Thoughts on Causality. 



231 



It is a misfortune, as it seems to me, for either to restrict 

 his investigations to a single field. The practice begets 

 indifference to certain classes of data, and ends in bigotry, 

 misunderstandings and hostility. Our common nature co- 

 vers, in each individual, the whole ground, and it seems 

 to me narrow and pernicious for the truth-seeker to tie 

 himself up to a single method. 



Science, in its modern acceptation, does not lead to 

 causes — still less, to primordial cause. The search for 

 these is the legitimate object of philosophy. Science, strictly 

 speaking, knows only phenomena, with their groupings 

 and orders of sequence. It talks much of forces ; but these 

 are only hypotheses, verbal symbols of unknown quantities 

 which may be one thing or another. Moreover, when the 

 scientist steps into the realm of abstract realities, he is 

 playing the role of philosopher. 



I have said the bond between effect and cause is a uni- 

 versal datum of reason. I think no modern philosopher 

 will maintain that existence or phenomenon can be the 

 product of chance. In ruling chance, however, from the 

 throne of the universe, it may be well to offer an explan- 

 ation and a discrmination. We must recognize such a 

 thing as chance ; and we ought to understand what it is 

 and what it is not. If I throw down a couple of dice, it is 

 impossible to calculate what will turn up. We say the result 

 is wholly a matter of chance. I may chance to turn up one 

 ace, it may be two. But the contingency of the result is 

 not the cause of it. The two aces concur by chance ; but 

 chance did not put forth the efficiency which moved each 

 die precisely so far and no farther. The movement of the 

 dice is as absolutely the effect of the forces exerted by my 

 hand, by gravity and by elasticity, as if I had deliberately 

 laid each one down with the ace up. I have not the ability 

 so to measure and adjust the force and direction of my 

 muscular effort as to produce a preappointed movement 

 and lodgment of the dice; and there is, consequently, 



