CONTENT AND VALIDITY OF THE CAUSAL LAW 387 



law of the conservation of energy, rightly interpreted, and in part 

 epistemological considerations. Still it is not advisable to burden 

 methodological study, for instance, the theory of induction, with 

 these remote problems; and on that account it is better for our 

 present investigation to subordinate the psychological interdepend- 

 ences to the causal ones in the narrower sense. 



The final consequence, too, that forces itself upon our attention 

 is close at hand in the preceding discussion. The tradition prevailing 

 since Hume, together with its inherent opposition to the inter- 

 pretation of causal connection given by the concept philosophy, 

 permitted us to make the uniform sequences of events the basis of 

 our discussion. In so doing, however, our attention had to be called 

 repeatedly to one reservation. In fact, only a moment ago, in allud- 

 ing to the psychological interdependences, we had to emphasize 

 the uniform sequence. Elsewhere the arguments depended upon 

 the uniformity that characterizes this sequence; and rightly, for the 

 reduction of the causal relation to the fundamental relation of the 

 sequence of events is merely a convenient one and not the only pos- 

 sible one. As soon as we regard the causal connection, along with 

 the opposed and equal reaction, as an interconnection, then cause 

 and effect become, as a matter of principle, simultaneous. The sep- 

 aration of interaction from causation is not justifiable. 



In other ways also we can so transform every causal relation 

 that cause and effect must be regarded as simultaneous. Every 

 stage, for instance, of the warming of a stone by the heat of the 

 sun, or of the treaty conferences of two states, presents an effect 

 that is simultaneous with the totality of the acting causes. The 

 analysis of a cause that was at first grasped as a whole into the 

 multiplicity of its constituent causes and the comprehension of 

 the constituent causes into a whole, which then presents itself as 

 the effect, is a necessary condition of such a type of investigation. 

 This conception, which is present already in Hobbes, but especially 

 in Herbart's "method of relations," deserves preference always 

 where the purpose in view is not the shortest possible argumentation 

 but the most exact analysis. 



If we turn our attention to this way of viewing the problem, 

 not, however, in the form of Herbart's speculative method, we 

 shall find that the results which we have gained will in no respect be 

 altered. We do, however, get a view beyond. From it we can find 

 the way to subordinate not only the uniform sequence of events, 

 but also the persistent characteristics and states with their mutual 

 relations, under the extended causal law. In so doing, we do not 

 fall back again into the intellectual world of the concept philosophy. 

 We come only to regard the persisting coexistences in the physical 

 field, the bodies, in the psychical, the subjects of consciousness as 



