CAUSATION 



chapter on the Test of Truth, this shows onl}'- 

 that it is possible for men to accept and defend 

 propositions which they cannot truly conceive. 

 It is easy to state the proposition that the Whole 

 is equal to its Part ; but it is none the less im- 

 possible to think the thought or no-thought, 

 which the proposition seeks to express.^ We 

 are under a mental compulsion to think of the 

 whole as greater than its part, and to think of 

 fire as a thing which burns, because the condi- 

 tions of our thinking have been prescribed by 

 that intercourse between our mind and environ- 

 ing agencies which we call experience. 



It is for the same reason that the mind is com- 

 pelled to believe in the necessity of causation, 

 and that the cultivated mind, which can realize 

 all the essential conditions of the case, is com- 

 pelled to believe in its universality. For what 

 is the belief in the necessity and universality of 

 causation ? It is the belief that every event must 

 be determined by some preceding event and 

 must itself determine some succeeding event. 

 And what is an event? It is a manifestation of 

 force. The falling of a stone, the union of two 

 gases, the blowing of a wind, the breaking of 



^ [Had Fiske's attention been later attracted to those recent 

 mathematical theories of Dedekind and Cantor which rest upon 

 the exact definition and clear conception of infinite assemblages 

 of objects in which the Whole is equal to the Part, he might 

 have modified this opinion.] 



217 



