LAW OF CAUSATION. 249 



sorts of effects quite heterogeneous, but which go on simultaneously one 

 witli another ; provided, of course, that all other conditions requisite for 

 each of them also exist. Thus, the sun produces the celestial motions ; it 

 produces daylight, and it produces heat. The earth causes the fall of heavy 

 bodies, and it also, in its capacity of a great magnet, causes the phenomena 

 of the magnetic needle. A crystal of galena causes the sensations of hard- 

 ness, of Aveight, of cubical form, of gray color, and many others between 

 which we can trace no interdependence. The purpose to which the phrase- 

 ology of Properties and Powers is specially adapted, is the expression of 

 this sort of cases. When the same phenomenon is followed (either sub- 

 ject or not to the presence of other conditions) by effects of different and 

 dissimilar ordei's, it is usual to say that each different sort of effect is pro- 

 duced by a different property of the cause. Thus we distinguish the at- 

 tractive or gravitative property of the earth, and its magnetic property : 

 the gravitative, luminiferous, and calorific properties of the sun : the color, 

 shape, weight, and hardness of a crystal. These are mere phrases, which 

 explain nothing, and add nothing to our knowledge of the subject ; but, 

 considered as abstract names denoting the connection between the differ- 

 ent effects produced and the object which produces them, they are a very 

 powerful instrument of abridgment, and of that acceleration of the proc- 

 ess of thought which abridgment accomplishes. 



This class of considerations leads to a conception which we shall find to 

 be of great importance, that of a Permanent Cause, or original natural 

 agent. There exist in nature a number of permanent causes, which have 

 subsisted ever since the human race has been in existence, and for an in- 

 definite and probably an enormous length of time previous. The sun, the 

 earth, and planets, with their various constituents, air, water, and other dis- 

 tinguishable substances, whether simple or compound, of which nature is 

 made up, are such Permanent Causes. These have existed, and the effects 

 or consequences which they were fitted to produce have taken place (as 

 often as the other conditions of the production met), from the very begin- 

 ning of our experience. But we can give no account of the origin of the 

 Permanent Causes themselves. Why these particular natural agents ex- 

 isted oi-iginally and no others, or why they are commingled in such and 

 such proportions, and distributed in such and such a manner throughout 

 space, is a question we can not answer. More than this : we can discover 

 nothing regular in the distribution itself; we can reduce it to no uniformi- 

 ty, to no law. There are no means by which, from the distribution of these 

 causes or agents in one part of space, we could conjecture whether a simi- 

 lar distribution prevails in another. The co-existence, therefore, of Prime- 

 val Causes ranks, to us, among merely casual concurrences : and all those 

 sequences or co-existences among the effects of several such causes, which, 

 though invariable while those causes co-exist, Avould, if the co-existence ter- 

 minated, terminate along with it, we do not class as cases of causation, or 

 laws of nature : we can only calculate on finding these sequences or co-ex- 

 istences where we know by direct evidence, that the natural agents on the 

 properties of which they ultimately depend, are distributed in the requisite 

 manner. These Permanent Causes are not always objects ; they are some- 

 times events, that is to say, periodical cycles of events, that being the only 

 mode in which events can possess the property of permanence. Not only, 

 for instance, is the earth itself a permanent cause, or primitive natural 

 agent, but the earth's rotation is so too : it is a cause which has produced, 

 from the earliest period (by the aid of other necessary conditions), the sue- 



