LAW OF CAUSATION. 



221 



certain new circumstances arise. We 

 may invest this assurance of future 

 events with a fictitious objective ex- 

 istence, by calling it a state of the 

 object. But unless the state consists, 

 as in the case of the gunpowder it 

 does, in a collocation of particles, it 

 expresses no present fact ; it is but 

 the contingent future fact brought 

 back under another name. 



It may be thought that this form 

 of causation requires us to admit an 

 exception to the doctrine that the 

 conditions of a phenomenon — the 

 antecedents required for calling it 

 into existence — must all be found 

 among the facts immediately, not 

 remotely, preceding its commence- 

 ment. But what we have arrived 

 at is not a correction, it is only an 

 explanation, of that doctrine. In the 

 enumeration of the conditions required 

 for the occurrence of any phenomenon, 

 it always has to be included that 

 objects must be present, possessed of 

 given properties. It is a condition 

 of the phenomenon explosion that an 

 object should be present, of one or 

 other of certain kinds, which for that 

 reason are called explosive. The pre- 

 sence of one of these objects is a con- 

 dition immediately precedent to the 

 explosion. The condition which is 

 not immediately precedent is the 

 cause which produced, not the ex- 

 plosion, but the explosive property. 

 The conditions of the explosion itself 

 were all present immediately before 

 it took place, and the general law, 

 therefore, remains intact. 



§ 6. It now remains to advert to a 

 distinction which is of first-rate im- 

 portance both for clearing up the 

 notion of cause, and for obviating a 

 very specious objection often made 

 against the view which we have taken 

 of the subject. 



When we define the cause of any- 

 thing (in the only sense in which the 

 present inquiry has any concern with 

 causes) to be " the antecedent which 

 it invariably follows," we do not use 

 this phrase as exactly synonymous 



I with "the antecedent which it in- 

 1 variably has followed in our past ex- 

 perience." Such a mode of conceiving 

 I causation would be liable to the ob- 

 jection very plausibly urged by Dr. 

 Reid, namely, that according to this 

 doctrine night must be the cause of 

 day, and day the cause of night ; 

 since these phenomena have invari- 

 i ably succeeded one another from the 

 beginning of the world. But it is 

 necessary to our using the word cause 

 that we should believe not only that 

 the antecedent always has been fol- 

 lowed by the consequent, but that as 

 long as the present constitution of 

 things * endures it always ivill be so. 

 And this would not be true of day 

 and night. We do not believe that 

 night will be followed by day under 

 I all imaginable circumstances, but only 

 ' that it will be so provided the sun 

 j rises above the horizon. If the sun 

 I ceased to rise, which, for aught we 

 ; know, may be perfectly compatible 

 i with the general laws of matter, night 

 I would be, or might be, eternal. On 

 i the other hand, if the sun is above 

 I the horizon, his light not extinct, and 

 I no opaque body between us and him, 

 I we believe firmly that unless a change 

 i takes place in the properties of matter, 

 I this combination of antecedents will 

 be followed by the consequent day ; 

 I that if the combination of antecedents 

 could be indefinitely prolonged, it 

 would be always day ; and that if 

 the same combination had always 

 existed, it would always have been 

 I day, quite independently of night as 

 I a previous condition. Therefore is it 

 I that we do not call night the cause, 

 nor even a condition, of day. The 

 existence of the sun (or some such 

 luminous body), and there being no 

 : opaque medium in a straight Unef 



* I mean by this expression, the ultimate 

 laws of nature (whatever they may be) as 

 distinguished from the derivative laws and 

 from the collocations. The diurnal revolu- 

 tion of the earth (for example) is not a 

 part of the constitution of things, because 

 nothing can be so called which might pos- 

 sibly be terminated or altered by natural 

 causes. 



t I use the words "straight line" foi 



