502 HUME AND BROWN. 



Newton's Principia, Mr. Hume and several other 

 philosophers have insisted that there is no such 

 thing as a primary and efficient cause of power 

 in nature, distinct from the phenomena produced ; 

 that cause and effect are resolvable into the mere 

 antecedence and sequence of events ; or that 

 what is a cause in one case, is an effect in another. 

 Dr. Thomas Brown observes, that men have not 

 been able to discover the cause of gravitation, 

 cohesion, and chemical affinity, because there is 

 none except the inherent tendency of masses 

 and their constituent particles to approach one 

 another. But it might as well be said that there 

 is no other cause of steam power than the inhe- 

 rent tendency of water to expand into the 

 gaseous form, which is absurd, and contradicted 

 by all experience. Besides, if it be true that 

 caloric possesses the power of moving itself, and 

 of generating motion in other bodies, it must be 

 endowed with the essential attributes of a pri- 

 mary cause. And if when deprived of this prin- 

 ciple the particles of matter become passive and 

 motionless, it is clear that, without its agency, 

 they could have no power of approximating, or 

 of receding from each other.* 



* So far as it was the object of Brown to guard men against 

 the error of assuming the existence of some occult and imma- 

 terial cause of power in bodies, of which experience affords no 

 proof, he was clearly right; for it must be admitted that all 

 causes, whether material or spiritual, that exist in nature, must 

 be a portion of this divine work. Newton carried this doctrine 



