KELATION OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 405 



between two or more things. All our experience of 

 nature proves : 1st, that matter is the seat of natural 

 causes, and of all forms of energy ; 2nd, that the same 

 cause, acting under the same circumstances, invariably 

 produces the same effect. For instance, the attractive force 

 of gravity causes all bodies to fall towards the earth in a 

 vacuum ; 3rd, a cause and its effect are two distinct things 

 and an effect is not necessarily similar to its cause ; 4th, 

 the same cause, acting under different circumstances, may 

 produce different and even opposite effects ; thus gravity 

 causes a stone to fall arid a cork to rise in water ; 5th, the 

 same effect may be produced by different causes, for 

 instance, heat may be produced by friction, an electric 

 current, &c. ; 6th, one cause, acting upon a single sub- 

 stance only, often (and probably nearly always) produces 

 many effects ; and 7th, every new combination of matter 

 or its forces must produce a new effect, and conversely 

 every new physical or chemical effect must be produced 

 by a new combination of matter or its forces. 



Every event has many surrounding antecedents, and 

 they may be divided into those which are separable from 

 the event, and those which are not ; and the cause of an 

 event is always to be found amongst the inseparable ones 

 only. In ordinary language, the most probable cause of 

 an event is, a priori, that circumstance which, in the 

 greatest number of cases, immediately precedes or accom- 

 panies it ; and we call a cause a * tendency ' when it is 

 very liable to be counteracted or diminished in its effect 

 by undetermined circumstances. 



The chief conditions of material causation are time 

 and space ; even the quickest phenomenon (such as thought) 

 occupies time, 1 and the most minute material action 



1 See pp. 55, 56. 



