DOUBLE CAUSATION. 417 



difference, for good and for evil, in the natural 

 endowment of the offspring. 



So we must, from the strictly physical point of 

 view, answer, that the circumstances which deter- 

 mine at which out of all possible moments gener- 

 ation shall take place, depend on another set of 

 ulterior circumstances. And if the questioner perti- 

 naciously inquires again on what these circumstances 

 in their turn depend, he must be told, on another 

 set of circumstances, and these again on another, 

 and so on indefinitely, until we realize that we have 

 unwittingly launched forth into an infinite regress 

 of causes, which deludes us with a semblance of 

 explanation, but baffles all attempts to arrive at a 

 real and final answer. And then, if we have the 

 courage really to think out the question, and do not 

 give up the pursuit of truth faintheartedly as soon 

 as our imagination wearies and our attention is re- 

 laxed, the perception may begin to dawn upon us 

 that physical causation in the phenomenal sphere 

 is not, perhaps, the only, nor ultimately the most 

 satisfactory, mode of explaining a fact. 



§ 19. It Is quite possible for the same event to 

 be conditioned In two different ways, teleologlcally 

 and historically, by a reason as well as by what we 

 somewhat ambiguously call a cause. And It is only 

 human Inconsistency which sees any difficulty In 

 this. For It Is nothing but Inconsistency, to limit 

 teleologlcal causation by reasons to conscious human 

 action, and to refuse to extend It to all things, i.e., 

 to deny the complete parallelism of the processes 

 of nature and of our minds, while we yet assert 

 their partial parallelism by asserting the existence 

 of physical causation. For the assertion of the 

 reality of causation assumes this similarity of mind 



R. ofS. E E 



