LAW OF CAUSATION. 201 



preventing the effects of other causes by virtue (for the most part) of 

 the same laws, according to which they produce their own,* enables 

 us, by establishing the general axiom that all causes are liable to be 

 counteracted in their effects by one another, to dispense with the con- 

 sideration of negative conditions entirely, and limit the notion of cause 

 to the assemblage of the positive conditions of the phenomenon : one 

 negative condition invariably understood, and the same in all instances 

 (namely, the absence of all counteracting causes) being sufficient, along 

 with the sum of the positive conditions, to make up the whole set of 

 circumstances upon which the phenomenon is dependent. 



§ 4. Among the positive conditions, as we have seen that there are 

 some to which, in common parlance, the term cause is more readily 

 and frequently awarded, so there are others to which it is, in ordinary 

 circumstances, refused. In most cases of causation a distinction is 

 commonly dra\vn between somethhig which acts, and some other thing 

 which is acted upon, between an agent and a patient. Both of these, 

 it would be universally allowed, are conditions of the phenomenon ; 

 but it would be thought absurd to call the latter the cause, that title 

 being reserved for the former. The distinction, however, vanishes on 

 examination, or rather is found to be only verbal ; arising from an in- 

 cident of mere expression, namely, that the object said to be acted upon., 

 and which is considered as the scene in which the effect takes place, is 

 commonly included ia the phrase by which the effect is spoken of, so 

 that if it were also reckoned as part of the cause, the seeming incon- 

 gruity would arise of its being supposed to cause itself. In the in- 

 stance which we have already had, of falling bodies, the question was 

 thus put : — What is the cause which makes a stone fall 1 and if the 

 answer had been "the stone itself," the expression would have been 

 in apparent contradiction to the meaning of the word cause. The 

 stone, therefore, is conceived as the patient, and the earth (or, accord- 

 ing to the common and most unphilosophical practice, some occult 

 quality of the earth) is represented as the agent, or cause. But that 

 there is nothing fundamental in the distinction may be seen from this, 

 that if we do but alter the mere wording of the question, and express 

 it thus, What is the cause which produces vertical motion towards the 

 earth ? we might now, without any incongruity, speak of the stone or 

 other heavy body as the agent, which, by virtue of its own laws or 

 properties, commences moving towards the earth ; although to save the 

 established doctrine of the inactivity of matter, men usually prefer here 

 also to ascribe the effect to an occult quality, and say that the caase is 

 not the stone itself, but the weight or gravitation of the stone. 



* There are a few exceptions ; for there are some properties of objects which seem to be 

 purely preventive ; as the property of opaque bodies, by which they intercept the passage 

 of light. This, so far as we are able to understand it, appears an instance not of one cause 

 counteracting another by the same law whereby it produces its own efl'ects, but of an 

 agency vvhicfi manifests itself in no other way than in defeating the effects of another 

 agency. If we knew upon wnat other relations to light, or upon what peculiarities of 

 structure opacity depends, we might find that this is only an apparent, not a real, excep- 

 tion to the general proposition in the text. In any case it needs not affect the practical 

 application. The formula which includes all the negative conditions of an effect in the 

 single one of the absence of counteracting causes, is not violated by such cases as this; 

 although, if all counteracting agencies were of this description, there would be no pur- 

 pose served by employing the formula, since we should still have to enumerate specially 

 the negative conditions of each phenomenon, instead of regarding them as implicitly con- 

 tained in the positive laws of the various other agencies in nature. 



Cc 



