LAW OF CAUSATION. 415 



of the conditions which produced an effect is necessary 

 to the continuance of the effect. 



As to the ulterior question, whether it is strictly 

 necessary that the cause, or assemblage of conditions, 

 should precede, by ever so short an instant, the pro- 

 duction of the effect, (a question raised and argued 

 with much ingenuity by a writer from whom we have 

 quoted*,) we think the inquiry an unimportant one. 

 There certainly are cases in which the effect follows 

 without any interval perceptible to our faculties ; and 

 when there is an interval we cannot tell by how many 

 intermediate links imperceptible to us that interval may 

 really be filled up. But even granting that an effect 

 may commence simultaneously with its cause, the view 

 I have taken of causation is in no way practically affected. 

 Whether the cause and its effect be necessarily suc- 

 cessive or not, causation is still the law of the succes- 

 sion of phenomena. Everything which begins to 

 exist must have a cause ; what does not begin to exist 

 does not need a cause ; what causation has to account 

 for is the origin of phenomena, and all the successions 

 of phenomena must be resolvable into causation. 

 These are the axioms of our doctrine. If these be 

 granted, we can afford, though T see no necessity 

 for doing so, to drop the words antecedent and con- 

 sequent as applied to cause and effect. I have no 

 objection to define a cause, the assemblage of pheno- 

 mena, which occurring, some other phenomenon inva- 

 riably commences, or has its origin. Whether the 

 effect coincides in point of time with, or immediately 

 follows, the hindmost of its conditions, is immaterial. 

 At all events it does not precede it ; and when we are 

 in doubt, between two coexistent phenomena, which 



* The reviewer of Mr. Whewell in the Quarterly Review. 



