236 



Thoughts on Causality. 



an indefinite number of points of application of causal 

 efficiency. This latter alternative would evidently be the 

 resort of a monotheism not yet sufficiently exalted in scien- 

 tific knowledge to be able to appreciate the full meaning 

 of that convergence toward a unity which is disclosed in 

 the genealogical lines of phenomena. To the first alter- 

 native it would be driven by a clearer understanding of the 

 significance of the history of opinion ; and when once fully 

 entrenched in that position, it would contemplate with 

 satisfaction rather than alarm, the progress of science in 

 breaking through the uuexplored barriers which separate 

 the last found causes from the one Universal Cause. 



We turn back, now, to scrutinize the field of secondary 

 causation, in which physical science occupies itself. It is 

 purely a phenomenal world. The data of physical science, 

 strictly speaking, do not consist of causes made manifest 

 in sensible phenomena, but of sensible phenomena them- 

 selves, certain ones of which sustain to each other the 

 relation of invariable antecedence and sequence. The 

 body of positive science is restricted to these. When, in 

 obedience to a law of our minds, we connect the necessary 

 notion of causation with a given invariable antecedence, 

 we perform a legitimate act of philosophic thinking ; but 

 we neither know the modus operandi of the causation, nor 

 whether the causation inheres in the antecedent or acts 

 through it, nor whether such causation is primary or sepa- 

 rated by an indefinite number of terms from primary cause. 

 It is only an accommodated and symbolical form of expres- 

 sion when I say, for instance, that friction causes electrical 

 phenomena. I only know that electrical phenomena follow 

 friction. Friction may be the cause proximate or it may 

 not be. That it is the first cause no one will pretend ; but 

 how many removes separate it from first cause, no one can 

 conjecture. 



Physical science may conveniently an d harmlessly assume 

 that causation inheres in the antecedent ; but the habit 



