86 PART II. SOME IMPORTANT METHODOLOGICAL TERMS. 



and masses; of chemical, crystalline, vital, and moral action; 

 of the origin of States and civilisations ; of the development of 

 the arts and the appreciation of the beautiful; and we cannot 

 rest satisfied until the causes are made plain to us. At the 

 same time our insight into causes must be exact and relatively 

 exhaustive, if it is to possess scientific validity. Any one may 

 be convinced that he feels hot because he closely faces a coal 

 fire fiercely burning in an open grate, or because he is exposed 

 to the scorching rays of a tropical sun; but such a legitimate 

 conviction leaves him in nearly complete ignorance of his own 

 physical being and of the nature of the coal fire, the sun, or 

 the heat. So, too, nations may empirically discover a tolerably 

 satisfactory diet, or physicians may prescribe dietaries, etc., 

 having decidedly beneficial effects; but the unveiling of the 

 actual causes has revolutionary consequences both in practice 

 and theory. It is only, therefore, when we know precisely and 

 circumstantially the nature of the cause and of the effect of a 

 phenomenon, e.g., the relation of ruminating to cloven hoofs, 

 that we are confronted by a truth which has scientific signi- 

 ficance. On this account, the causal aspect is to be regarded 

 as one of a number of indispensable aspects to be examined 

 in any general enquiry. 



27. (b) The Causal View of Nature. The causal view of 

 nature conceives the world from the standpoint of time and 

 virtually disregards all other phases. We see, in this panorama, 

 one phenomenon producing a change in another ad indefinitum. 

 This is a possible and an important standpoint; but it cannot 

 be said to be the only one possible or of importance. Such a 

 conception involves that we think of facts as consisting of in- 

 variable and necessary antecedents and consequents without 

 defining the antecedents and consequents inquiring, say, into 

 the cause of heat without determining the nature of heat. It 

 misses, that is, the reverse side, the present constitution of the 

 objects which are changing or are to be changed, unless the 

 world is dissolved into featureless forces, whiqh Mill does not 

 contemplate, and which is a barren conception from the angle 

 of the investigator of to-day. The dynamic view of nature 

 must be therefore supplemented by a static view of nature. 1 



28. (c) Static Aspects. Since, as we have just seen, science 

 needs be first conversant to a certain degree about phenomena 

 in their quasi-static aspects, before it becomes curious con- 



1 A full discussion of the implications of the term Cause, from the causal- 

 istic standpoint, will be found in Mill. According to him "the invariable 

 [or rather "unconditional invariable"] antecedent is termed the cause; the 

 invariable consequent, the effect" (Logic, bk. 3, ch. 5, 2); "the notion of 

 Cause" is "the root of the whole theory of Induction" (ibid.); and "to 

 ascertain what are the laws of causation which exist in nature; to determine 

 the effect of every cause, and the causes of all effects, is the main business 

 of Induction; and to point out how this is done is the chief object of In- 

 ductive Logic". (Logic, bk. 3, ch. 6, 3.) 



