A DIFFICULTY OF CAUSATION. 46 1 



something which in its turn is caused by something else, 

 and so on indefinitely. For the necessity which each cause 

 transmits to its successor is a hypothetical one, and de- 

 pends on the assumption that the initial cause had origin- 

 ally any necessity to transmit. But if none of the supposed 

 causes is a cause in its own right, if they are all effects of 

 anterior causes, then their necessity is wholly hypothetical, 

 dependent on a condition which is never fulfilled. Either, 

 therefore, determinism must admit that the regress of 

 causation is infinite, and that a necessity infinitely remote 

 is no necessity at all, or it must assume a First Cause. 



But concerning the First Cause the same question must 

 be raised. Was the First Cause, which determined all else, 

 itself determined by motives or not? If it was not, then 

 determinism ends in indeterminism ; if it was, then these 

 motives are the real cause of the world, for they alone ex- 

 plain why the First Cause generated the world at one time 

 and not at another. 



And these motives in their turn must have been pro- 

 voked by something within the First Cause, or without it, 

 or by nothing at all. If by nothing at all, the indetermin- 

 ism of motives uncaused and unprovoked stands confessed. 

 If the motives were provoked by something without it, 

 this constitutes a First Cause higher than the First Cause, 

 which is absurd ; if by something within it, a change must 

 have taken place in the First Cause. 



This change again must have been either caused by 

 something or by nothing. If the former, we have a re- 

 currence of the infinite regress ; if the latter, of indeter- 

 minism. And the result remains the same whether we 

 say that the First Cause was determined by nothing or 

 by itself If by nothing, the indeterminism is once more 

 avowed ; if by itself, we require to know why its nature 

 determined it to be the First Cause at the time it was 

 and not before. 



In short, whatever excursions into the realms of unmiti- 

 gated nonsense determinism may undertake in its retreat, 

 it can find no resting place until it reaches indeterminism. 

 And one may naturally inquire why it was necessary to 

 lead us so far afield. Why is indeterminism a worse 

 account of what happens when it is avovved frankly at 



