ON THE NOTION OF CAUSE iSi 



In order to find out what philosophers commonly 

 understand by " cause," I consulted Baldwin's Dictionary, 

 and was rewarded beyond my expectations, for I found 

 the following three mutually incompatible definitions : 



" CAUSALITY, (i) The necessary connection of events 

 in the time-series. . . . 



" CAUSE (notion of). Whatever may be included in 

 the thought or perception of a process as taking 

 place in consequence of another process. . . . 



" CAUSE AND EFFECT, (i) Cause and effect . . . are 

 correlative terms denoting any two distinguish- 

 able things, phases, or aspects of reality, which 

 are so related to each other that whenever the 

 first ceases to exist the second comes into exist- 

 ence immediately after, and whenever the second 

 comes into existence the first has ceased to exist 

 immediately before." 



Let us consider these three definitions in turn. The 

 first, obviously, is unintelligible without a definition of 

 " necessary." Under this head, Baldwin's Dictionary 

 gives the following : 



" NECESSARY. That is necessary which not only is 

 true, but would be true under all circumstances. 

 Something more than brute compulsion is, there- 

 fore, involved in the conception ; there is a 

 general law under which the thing takes place." 



The notion of cause is so intimately connected with 

 that of necessity that it will be no digression to linger 

 over the above definition, with a view to discovering, if 

 possible, some meaning of which it is capable ; for, as it 

 stands, it is very far from having any definite signification. 



The first point to notice is that, if any meaning is to be 

 given to the phrase " would be true under all circum- 

 stances," the subject of it must be a pro positional nine- 



