Meaning of the Category of Causation 289 



as causation and mechanism, are really capable of a similar 

 evaluation as that given to teleology. This possibility may 

 now be put in a little stronger light. 



It is evident, when we come to think of it, that all 

 organization in the world must rest ultimately on the same 

 basis ; and the recognition of this is the strength of thor- 

 oughgoing naturalism and of absolute idealism alike. The 

 justification of the view is to be made out, it seems to me, 

 by detailed investigation of the genetic development of 

 the categories. The way the child reaches his notion of 

 causation, for example, or that of personality, is evidence 

 of the way we are to consider the great corresponding 

 race categories of thought to have been reached ; and the 

 category of causation is, equally with that of personality 

 or that of design, a category of organization. The reason 

 that causation is considered a cast-iron thing, implicit 

 in nature in the form of ' conservation of energy,' is 

 that in the growth of the rubrics of thought certain great 

 differentiations have been made in experience according 

 to observed aspects of behaviour ; and those events which 

 exhibit the more definite, invariable aspects of behaviour 

 have been put aside by themselves ; not of course by a 

 conscious convention of man's, but by the conventions of 

 the organism working under the very method which we 

 come — when we make it consciously conventional — to 

 call this very category of organization. What is conserva- 

 tion but a kind of organization looked at retrospectively 

 and conventionally .? Does it not hold simply because my 

 organism has made the convention that only that class of 

 experiences which are * objective ' and regular and habitual 

 to me shall be treated together, and so shall give rise to 

 such a regular mental construction on my part } 



