LAW OF CAUSATION. 407 



spoken of, so that if it were also reckoned as part of 

 the cause, the seeming incongruity would arise of its 

 being supposed to cause itself. In the instance which 

 we have already had, of falling bodies, the question was 

 thus put : What is the cause which makes a stone 

 fall? and if the answer had been "the stone itself,'* 

 the expression would have been in apparent contra- 

 diction to the meaning of the word cause. The stone, 

 therefore, is conceived as the patient, and the earth 

 (or, according to the common and most unphiloso- 

 phical practice, some occult quality of the earth) is 

 represented as the agent, or cause. But that there is 

 nothing fundamental in the distinction may be seen 

 from this, that if We do but alter the mere wording of 

 the question, and express it thus, What is the cause 

 which produces vertical motion towards the earth? 

 we might now, without any incongruity, speak of the 

 stone or other heavy body as the agent, which, by 

 virtue of its own laws or properties, commences 

 moving towards the earth ; although, to save the esta- 

 blished doctrine of the inactivity of matter, men 

 usually prefer here also to ascribe the effect to an 

 occult quality, and say that the cause is not the stone 

 itself, but the weight or gravitation of the stone. 



Those who have contended for a radical distinc- 

 tion between agent and patient, have generally con- 

 ceived the agent as that which causes some state of, 

 or some change in the state of, another object which is 

 called the patient. But a little reflection will show 

 that the license we assume of speaking of phenomena 

 as states of the various objects which take part in 

 them, (an artifice of which so much use has been 

 made by some philosophers, Brown in particular, for 

 the apparent explanation of phenomena,) is simply a 

 sort of logical fiction, useful sometimes as one among 



