COSMIC PHILOSOPHY 



tecedent, which may be termed Phenomenal 

 Cause. 



This explanation bears the distinctive marks 

 of a metaphysical hypothesis, as enumerated in 

 the preceding chapter. To the elements of 

 sequence, invariableness and unconditionalness 

 embraced in the scientific explanation, it super- 

 adds an occulta vis^ an element which is not 

 given in the phenomenon. No one pretends 

 that we can actually cognize this occulta vis. 

 The deepest analysis of our experience of the 

 act of causation will yield no such element. 

 Viewed under its subjective aspect, our know- 

 ledge of causation amounts simply to this, — 

 that an experience of certain invariable sequences 

 among phenomena has wrought in us a set of 

 corresponding indissolubly coherent sequences 

 among our states of consciousness ; so that 

 whenever the state of consciousness answering 

 to the cause arises, the state of consciousness 

 answering to the effect inevitably follows. But 

 answering to the occulta vis we have no state 

 of consciousness whatever. 



Moreover the hypothesis of an occulta viSy 

 like so many other metaphysical hypotheses, 

 straightway lands us in an impossibility of 

 thought. The proposition that the cause con- 

 strains the effect to follow, is an unthinkable 

 proposition ; since it requires us to conceive the 

 action of matter upon matter, which, as we saw 



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