406 ACTUAL WORKING IN ORIGINAL .RESEARCH. 



requires space. The most characteristic signs of material 

 causation are inseparable connection and continuity in 

 time and space. As even the quickest phenomena occupy 

 time, effects must follow their causes ; an immediate 

 cause also acts only upon that which is contiguous to it 

 in space. 



The cause of a physical or chemical phenomenon is 

 usually defined as that condition, or group of conditions or 

 circumstances which, so far as our experience has extended, 

 always precedes the effect, and in the absence of which the 

 effect does not occur ; i.e., the cause of a thing is the entire 

 collection of its necessary conditions. According to this 

 definition, the cause of an existing thing is some previously 

 existing thing, the cause of energy is pre-existing energy, 

 and the causes of the physical and chemical conditions of 

 the entire universe at one moment are the whole of its 

 conditions at the previous moment, and so on backwards 

 through all time. According to this view, all the future 

 conditions of the universe are implicitly contained in those 

 of the present, while chains of causes from place to place 

 extend through all existing space. Reasons and inferences 

 are not causes or effects, but only the ideas which repre- 

 sent them. 



All causes are conditions, and the conditions of a 

 material phenomenon are divided into static, or those 

 in which motion does not occur, and dynamic, or those 

 involving motion. The characteristics of a dynamic cause 

 or condition are not only inseparable connection, sequence 

 in time, and continuity in space, but also expenditure of 

 energy. According to the law of conservation of energy, 

 no dynamic physical or chemical phenomenon can occur 

 without a consumption of power. And not only is there a 

 consumption of power, but a redistribution of it, often a 

 tranference of it from the cause to its effect. 



