LAW OF CAUSATION. 



23s 



"Thus we say the sun rises and 

 sets, and comes to the meridian, the 

 moon changes, the sea ebbs and flows, 

 the winds blow. Languages were 

 formed by men who believed these 

 objects to have life and active power 

 in themselves. It was therefore pro- 

 jier and natural to express their mo- 

 tions and changes by active verbs. 



" There is no surer way of tracing 

 the sentiments of nations before they 

 have records than by the structure 

 of their language, which, notwith- 

 standing the changes produced in it 

 by time, will always retain some sig- 

 natures of the thoughts of those by 

 whom it was invented. When we 

 find the same sentiments indicated in 

 the structure of all languages, those 

 sentiments must have been common 

 to the human species when languages 

 were invented. 



" When a few, of superior intellec- 

 tual abilities, find leisure for specu- 

 lation, they begin to philosophise, and 

 soon discover that many of those 

 objects which at first they believed 

 to be intelligent and active are really 

 lifeless and passive. This is a very 

 important discovery. It elevates the 

 mind, emancipates from many vidgar 

 superstitions, and invites to further 

 discoveries of the same kind. 



" As philosophy advances, life and 

 activity in natural objects retires, and 

 leaves them dead and inactive. In- 

 stead of moving voluntarily, we find 

 them to be moved necessarily ; in- 

 stead of acting, we find them to be 

 acted upon ; and Nature appears as 

 one great machine, where one wheel 

 is turned by another, that by a third; 

 and how far this necessary succession 

 may reach, the philosopher does not 

 know." * 



There is, then, a spontaneous ten- 

 dency of the intellect to account to 

 itself for all cases of causation by 

 assimilating them to the intentional 

 acts of voluntary agents like itself. 

 This is the instinctive philosophy of 

 the human mind in its earliest stage, 



* Reid's Estays on iht Active Powers, Easay 

 iv. chap. 3. 



before it has become familiar with 

 j any other invariable sequences than 

 those between its own volitions or 

 I those of other human beings and their 

 I voluntary acts. As the notion of 

 fixed laws of succession among ex- 

 ternal phenomena gradually esta- 

 blishes itself, the propensity to refer 

 all phenomena to voluntary agency 

 slowly gives way before it. The sug- 

 gestions, however, of daily life con- 

 tinuing to be more powerful than 

 those of scientific thought, the original 

 instinctive philosophy maintains its 

 ground in the mind, underneath the 

 growths obtained by cultivation, and 

 keeps up a constant resistance to their 

 throwing their roots deep into the 

 soil. The theory against which I am 

 contending derives its nourishment 

 from that substratum. Its strength 

 does not lie in argument, but in its 

 affinity to an obstinate tendency of 

 the infancy of the human mind. 



That this tendency, however, is not 

 the result of an inherent mental law, 

 is proved by superabundant evidence. 

 The history of science, from its ear- 

 liest davni, shows that mankind have 

 not been unanimous in thinking either 

 that the action of matter upon mat- 

 ter was not conceivable, or that the 

 action of mind upon matter was. To 

 some thinkers, and some schools of 

 thinkers, both in ancient and in 

 modem times, this last has appeared 

 much more inconceivable than the 

 former. Sequences entirely physical 

 and material, as soon as they had 

 become sufficiently familiar to the 

 human mind, came to be thought 

 perfectly natural, and were regarded 

 not only as needing no explanation 

 themselves, but as being capable of 

 affording it to others, and even of 

 serving as the ultimate explanation 

 of things in general. 



One of the ablest recent supporters 

 of the Volitional theory has furnished 

 an explanation, at once historically 

 true and philosophically acute, of the 

 failure of the Greek philosophers in 

 physical inquiry, in which, as I con- 

 4.ceive, he unconsciously depicts his 



