CHAPTER Vt 



CAUSATION. 



In the course of our examination of the Kantian doctrine of 

 Necessary Truths, the origin and justification of our belief in 

 the necessity of causation was incidentally discussed. We 

 found that this belief can be explained and defended only as 

 the product of a mental limitation due to absolute uniformity 

 of experience. We believe that, under the requisite conditions 

 fire burned before we were born, that it now burns in regions 

 to which we have never had access, and that it will continue 

 to burn as long as the world lasts, simply because we are in- 

 capable of forming conceptions of which the materials are 

 not supplied by experience, and because experience has never 

 presented to our consciousness an instance of fire which, 

 under the requisite conditions for burning, did not burn. Or, 

 in other words, we believe that in the absence of preventive 

 conditions, fire must always and everywhere burn, because 

 our concept of fire is the concept of a thing which burns, and 

 this concept has been formed exclusively by our experience 

 of fire. You may, like a mediaeval sorcerer, envelope your 

 hand in a soapy substance which will, for a few moments, 

 check oxidation of the epidermis ; or you may insert your 

 hand in the blaze and withdraw it again so quickly that, 

 since chemical action takes time, oxidation will not have a 



