another, the real relation between them is not always the same ... we 

 say that molecular motion is the cause of heat, that the heat of the sun is the cause 

 of growth, that starvation is sometimes the cause of death, that jealousy is a fre 

 quent cause of crime. We should in the first case maintain that the cause and 

 effect are reciprocally necessary ; no heat without molecular motion and no molecular 

 motio^ without heat. In the second the effect cannot exist without the cause, 

 but the cause may exist without the effect; for the sun shines on the moon but 

 nothing grows there. In the third, the cause cannot exist without the effect, for 

 starvation must produce death, but the effect may exist without the cause, since 

 death need not have been produced by starvation. In the fourth case we can 

 have the cause without the effect, and also the effect without the cause ; for jealousy 

 may exist without producing crime, and crime may occur without the motive of 

 jealousy. It is plain, then, that we do not always mean the same thing by our 

 words, when we say that two things are related as cause and effect ; and any one 

 who would classify and name the various modes in which two things maybe causally 

 related would do a great service to clear thinking.&quot; And the author adds : &quot; that is 

 the sort of service that Aristotle attempted in distinguishing the heads of predic- 

 ables &quot;. C/. also op. cit., c. xxii. 



