68 AS REGARDS PROTOPLASM, ETC. 



writers to reason away the connection of cause and effect, and 

 fritter it down into the unsatisfactory relation of habitual 

 sequence, it is certain that the conception of some more real 

 and intimate connection is quite as strongly impressed upon 

 the human mind as that of the existence of an external 

 world." 



Beyond all doubt, then, there is a certain community between 

 the cause and the effect, and in this community lies the reason 

 of the nexus. In short, the reason of the causal nexus is 

 Identity. " The rain/' says Hegel, " is the cause of the wet- 

 ness," " but it is the same water in the wetness that is in the 

 rain." It is the same physical water on the street, then, that 

 was in the cloud, and, similarly, the water in my beard is the 

 same physical water that was in my breath. A like state of 

 the case is visible in every one of the various examples of 

 causality that we have seen above. 



Nor is it different with Hume's billiard balls : it is identically 

 the same motion now in the one that was then in the other, 

 and the examination of them, before the motion, or after the 

 motion, as independent individuals, was beside the point. That 

 is, abstraction was made by Hume from all that constituted 

 causality in the balls, and no wonder he could not find in them 

 what he himself had just thrown out. The motion was alone 

 the cause, and it was idle to examine them apart from it. And 

 here we see that what are regarded as causes are, commonly, 

 concrete objects with a variety of elements in them beside that 

 or those which may stand at the moment in the causal nexus. 

 Contraction in the hand, and in the sponge ; water in the cloud, 

 and on the street ; motion in the bat, and in the ball : in all such 

 cases we see but a single import, and it is common to the cause 

 and to the effect. It, in effect, is both. So far as this import 

 goes, then, there is a relation of identity between the cause and 

 the effect, however different they are otherwise. They are not 

 only externally associated, they are internally united they are 

 united in a relation of identity, and this, whatever elements of 

 difference they may bring with them otherwise. The hand is 

 very different from the sponge, the cloud from the street, the 

 ball from the bat ; but as copula between the respective pairs 

 of di/erents, we have, in order, the identity of contraction, of 

 water, and of motion. The knife cuts the apple : shall we, like 

 Hume, examine knife and apple apart, and say how different 

 they are blinding ourselves to the one single absolute 

 identity that is in the cause and the effect of which they are 

 but the vehicles 1 



Sometimes, too, plainly, the identity may not be explicit, but 

 only implicit ; or it may even be present in the form of diversity. 

 It is really by identity that you would explain shadows, 



