LAW OF CAUSATION, 



395 



sisteiicy of the Greeks in this error, shows that their minds 

 were in a very different state : they were able to derive from 

 the assimilation of physical facts to other physical facts, the 

 kind of mental satisfaction which we connect with the word 

 explanation, and which the reviewer would have us think can 

 only be found in referring phenomena to a will. When Thales 

 and Hippo held that moisture was the universal cause, and 

 external element, of which all other things were but the infi- 

 nitely various sensible manifestations ; when Anaximenes 

 predicated the same thing of air, Pythagoras of numbers, and 

 the like, they all thought that they had found a real expla- 

 nation ; and were content to rest in this explanation as 

 ultimate. The ordinary sequences of the external universe 

 appeared to them, no less than to their critic, to be incon- 

 ceivable without the supposition of some universal agency to 

 connect the antecedents with the consequents ; but they did 

 not think that Volition, exerted by minds, was the only agency 

 which fulfilled this requirement. Moisture, or air, or numbers, 

 carried to their minds a precisely similar impression of making 

 intelligible what was otherwise inconceivable, and gave the 

 same full satisfaction to the demands of their conceptive 

 faculty. 



It was not the Greeks alone, who " wanted to see some 

 reason why the physical antecedent should produce this par- 

 ticular consequent," some connexion "which would per se 

 carry some presumption to their own mind." Among modern 

 philosophers, Leibnitz laid it down as a self-evident principle 

 that all physical causes without exception must contain in 

 their own nature something which makes it intelligible that 

 they should be able to produce the effects which they do 

 produce. Far from admitting Volition as the only kind of 

 cause which carried internal evidence of its own power, and as 

 the real bond of connexion between physical antecedents and 

 their consequents, he demanded some naturally and per se 

 efficient physical antecedent as the bond of connexion between 

 Volition itself and its effects. He distinctly refused to admit 

 the will of God as a sufficient explanation of anything except 

 miracles; and insisted upon finding something that would 



